Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research The Art of Rebuke, article link

Dear Ones -
Happy Holidays to all of us who are celebrating holidays this season.
I just dug up this article link: http://reformjudaismmag.org/Articles/index.cfm?id=1271
and re-read this article on the Art of Rebuke.

I know that there are a lot of Natural Born Rebukers in this crowd, both parents and children, of all religious backrounds, and I wanted to share this bit of my heritage because it seems to light the way toward guiding our small ones who are so in touch with their 'inner rebuker.'

There is also a discussion guide to the above article here: http://reformjudaismmag.org/Articles/index.cfm?id=1285

Usually I'm quite embarrassed by my son's tendency to Rebuke, and feel that he doesn't do this smoothly or politely enough, and I worry that I'm not doing enough to 'Make' him pipe down.

I'd love to hear what your own reactions and experiences are to this article.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Thanks, Grinity. This is new to me. I look forward to reading it in detail. Thanks for posting.

Hi Grinity,

Thanks for this. It's actually really funny that you posted this just now. I am not Jewish and I have a good friend from out of town who is Jewish. We go on a ski weekend every year where we ski hard, eat well, laugh a lot, and she teaches me Yiddish. It's pretty fun. But she also rebukes me pretty constantly, to the point that I feel kind of beat up by the time I get home.

In the course of our 8 year tradition she has told me I have hearing loss (I don't), that I have asthma (she was right and as a result of her my whole family got diagnosed--what a blessing!); she had helped me with my winter driving (she was originally from Boston); she has made me take medicines I didn't want to and criticized my diet (even though she is the one who is gaining weight each year, not me); she has told me how to do my job and how do get along with my boss. But, right or wrong, it is a steady string of rebukes.

She and I have always been aware of our cultural difference and this topic came up over a fabulous dinner this year. She wanted to know why my Scandanavian friends and I just won't say when something is bothering us. She believes that we should get it out in the open and not let it fester. I told her that I prefer to work on myself and not on others, which only made a little sense to her. With that in mind, I loved this part of the article:


Clearly my reserved friends and me never get past these first two lines! LOL.

Anyway, I'll forward this to her. I did understand that there were cultural differences between us and differences in how we thought friends should talk to each other. But this explained her expectations perfectly. Here's to cross-cultrual skiing trips!!

This happened to me exactly! I had a friend who was constantly late or broken plans, etc. and I attempted to talk to her about it but she didn't really get it. That was the only major attempt I made and after taking her poor behavior a few more times, I just ended the friendship. And then I was sorry that I did. It's hard when you try to talk to someone and they don't listen. Or they don't get it. Or you don't explain well enough.

I'm like acs. I've always been one who wanted to try to fix myself, not other people. It was really hard for me to say anything to her in the first place but I had gotten to the place I couldn't take it any more, and our talk didn't go badly, but she didn't stop treating me that way.

I definitely agree you can't fix problems if they aren't brought out in the open. But somehow, on this occasion it didn't work for me. I probably should have tried harder or just switched my expectations of her. That's what I've always thought, that I should have just reassigned her friendship catagory to "acquaintance" instead of just dropping her completely.

My favorite quote from the article is:
"Rebuke a wise person and he will love you."
- R. Yossi bar Hanina

I read once that we have to explain to our children that for some people the urge to 'not be embarrassed' is stronger than the urge to 'learn something new, or correct a mistaken thought.' Our little ones are so amazed that adults and older kids don't want to have their errors explained to them - I think because they expect the best from everyone, at least for a while.

Acs - sounds like you and your friend have a wonderful thing going! I remember learning that although I was taught that if a person is quiet and shy one helps them feel at home by sharing something personal enought that they will feel safe enought to speak, that this sure didn't work with folks who are taught that 'if someone is talking, they must want to, so let them!' Boy did I laught and be pleased when I unraveled that one. One of my best friends became so because I was 'trying to help her feel at home, by talking,' and she was terrified (of me) and too polite to say so. I chattered on and on until I won her over, but I turn red thinking about it now!

Grins,
Grinity

I think that was definitely my friend's issue. She was very much a "this is how I am" type of person. I am amazed at how many people think this way.

I guess your other quote says it all


You have to start with a wise person, though, right??

Uh-oh! I hate to be corrected. I always attributed it to my lousy case of perfectionism. Fault-finding with me is like sticking a dagger in my perfectionistic soul and telling me that I'm not worth much. (If you'll pardon the rampant emotionalism!)

Perhaps lack of wisdom is really my problem...

I think that one of the liabilities of growing up gifted is that much of the time when one is being corrected, such as when my DS11 was told, by his teacher, who he really loved, back when he was in 1st grade, that you couldn't use a fraction as the denominator of a fraction, the adult or bigger kid who is correcting you is actually wrong. This is backwards from the typical experience. And our l o n g memories, that allow us to hang on to the feeling that we are being mis-'corrected' until many years later, when he happened across the fact that a fraction can be a denominator in a Math book. So I think that gifted kids don't get as many developmental opportunities to see that, yes, they made a mistake, and yes, it's ok to be corrected because one's life will be better for it, and they have 'too many' experiences where someone was hot to correct them when they, in fact were right.

So I think that being gifted, in this time and place, is about never really knowing where you stand. You might feel superior when the teachers mis-correct you, and inferior when your classmates let you know that you 'talk funny' and have difficulty communicating because you are using words they don't know and refering to an idea of fun that they havn't developed yet. What you miss most is just being regular - unless your family can provide that - a work in progress like the rest of us.

BTW - I know I'm not speaking for ALL gifted adults and kids, just some of us. This doesn't have much to do with the nature of giftedness, more an inevitable outcome of how our current society is set up.



What I like about the article is that it guide the impulse of ODP (outer directed perfectionism) towards something useful, instead of just 'throwing out the baby with the bathwater.'

Maybe wisdom is finding a way to make something useful/beautiful out of all of our annoying traits?

((shrugs))
Grinity

I can truly relate to your statement, Grinity. I still have serious authority issues as an adult because so many of the people in authority over me as a child were wrong so often.

My dd8 is running into the same problem at school in science. Her level of knowledge is so far above the level of science taught in the elementary school that she often knows more than the teacher. I think this actually started in preschool. Recently she had the following multiple choice question on a science quiz:
What state of matter is the sun?
a. energy
b. gas
c. liquid
d. solid
She wrote plasma to the side. It does seem strange that elementary students are not taught about the most common state of matter in the universe.

Yes, I like this.

I was sharing the Meyers-Briggs test with a relative, and he kept picking out any weakness indicated by his profile and ignoring the strengths. (Think Eyeore, only all self-directed.)

Naturally, I told him that there's no "good" or "bad" profile; every one of the personality types has its own strengths and weaknesses. Some people are better suited to some jobs and situations, and others are betters suited for others. But in the end, M-B is about giving us self-knowledge so that we can use our gifts to their fullest and minimize our weaknesses.

Wisdom!