Dear Wayne,
In my earlier Q&A (Quarrel and Arguments) post, I asked you to apologize to 哥哥 because you started the argument first.
As the youngest member in our family, you will invariably do more apologizing than the rest of us. Cognitively you are still developing and learning the social ropes in the family, there are still rules and protocols that you might not be familiar with. In conversation, you sometimes forget to take turns in talking and interrupt at the wrong time. There are also life skills, concepts and ideas that are too mature for you to learn and you will offend us, or upset us ever so often.
Bad about Feeling Bad
You can’t be help it but feel kinda crappy at times, being the ‘loser’ who have to say sorry more often than us. Sometimes your 12 year-old perception of things simply doesn’t bode well for your argument and your reasoning sometimes is just…unreasonable.
I remembered vividly when you were much younger, we have to force you to admit that you are wrong and apologize. You did apologize, but I can tell you were going through the motion, as you are still unsure what you did wrong and why you are apologizing for.
You will feel bad, and I can accept that, but I don’t want you to stop trying, testing and pushing your arguments. While many a times it is outright wrong; sometimes, you got it right, and gave us a fresh new perspective on how things should be handled.
Growing Pains
So keep trying, because you are the smallest in the family, everyone and everything looks larger than life, you want to puff yourself up and felt measured, you want to be counted, as part of the ‘big people club’, making mistakes and pissing people off. Your best intentions often leads to unintended consequences.
This is part of being the newest kid in the block. I was also the youngest in my family and I too have such challenges, although I wasn’t able to figure it out until I was much, much older. It can be tough being the youngest because we always feel a constant need to fight for attention, fight for our voices to be heard.
There are times where my opinions are not take seriously, because people thinks that because I am the youngest, my opinions will not be considered. Or people will say things like: ‘Kids, be seen, not heard!’ I’m sure you felt that to many times, and I hope our efforts to reason and argue with you, make you see the flaws of your own arguments, help you build better premises and assumption.
You are not Stupid
Apologizing more often don’t mean that you are stupid, an self depreciating assumption you make about yourself, thinking that everyone is smarter than you. It’s stupid to feel that you are stupid when you are not stupid. You are still learning from trial and error, our feedback and reasoning to build better and stronger reasoning, in the end of it, you will become the smarter of all of us, because your learning curve is steeper, you have to swim faster to catch up with us.
Right now, your brother is already somewhat completed his ‘O’ levels, his knows physics, chemistry and all those secondary school things. You don’t and you always look up to him and marveled at his level of knowledge, thinking how smart your 哥哥 is; you are also smart, just not as smart as a 16 year old.
You fail to take reference to your younger peers, are they as smart as you?
We are not asking you to compare, although you always try to measure up to your nearest competitor, your 哥哥. It’s pointless, we keep saying to you, just be the best version of yourself and we love you just as much. You are original and authentic in your own way. You have a take-no-prisoners, don’t give a rat’s ass attitude, which is unique to you. That is fine, that will also means you will offend people, which is fine, just learn from it apologize and reconcile with the hurt you sometimes unwittingly caused.
theaikidad 