Control

I really wanted to make a post about control, a very specific kind of control. I would bet that everyone has had someone who has mindlessly wasted their time by making them wait for what seems like no reason at all. However, what you may not have known, and I am sure they did not know at the time, is that making someone wait on you is a form of control.

This kind of delaying tactic is generally not done in a conscious way, but it is nonetheless a form of control. By making the other person wait, one is attempting to establish a dominant position over them. If someone is waiting at a restaurant for you to show up, every minute that they sit there is a minute they have to spend, not doing what they want to do, but rather doing what you are forcing them to do. My brother is the worse at this. Not only is he always late (sometimes by days) but many times, he doesn’t even show up at all. I try not to think about the many hours I have lost because of him.

So, who uses this kind of control tactic? Well, everyone really. Only most people don’t know it. I think we have all seen or read about that woman who is being picked up for a date and she is completely ready, but when her date arrives, she makes him wait a while. This is control. I personally have never once had a girlfriend who was on time for anything. Actually, I once had a girlfriend who would be insanely early to everything. Like we would plan to meet at 5, and she would get there at 4 and call me to ask where I was. That was a very extreme form of control but, it worked in a similar way.

Children use this in my favorite way, because unlike adults, who know what they are doing, but don’t know that it is control: (Like showing up late, but not really knowing that they are controlling the other party). Children do it the other way. They know they are controlling, but do not know how they are doing it: (Like they know they are forcing you to wait on them, but they don’t know that it is your time they are controlling). So here is a little story to demonstrate my point:

For what seems like the millionth time, I watch as my sister suggested to my niece (who is 7) that she needs to go find her shoes, because it was almost time to leave. My niece, just being herself, ran around for about 5 minutes playing with the various toys and objects that she could find until she got bored. She then returned so she could play with us, having completely forgotten about the mission that my sister sent her on.  After about a minute or so my sister would say “Have you found your shoes yet?” My niece would say no and run off, only to repeat the process and still never even attempting to find her shoes.

Finally after the 3^rd time I said to my sister “Will you stop for a second? I have watched you do this over and over and just like the many times before it, you don’t seem to remember how it ends. She is not going to find her shoes… she has never once actually found them. Not because she can’t, but because she doesn’t want to. Let me just give you the spoiler on how this story ends. You will continue to tell her to go get her shoes and she will continue to kind of pretend  to do that. Then, when it is actually time to leave, you will just go get the shoes because deep in the back of your mind, you know exactly where the shoes are… So stop being cruel and just go get them now so you can be ready when you actually have to leave.” She calmly looked up at me for a few moments and then said “Shut Up!” and stormed off to complete the job that she was going to end up doing anyways.

So why would my sister do this? Why would she so deeply deny the inevitable fate that revolves around her and her child? And make sure not to fool yourselves… all parents do this, yours did, and if you are not currently a parent, well, you will do it when and if you become one. She does it in hopes that she will teach her child a lesson. A lesson that she needs to be ready, and know where her shoes are, and obey her mother. Well, I believe that she does learn a lesson from all of this. However, the lesson that she learns probably deals more with the the fact that she has started to see that she can control people and that the words ‘It’s time to go’ do not mean that it is really time to go, but rather that it is time for her to test the skills that others keep teaching her, and like the brilliant little creature that she is, she is learning how to control this power that she has over others.