Everything I need to know as a mediator I am learning from being a Grandparent.
By Paula Drouin, Founder and Director, ADR Learning Institute
Spending New Year’s Eve alone with a two-year-old and a four-year-old can teach you what you need to know as a professional neutral facilitator, commonly referred to as a mediator. The first thing I noticed was how slow the clock was ticking for me. It’s like time stands still. It felt like I’d been there for at least an hour but only 15 minutes had ticked by. Then I realized the grandsons were simply fully engaged in the moment with no sense of time. That is what being a child is, moving from being fully present in one moment to fully present in the next. It is how a mediator is present when facilitating.
Children are endlessly moving through many feelings and experiences, then seamlessly moving into the next. Giggling one moment, hurt, and crying the next, then hugging the next, then deeply absorbed in drawing or playing or reading next. As the Grandparent with full-on responsibility to keep the kidlets alive and unscathed until the parents return, I didn’t really have to do anything but allow them to fully experience each moment then help them when needed, to transition from intense expression to calm expression, sometimes to humorous expression. To not let them get stuck too long in hurt or blame or guilt. I am questioning whether two- and four-year-olds experience guilt, but that is different research.
I realized that parenting and grandparenting can be a great training ground for honing the skills and presence you need to be an effective mediator. Just as mediation can be a great training ground for parenting and grand parenting. It forces you to see that nothing stays the same. Humans are always in transition. Transitioning between feelings, moods, thoughts, life situations, financial states, relationships, family dynamics and practically anything else you can think of. The less we try to control their expression and instead help them express in a meaningful way, the easier the transition from one state of being into the next is.
Since things barely stay the same for even a month, depending on the stage of life you are in, the more comfortable we are with our own and other people’s transitions, the easier life will be. In addition, the more we accept that nothing stays the same forever, the less resistant we will be when things change and the more quickly, we’ll accept the change.
Tips for 2024:
- Commit to learning something new.
- Fully live each year embracing transitional moments and events.
- With some luck and thoughtful action, you will be a wiser version of yourself by next New Year’s Eve.
