Fetteroll

Sandra:

> Your writing here isn't indicating any attention to your kids, and other than
> depriving them and medicating them, you haven't shown or told us how you're
> helping them feel light and happy.

Bridget:

> So who says we don't go out and do things? Who says I am sitting around
> doing nothing about any of it?

No one. Sometimes it takes a second reading to find out what people are
really saying.

Sandra said "Your WRITING isn't indicating" and "you haven't SHOWN or TOLD
us".

*All* that people have to discuss are what we *choose* to say. What we
*choose* (*and* not choose) to say builds a picture in someone else's head.
It's the point of communication.

If the majority of our words and examples are about control, regardless of
how much we *say* we are free, then people can't help but build up a mental
picture of control.

Quite often our words can convey more than the simple meanings of the words
because they are in a common cultural context. If I say "I ate at McDonalds
yesterday" it conveys more than "I ate at Jason's yesterday." The second
doesn't convey more than I didn't eat at home. The first carries an
impression of ambience, food, price, architecture, patrons.

Interestingly if I say "I ate at Mr. Donuts" to an American it would carry
one impression, but a different impression to a Japanese person. (They sell
Chinese food there along with the donuts!)

You can call house maintenance stuff chores if you like, but if the general
cultural connotation of "chores" is different than what you mean, then what
you've communicated isn't what you've intended. Happens all the time,
especially when talking to people who don't share our cultural or family
context. But it isn't the recipients who is wrong in their interpretation.
The responsibility is on the person who's trying to communicate. *If* their
purpose is communication. *If* someone finds it more important to be right
than to communicate then the rules are different, of course ;-)

Joyce