Beth Britton: The Ultimate Role Reversal

Beth Britton: The Ultimate Role Reversal

Sitting around the breakfast table, dad munching on his cornflakes, mum making toast, siblings arguing over the merits of muesli while you work your way through the bowl of porridge that is apparently 'good for you' - the only thing on your eight-year-old mind being what your school day has in store - is how many people spend their formative years.

Your parents become the soundtrack to your life, quick to reprimand your behaviour, ask you to eat things you dislike, and stop you going out when you want to or because you are wearing a skirt that they consider to be more like a belt. Imagine in little more than twenty years from that cosy breakfast scene that you could be censuring their behaviour, trying to stop them going out at all hours dressed in next to nothing, and only a few years later feeding them food that you have no idea if they will eat or spit out.

This is the ultimate role reversal, where you become the parent and your parent looks to you for the guidance they used to provide. It may sound like an extreme situation, but for hundreds of thousands of people this is becoming a reality, particularly as many couples are having their children later, and as those young people are busy growing up, the adults are heading towards health problems that could shatter their safe and secure family life.

In the most severe cases, this can mean early-onset dementia (defined as dementia in someone under 65). When dementia hits your family, the person with it develops that cocktail of vulnerability mixed with a need for independence that, in the early days at least, can be very similar to how that young person desperate to spread their wings might feel and behave.

It's often accompanied by denial on both sides, as the person with dementia tries to carry on 'life as normal' while their children are oblivious to the irreversible changes that are happening. I think most of us see our parents as frozen in time, a continuous rock in our lives, ignoring the ageing process and all its pitfalls.

We might leave home to go to university, hopefully then going on a career and maybe a relationship that keeps us many miles away from the parents we used to see every day. Meanwhile, if your mum or dad find that ageing brings with it mental or physical frailties that prevent life carrying on as it always has, you can be faced with the reality of putting your life on pause to parent your parent.

Nothing can really prepare you for that scenario. I was just 12 years old when my father began to exhibit the symptoms of what we discovered 10 years later was vascular dementia. My twenties weren't about university life, all-night parties and angst with boyfriends, they were about supporting my dad to have the best life he could, just as he had supported me as a child.

What surprised me is that rather than resenting my role, I actually grew into it. I learnt how to feed someone with a swallowing problem, knew all the words to the songs he loved, and became an expert at sewing name tapes into his clothes so they wouldn't go missing. I had become a parent and dad was, well, a 'new man' in every sense of the phrase!

Like every parent, I was told I was wrong on countless occasions, had to field numerous demands to know "Are we there yet?" and was asked for things I couldn't possibly provide. I would sign consent forms so that he could go on outings, was given paintings and crafts that he had created, and played endless guessing games when he was ill but couldn't tell us where it hurt. The difference between me and your average parent? 'He' was my dad.

From the ultimate role reversal, however, comes the ultimate lesson. Cherish every moment you have with your parents, however irritating, irrational or restrictive their parenting may seem. If you ever have to become their parent, you will understand where they were coming from. After all, the apple doesn't fall so very far from the tree.

Read more on dementia and ageing on Beth's D4Dementia blog: http://d4dementia.blogspot.co.uk/

Follow Beth Britton on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bethyb1886

Source: www.huffingtonpost.co.uk

WATCH: 'The Evolution Of Mom Dancing'

WATCH: 'The Evolution Of Mom Dancing'

If Jimmy Fallon had put on a pink sweater and a wig and filmed "Evolution of Mom Dancing" alone, it would have been enough. But, no, he went ahead and paired up with Michelle Obama, in the name of encouraging parents everywhere to get up and get moving with their kids for her Let's Move campaign. They did all the signature mom moves and named them things like "Just The Hands Part Of 'All The Single Ladies'" and "The 'Where's Your Father?' (Get Him Back Here!)." Then, FLOTUS went solo for an epic finale.

In other words, this clip is glorious.

(h/t every mom on Facebook)

Earlier on HuffPost:

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D.: How To Actually Have Influence

Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D.: How To Actually Have Influence

What makes a person good at -- and comfortable with -- persuading others?

Yesterday, I had lunch with a friend, a brilliant and hardworking executive. I had just finished Dan Pink's excellent new book, To Sell Is Human, and was eager for my friend's take on it. In a nutshell, Pink argues that moving people (i.e., selling, but also persuading or influencing) has become an essential component of nearly everyone's job in the modern workplace. Everyone is in sales. Like a lot of people, I found Pink's argument to be radical, surprising, and undeniably true.

But that doesn't necessarily mean everyone likes this argument. I thought my friend would find it interesting, but instead he seemed profoundly uncomfortable. "That's crap," he said, more to himself than to me. "I'm not a salesman. My job is strategy, not manipulating suckers."

On the surface, it seemed like the salesmen-are-slimy stereotype was at work here (something Pink's book tackles head-on and does an admirable job dispelling). There might also have been a touch of aversion to the idea of selling -- many of us wonder if it's right, ethically speaking, to persuade someone to buy or believe something. We're uneasy with the power that effective persuasion gives us. But, as Pink points out, it's impossible for human beings to avoid influencing, and being influenced by, other people's words and deeds. People are going to be moved -- the trick is to make sure that the ideas and products with genuine merit do the moving.

In my friend's visible discomfort, however, I sensed something more. Something like what happens when you give an unsuspecting person a set of algebra problems and they literally back away from you, stuttering, "Um... I'm not a math person." (Believe it or not, in my job I actually do things like that.)

I spend a lot of time writing and speaking about the pervasive -- and false -- belief that our success depends upon the possession of innate, immutable abilities. I drown my readers and listeners in data, showing beyond a reasonable doubt that reaching goals and mastering skills are about strategy, effort, and persistence, and that these things are learned. The abilities I have usually focused on are intelligence, creativity, self-control, and, of course, mathematical skill.

But until I read Pink's latest book and witnessed my friend's reaction to the idea that the ability to move people is essential to success, it really hadn't occurred to me that a lot of people might think that's innate, too. Oh, no.

To find out more, I turned to Google. I searched the Internet for the expression "natural born salesman." Over half a million hits. To be fair, many of these were attempts to dispel the myth of the naturally-gifted mover, but the need to dispel the myth speaks volumes about its ubiquity.

Selling, moving, persuading, influencing... Many of us may resist the idea that this is part of our job description (or avoid taking positions for which it would be) because we believe we lack that ability, just as we avoided calculus in college like the plague because we weren't "math people." My friend doesn't want to believe that sales is a part of his job because he doesn't believe he is good at sales, and more importantly, because he doesn't believe he can be.

(A quick aside: There is research suggesting that successful salespeople have particular personality traits, including conscientiousness, humility, and, as Pink points out, "ambiversion" -- being neither an extreme introvert nor extrovert. But it's important to not assume that personality traits = innate ability. Personalities can and do change as a result of our efforts and experiences. You aren't "stuck" as you are.)

If you want to become good at influencing others, then you simply need to learn how. It's not magic, and it's certainly not innate. It may sometimes feel innate, but that's because people are often able to pick up on effective strategies implicitly -- without conscious awareness -- through experience and observation. Not realizing you are learning makes your abilities feel innate, even when they aren't.

Do you want to be a people mover? Pick up one (or more) of the many excellent, data-driven books on the subject. To Sell Is Human is a good place to start. Robert Cialdini's Influence and Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational are also filled with strategies of effective persuasion. (My forthcoming book with Tory Higgins, Focus, offers a few useful pointers as well.)

Then, armed with the knowledge of what works, practice. Everything gets easier, more automatic, more "natural" with practice. You don't need to be afraid of this brave new people-moving world -- you have what it takes, you just need to learn to use it.

Check out the free gifts you'll receive for pre-ordering my new book, FOCUS.

For more science-based strategies you can use to reach your goals and get happier and healthier, check out Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals and Nine Things Successful People Do Differently.

Trying to figure out where you go wrong when it comes to reaching your goals? Check out the free Nine Things Diagnostics.

For more by Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D., click here.

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Follow Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/hghalvorson

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com