PUTTING MY FOOT IN IT 09/13/00

Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 17:31:43 EDT
Subject: Putting my foot in it

My goodness, I did not intend to cast any of my children in a poor light, which is what I seem to have done in my last posting.

It is important to me, as a person and a Mom, to recognize my children as the individuals they are, each with their own communication style. While Elsa is usually effusively verbal, the rest of us surviving Lockharts – even Mike, in many ways - are what is called non-verbal; we get and send our most important messages without words, through tone and what is called body language. I don’t really understand it and it still confuses the daylights out of me, but I realize is how we connect, or don’t.

I've learned over the years that with my three oldest (and, yes, with me), less is more and that a message received sideways, as one young friend described it, can be received more easily than one addressed head on.

Does this sound as confusing to you as it does to me? You should be inside my head, a cobwebby place at the moment.

The bottom line, as they say, is that my kids love me. They know I know, which is what counts.

Love to all, a poorly worded but very loving MUM

reposted with sweet memories of its author, KATHARINE REYNOLDS LOCKHART, by her scribe/daughter, Elsa Lockhart Murphy aka Deev, in celebration of the 05/14 centenary of Mum's birth