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and looked at the menu in the frame from the sidewalk , our mother would hem and haw . Eventually , after an hour of this , it occurred to me that she hemmed and hawed less at one particular spot early on in our search . I stopped and asked her if she wanted to go back to that spot and she said , “ Sure , if that is what you girls want .” She eventually admitted that she wanted that place from the start but wanted us to pick it not because she wanted it , but because we wanted it . It was like a veil had been lifted . It was a moment I won ’ t forget . I was in-between my first and second year of med school and I realized that manipulation would not be my go-to form of communication with patients or with family .
My sister and I felt a negative response to being manipulated into picking the restaurant she wanted . If she had just said yes the first time we had looked at the menu , we would have already been well on our way into our second pint , especially since it didn ’ t matter to us which restaurant we stopped in . We were going to keep going until our mother said she wanted to go inside , thinking we would let her pick to keep her happy . Since our mother was never going to be that forthcoming , I can only think we would have collapsed on the sidewalk in front of Hyde Park hungry and parched . Her happiness would come from getting into that place without shouldering the burden of saying it was what she wanted . Man , humans are complex !
Yet here I was suggesting a form of conversation manipulation to avoid possible hard feelings or defensiveness . Is it possible that sometimes direct is not the best path ? Absolutely . But , for my partner , their best path at being heard was to be direct . Our patients , our partners at work and in personal life , and even our pets need us to be in tune with the way they communicate best . As leaders in our office , in our lives and in our patient ’ s lives , we need to be in tune with the way we get heard . How we voice , does in fact , determine how we are heard . For Hoover , just turning the light on in the morning is his signal that the flakey delights will soon be dropping . I have faith that even on his “ bottom ” days , he will not starve , and I cannot always get him to eat in the way I think is best for him .
Dr . Barnsfather is an OB-GYN with Norton Women ’ s Health .
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