I remember at a baby shower a while back, there was a game that was essentially the “maternity olympics”…there were prizes for the biggest baby, the most over due, and so on. When the “longest labor” event arose, I won. Hands down.
When I was six and a half months pregnant with my youngest Junior Tribe Member (JTM), I began early labor. Through the wonders of modern medicine, the contractions went from three minutes apart to intermittent–as long as I didn’t nothing. As soon as I moved around even a small amount, they would act up again. I was in labor for 6 weeks, on bed rest between home and hospital to postpone the birth of the little guy as long as possible.
Problem was that I had a busy and active household, including a 20 month old JTM that never slowed down. What to do? He needed to be chased after, and I needed to not be off the couch.
There was a delightful woman in my church, who I will forever consider my guardian angel. She would phone each Sunday and ask, “Whaddaya need this week?”
And she would invite me to let her know which days I needed someone for childcare and when we needed meals, and she would ask someone to come clean my house. Numerous folks understood and knew my predicament and had offered to assist. She would call those who were wanting to help and let them know when and how to help.
When my baby was born weeks later and needed only 10 days in hospital, it felt as though the community had birthed him. The support and help of the community prolonged my pregnancy enough that the complications were minimal. He was alive and healthy because the community surrounded us with care–the help was literally life-giving.
I will remain forever grateful…and forever open to supplying meals to young moms who need meals as a way of paying it forward. As a way of acknowledging my gratitude for the help.
We belong to each other.
We need each other.
We were created for connection.
We connect by helping and being helped.
It was powerful and humbling to be helped in such a meaningful way. The community it created around me was one I will never forget.
Years later, when that JTM grew up some, and was in high school, he would ask for my help with his school work. There were times when I would sit with him and we would figure things out together…and times when I would decline to help.
- There were occasions where the demands on my times were large and it didn’t work to help him…and often he would ask for help the day before the assignment was due even tho he had known about it for several days. It just didn’t seem like I wanted him to learn that it is OK to make unexpected huge demands on a person very suddenly. I don’t want him thinking that his lack of planning can have him expect others will drop everything to accommodate him. That would be an unkind thing for me to teach him.
- There were other occasions where the assignment was challenging but I knew to be within his scope. He wanted help because it would be easier to do it with my help, but not because he needed it. I would offer to proof read it when he was done his first draft, but would decline to write the draft with him. I wanted him to know that he can do hard things. I wanted him to know that I believed in him. I wanted him to know I didn’t feel like he needed rescuing. I wanted him to feel my confidence in him.
I like helping…especially people I care deeply about. But there was a sense that, in certain situations, if I was helping him, I wasn’t really helping him.
Sometimes, helping doesn’t help.
Huh?
Yeah, sometimes, helping doesn’t help:
1. Helping breeds dependence
Helping should be a hand up, not a hand out.
Small children might need help tying their shoes because they don’t have the fine motor skills to make a bow with the laces. It’s not fair to expect a one year old to tie their shoes. Helping is a good idea.
But if you keep tying those shoes, what happens when they move away to start college and you are not there in the dorm to tie those shoes? 🙂
There needs to be some moments of “just right challenge” where a helper says to the helpee: “I believe in you. I know you can do this. I want to be able to watch you do this on your own. I want to celebrate your success!”
2. Trust is broken during the helping
Say your buddy forgets his coffee card and asks if he can get a coffee off your card. No big deal…and you comply. He says he’ll get you back. He doesn’t. And he asks you for another coffee the next week. And soon he’s bumming one or two coffees off of you with this vague promise…that he doesn’t deliver on. Maybe it’s not just a coffee–maybe it’s huge favours. Trust is broken and relationships are strained.
If your help is taken advantage of–where the helpee repeatedly breaks your trust, violates agreements, doesn’t pay you back as promised, keeps “forgetting” and generally uses your assistance to be able to be irresponsible–your help isn’t helping.
It’s creating opportunity for bad behaviour.
Friends don’t create bad behaviour opportunities for other friends.
3. Helping requires you to violate your own moral code.
When a spouse asks you to call in sick when they have a hangover–they are asking you to lie for them. When a friend asks if they can copy your homework and hand it in as their own, they are asking you to participate in plagiarism.
Helping generally doesn’t involve violating your own values, keeping secrets, and deception.
When helping has you feel sick to your stomach, ask if this is a good idea. Give yourself permission to help within what feels right to you. Trust your intuition and let it matter.
4. The situation subtly corners you into helping in ways that feel manipulative.
Imagine this:
- A next door neighbour comes over and asks for a ride to the bus depot because of the need to go visit a sick relative in the next province. You agree to take your neighbour to the bus depot. Once there, out of the blue the neighbour asks if you could provide the money for the bus ticket because she doesn’t have the cash.
- A family member asks you to go buy liquor…saying if you don’t get it he will have to go get it himself…but he’s already had 6 beer and he’d prefer not to drive.
Helping is best freely offered. Often help is requested…but when the request comes with pressure, no options and something in your gut says this doesn’t feel right…listen to it. You are allowed to listen to that.
5. The help requested feels beyond your resources.
You may be able to loan lunch money to a co-worker who has forgotten their lunch. You may be able to assist with a cell phone bill for a relative who’s had unexpected expenses. But when you are asked to cover someone’s rent and the only way you can do that is by not paying your own…that doesn’t work.
Helping others comes from within our capacity to offer help.
At some stages of life, you may be able to offer rides to your neighbour to the grocery store…and then for a time your car is full with car seats and children, and your neighbour needs to find other options…and when the oldest starts kindergarten, it is again within your ability to offer help.
6. Your help enables unhealthy behaviour
There are times when helping another allows that person to continue in an unhealthy pattern. Constantly loaning small amounts of money and not expecting it back may seem kind…but may allow the person a sense of complacency so that they don’t pursue career advancement. Meeting someone’s every need after surgery may seem kind, but if the person is to be up and moving as much as possible even though it’s uncomfortable, you may be setting them up for a poor recovery.
7. Your help creates strings in the relationship of hidden expectations or resentments
Help is best given freely and within one’s capacity to do so. When help is given and received in ways that have covert expectations, it sets everyone up to get upset. Just because you loan someone some cash, they are not obligated to have the same political opinions. If you pay for a grandchild’s music lessons, you don’t have the right to decide how they are disciplined. Just because you helped provide a ride to school one year, doesn’t mean that you are obligated to do so the next year when the schedules and times change and it doesn’t work anymore.
8. Your help to another is an important part of you feeling good for yourself
Everyone likes to feel important. And helping has that effect. The danger is that a person helps to get that feeling–it’s that feeling that becomes the most important part…and so the helping is done for how it makes the helper feel.
The helper is looking for a “helper’s high”–so the recipient of the help better be effusive in their gratitude. The helper better need the help cuz it’s gonna be offered no matter what.
There are many, many reasons and opportunities to help each other. No doubt. Let’s keep helping positive.
Ways to keep helping helpful:
Develop healthy boundaries in helping
Everytime you say “yes” to helping someone, you are saying “no” to your availability to help someone else. If you say yes to the school, you may end up saying no to your kids. Choose discomfort over resentment. Helping is important, but without boundaries, it leads to burnout and frustration–and often, needing to pull back from all kinds of helping.
Know your Limits
Different people have different capacity. Know what you can offer. Life is a marathon, not a sprint and helping needs to be done in a way that is sustainable over the decades
Know where your heart sings
Know your gifts and natural skills and help in ways that fill you. If someone asks me to sew something for them, I may just want to poke my eyes out. If someone asks me to proofread a paper for them, I’m all over it.
Helping in ways that fit with who you are make helping enriching.
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