Covey and the Sunbeam Crisis

Today at church, we had a sunbeam who was on the verge of total meltdown.

My current church responsibility is teaching the sunbeams class with my wife (for those unfamiliar, sunbeams are 3 years old). On this day one of our precious little sunbeams was not having a good day. Her mother teaches one of the older classes, and when her mother brought her in, she was looking a bit surly, and was clinging to her mother. Her mother deposited her in a chair with our class and went back to sit with her class.

She was not okay with this.

She immediately stood up and followed her mom. Mother kindly insisted that she return to her seat. 

She did not want to return to her seat. She pointed to a chair near her mom and stated that she wanted to sit in that seat.

She was informed that the chair she wished to sit in was not with her class, and that she needed to go back and sit in her seat, with her class. Her volume began to rise as she repeated her desire to sit in that particular seat. I watched the gradual rise toward full meltdown for a while, then an idea came to me.

“Would it be okay if we moved that chair to where your chair is, and then you can sit in that chair?” I asked. It is worth noting that the two chairs in question are identical. Same color, same shape, same size... Possibly slightly different stains (pencil, pen, crayon...).

She paused for a moment as she considered this, then nodded affirmatively that this would be an acceptable solution. I pulled her chair out of the way, and my wife moved the other chair to where her chair had been. She sat down, and I moved her chair back to where the other chair had been.

Crisis averted.

As I pondered this, two of the Steven R. Covey 7 Habits came to mind:

• Think Win-Win
• Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

Okay, I will admit, I have no idea why that chair was different from the other one. Perhaps - given that this is a 3 year old – It wasn’t important in the beginning. Perhaps what she wanted was to be near her Mother, and chose that chair as the means to her end, but then as time passed the means became the end.

But what I did understand is that she wanted to sit in that chair, and not her chair. So, thinking win-win, I offered the suggestion. And voila! She was happy because she got the chair she wanted, and her mother was happy because she was sitting with her class.

Mr. Covey has some pretty good ideas there. It’s a little harder with grown-ups, given their particular flavor of stubborn-headed, but I’m betting that with a little effort, it works for them too….