Poop Shake

I was thinking about relationships today. Friends, family members, peers, colleagues... I was thinking about how wonderful it is for me to be surrounded by people in my life who are kind and thoughtful, people who treat me with respect. This hasn't always been so.

When I was younger, I had some experiences that were scary and unsafe. Some people close to me were violent and mean sometimes. I was young; I didn't have much say about the grown-ups around me.

As I got a little older, sometimes I didn't have very strong self-esteem and I didn't respect myself. Sometimes I made choices to allow people to treat me poorly or disrespectfully.

In my adult life, I have learned more about loving myself and having high expectations of how the people that I allow in my life treat me. I recently came across the post below in a parenting blog. I don't remember which one. I wish I could cite the source. I would like to offer this advice to all of my students: Don't drink the poop shake.

Why You Gotta Be So Rude?

I have an eight year old daughter. She has had a persistent problem with a schoolmate who plays rougher than she wants to play -- hitting, pushing, etc. She says "But when he's nice, he's so nice!"

I told her "If I put the most delicious looking milkshake in the world in front of you, and told you 'Drink up! By the way, this milkshake? It has a little bit of poop in it. Just a little! Like. . . one spoonful!' would you drink it?"

"Ew, no!" she said. "Poop is disgusting!"

"What if it was made of really, really good ice cream? Like, the best ice cream you can imagine?"

"No! Blech!"

"What if it had even LESS than a spoonful of poop? What if it had only one SPECK of poop?"

"No, mom, gross. Even one speck of poop is too much."

"Okay," I said. "Hitting in a friendship is like poop in a milkshake. Even a little bit is too much; there is no amount of it that is OK, and no amount of greatness in the rest of the friendship can make even a tiny bit of hitting OK. I know you have fun sometimes and you want everything to always be great, but this kid's friendship is a poopshake. Don't drink it."

Furthermore, t's not just hitting that is poop in a relationship milkshake. This kind of awful, abusive, gaslighting behavior is also poopy. Your relationship with this guy is a poopshake, no matter how great some parts of it are. Dump it out.

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