Caught up in our own 'reality'

Even in a child's game of T-Ball, balance and insight is needed. PHOTO/FILE

This week I have a story to tell.

The story starts with a overly excited and enthusiastic mother who has agreed to coach her son's T-ball team. Last year she coached her son's U7 T-ball team and because the players were all new to T-ball it was very much a collaborative effort. Parents from each side of the team were out on the field and there was no scoring, no-one got out and the purpose was to have a fun introduction to the game.

Moving on to U9 T-ball has taken the game to a whole other level. The coach has abruptly been made aware that the game requires scoring, no parents on the field and the kids have to leave the field if they get out. The coach's son is only 7 and the new rules were all a bit confronting for the first game, so he used the base plate as a pillow and did cartwheels instead of fielding.

The coach of the other team kindly provided her with a summary of the rules, which she then passed on in a 30 second "heads up" to the players. After this the kids started to play as they were supposed to. "Get the ball to the pitch before the player gets there", "catch the ball to get a player out" and "run as fast as you can to the pitch to beat the ball" were some of the new instructions. The coach went wild, screaming "you got them out", "brilliant" and "well done".

They had actually listened to her and were playing correctly with minimal instructions.

How do you feel about this story so far? Does it make sense to you, can you relate to why the coach is so excited?

The other half of this story involves a parent of the other team. She has been sitting in the back field watching the game with her family. Half way through the game she starts to get angry at the way the other team's coach is behaving. She starts to yell her displeasure at the coach and she is furious.

The coach is confused and she starts to become angry herself. Why is she getting yelled at by a parent of the other team?

Do you have any more thoughts? Why would the parent be so angry at the coach?

So the coach confronts the parent at the end of the game to find out why she is so angry. In among a lot of yelling (between the both of them) it dawns on the coach why she is so angry.

What would the game have looked like to this parent who had been watching from the outer field? The parent was not aware of the coach's inexperience and the reason she screamed with joy when one of her players got someone from the other team out was because they were playing correctly and implemented the rules so quickly. She was proud of them, not because they got another player out as such, but that they were playing the game correctly with such minimal guidance.

From the parent's perspective all she could see was the coach of the other team screaming wildly when one of her team's players got out. She would have felt protective of the poor kid who had to leave the field to wild applause.

There is more to this story, but ostensibly both the parent and coach were so caught up in their own experience and their own version of reality that neither could see the other person's perspective. If they'd been able to communicate more effectively and taken the time to listen to each other's perspective then a relationship may have been built, rather than destroyed.

I think that we so often do this in our world nowadays. We are so busy and caught up in our own version of reality that we fail to really consider each others' perspective.

We stereotype, judge others and gossip, but how often do we stop and consider the questions "why was that person behaving the way they were?" and "can I put myself in their shoes"? How often do we stop and really try to see things from the other person's perspective?

For when we stop focusing on our own emotions, our own sense of the world and our own version of reality, and consider other people's perspective we tend to get a more balanced view of how things really are.

When we do this we build better relationships and a stronger community.

If you haven't already figured it out, the coach in this story is me and this is my son's T-ball team.

It proves my point from my article a few weeks ago, that we are all human and we all make mistakes. I certainly made a mistake on that day and should have handled this situation a lot better. Live and learn hey!

A registered psychologist with a masters in applied psychology, Wanganui mother-of-two Kristen Hamling is studying for a PhD in positive psychology at Auckland University of Technology.