How Assumptions Can Trip You Up

Okay, I am the official wake up person in our family. I always have been. This is largely due to the fact that I am a morning person and that I have an internal alarm clock that wakes me up automatically WITHOUT needing an alarm. This internal clock is so on that I can travel through different time zones and go to bed telling myself, "you need to wake up at 6 am" (which may be 4 am from the time zone I was in) and I will wake up between 5:55 am and 6:05 am. It is uncanny.

Now contrast this to my husband who prefers nights. He loves to sleep in every morning. He also has restless leg syndrome so there are times he will sleep on a couch downstairs or in our spare bedroom upstairs. Well to get the family going in the morning I am usually the first one up and then my husband will start moving and help me with getting all of the kids up.

So here it is and I decide I would really like to just sleep in this morning. I am thinking, "for just one morning I would like to NOT have the be the one responsible for getting the entire family going." As I lay there I am thinking, "what are the chances my husband will get up and take care of the kids without me having to get him up and going as well." I am hoping it will be high because it is rare for me to sleep in.

So I open my eyes at 6:15 am. My son needs to be up at 6:30 am. I say to myself, "I am confident Rory and Paul will get up and get the day started. I can sleep in." Well, when I look at the clock next it is 6:50 am and NEITHER one is up. So I drag myself out of bed, muttering to myself, and go and wake up Rory. I then see my husband's feet in the spare room and am immediately irritated that he didn't hear Rory's alarm (he was closer to it) and that he is still snoozing. So I flick the light on in that room as well.

I proceed downstairs thinking, "I am justified in getting him up because, after all, it is only about 3 times a year I ask to sleep in. The rest of the time I let him sleep in." My husband calmly tells me when he comes down that our daughter Ce'Anna came in to our room last night with a fever and he took her in to the spare bedroom to sleep with her so I wouldn't be disturbed. And, of course, he didn't get a bit of sleep.

I went from smug to appalled with myself in 30 seconds flat. See, I had committed a sin we often commit. I believed that sense I had years of data and facts that I could safely assume that he was just sleeping in. Yet, what he was doing was actually doing ME a great service.

Make sure you have ALL the facts before you act. Don't ASSUME that just because of facts from the past you can safely jump to a conclusion. Most importantly, give people the grace of space without judgment. If I just had taken a moment to step farther in to the room or to wait until he came down I would have learned of the kindness he had done for me. Instead I made him start his day out frustrated--not a good spot to put someone in.


Anne Warfield http://www.impressionmanagement.com/