Talented and Gifted

As in previous blogs, I will present a challenge from the game, “Bounce Back,” and your job is to list the skills and the attitudes of resilience that you would use in dealing with the challenge. This one relates to your child and to your relationship with your ex-spouse. As any parent or partner would know, both relationships can present many challenges.

Your daughter is excited. She is part of the talented and gifted program at her school and has been selected for a tuition-paid summer in London. A friend of hers who is in the program and is also going to London has family friends who live there. She will be able to stay there for most of the season and will only need money to pay for her food and incidentals. The problem, however, and the challenge is that your ex-spouse has refused to pay for her airfare. She obviously wants to go to the program and you want to send her. But it will be difficult for you to find the money necessary for the airfare if your ex-husband is refusing to help financially. How would you use the skills and the attitudes of resilience to deal with this situation?

First of all, we would suggest that you look at the feelings that you have about what’s going on. His behavior may bring up old hurts and a lot of anger from the past. Some of it that relates to perhaps the way in which he treated the children in your marriage and you. But again, much of it may not have to do with the present situation. Dealing with your feelings will be the first part of being able to look at this situation and think about it clearly and effectively.

We would also suggest that you talk with others about what is happening. This connecting with others and communicating may allow you to vent and discharge some of the feelings that you have about the situation and thereby allow you to not be swayed and pressured so much by your feelings that you behave in ways that may make the situation worse.

In your communication with him, if you talk with him directly, we would encourage you to be assertive, not aggressive. You can clearly state your case for why you feel this is important to your daughter. You can outline the situation, the pros and the cons and make a clear request for what specifically you would like for him to do to assist you and your daughter. You can also state what you’re willing to do in return if he is willing to provide assistance.

Last of all, we hope you come up with a plan and make a decision about how you’re going to proceed with this. The difficult thing to do is to weigh the pros and the cons of this situation. But be realistic about what you can afford and what assistance you can actually provide.

And make a decision. Being in limbo is usually not the best place for anyone to be.

As we have said in previous blogs, you may have come up with other skills and attitudes that you would apply in this situation. And, of course, every situation and every individual is different. We would encourage you to talk with others about how they have dealt with similar challenges with their ex and how they feel you might deal with the situation.

We have found over the years that using this game encourages people to really think about what they would do in a specific situation and requires them to actually demonstrate how they would apply the skills and the attitudes of resilience to the challenge. We will be introducing an electronic form of this game in the next few months.