Life Hacks/Play to her empathy to you as her son
Your mom gets out of the car, looking as usual like a stern matron disapproving of everything and everyone as not measuring up. That is the opinion you have always had of her since a rather young age, but now that you have your improved people skills you find that you can read her a lot deeper and see some of the humanity under the permanent stony face she has crafted.
Well, she is not really humanized THAT much. You can tell indeed that she is a bit more perturbed that you called her away from work and worried about what it will mean for her in the office in the future than she is concerned about you and Roni, although that is there as a bit of an afterthought. An afterthought that seems to assert itself more in the foreground as she approaches you.
“Xander…” She says, still apparently jarred a bit by discovering you right in front of her. She then looks for a good solid second over at Billie grasping desperately on to your hand while avoiding eye contact with her. “Who’s this?” She demands with a confused tone.
“Well,” you respond, “remember how I told you about the guy who tried to attack me over Roni playing baseball?” you remind her of the details of your previous conversation in order to keep her up to speed, “This is his son.” You inform her. “His dad is under arrest now, so social services tried to take him into their custody. He ran away and found me and said he wanted to live with me rather than some foster home.” Certainly not an exact quote, but you figure giving the details might scare her off the idea. You also calculate this is the best way to approach your mother on this, communicating as simply and concisely as possible with the emotional appeals minimized.
“Is that what this is about?” Your mother glares at you and then sighs, “Xander, we can’t just go taking in some random kid off the street like that.”
“Mom!” you boldly cut her off with a solid, level, forceful tone. “I have been getting to know his situation. I know how to weigh the consequences of a situation. I wouldn’t be doing this if I thought it was going to be trouble.” Here you are counting on the memory control of the hack to have raised your mother’s opinion of your evaluation abilities. If she is sure you are smart enough to have considered the consequences, it should work. Besides that, based on what you saw of your relationship scores with her, she has a lot of trust in you, you figure that is the angle you should appeal to the most.
“Ahh…” She attempts to raise an objection, but for the first time in your life you see the gears in your mother’s mind completely grind to a halt. You have got to say you are amazed. With just two quick sentences, you managed to make your mother’s usual commanding attitude completely crumble. But you need to take it a step farther. You have broken down her defenses, but if you allow her a chance to recover she will be right back to her old self again. Most importantly, it is now in this window where an emotional appeal might actually work with her.
“Mom, you have been trying to get me to fill Brittany’s shoes lately right? Make me the new acting parent in the house? Well, if I am the one in charge at home, it will only really be me who has to worry about ‘Billy’ here. I’m the one who has to take the brunt of the burden anyway. If you are worried about money, there is really not much of a difference between paying for food and school supplies for 6 children Vs. 5. I am sure you have done the budgeting already. Those parts of the bills shouldn’t have dipped much since Brittany moved out.”
There we go, an emotional appeal, make it personal, then bring it back to logic. In this case though, it seems the logical point you made struck a chord you weren’t quite expecting. As soon as you got finished, you see your mother’s face go pail in surprise. She looks so aghast it is as though you just slapped her in the face.
“Xander… is that what you think of me?” She says, almost shaking. “Just a paycheck who forces you to be the homemaker?”
Ouch! You ought to have guessed that might happen. This seems to have gotten to her a lot more deeply than you thought it might. Well, there is no denying it. That actually is spot on exactly what she is and what she has been doing. It must have been bothering her though, at least on a subconscious level. It is not you she is mad at so much as herself. And now that you have brought this up, it triggered those deep seated fears and gilts she must have been bottling up inside her for who knows how long. Just there, she summed it up and stopped just shy of putting words in your mouth. She knows that’s exactly what she’s been to you, there is probably little you can do to deny it to her and now that the cat’s out of the bag it would just create more problems to try. What you can do though is choose what direction to go with this revelation.
How do you respond?
- Go on the attack, drive it in that she is a horrible absentee mother and this has hurt you
- Take a neutral stance, tell her it’s been hard but it has increased your independence and responsibility
- Extend an olive branch, tell her you understand but you would like for her to spend more time with the family
Infinity Pocket
Loki controls the local area.
