Based on the thread involving your reaction to people who question college choices, I thought I’d start a discussion of times you smile and nod in other instances.
I have several right off the bat:
Nurses, doctors, medical students, and social workers who try to tell me things about my mentally ill son that I’ve been aware of for many years. I’m not an idiot.
Friends and relatives who try to tell me about wonder diets, vitamins, etc. that will cure my son of schizophrenia.
Similarly, friends and relatives who tell my father and the rest of the family that there is still hope for him and he should be taking lots of Vitamin C and listening to Bible tapes, because miracles do happen. In this case, I smiled and nodded the first time, then explained why that wasn’t practical. When the same relative repeated the nonsense to my father the next day, Sister and I didn’t smile or nod but abruptly told the relative to knock it off.
I’m fairly active in a team sport. Most of the people who participate are men… who all assume I have no clue what I’m doing (because I’m female and much, much smaller than they are). Even after the team I lead has beaten them, the men will give me “tips” at the event dinners or awards ceremonies.
I think people have no idea what to say. So they feel they have to say something. They want to be upbeat and hopeful. Because what is the alternative? I don’t feel that they are being malicious, probably uninformed. Not schooled in what to say. But they want to visit, they want to be hopeful.
I had a friend who had some devastating news about her stage 4 cancer. It had spread everywhere. Her DIL decided to announce what was happening and have a fundraiser and go fund me. For expenses and to fund experimental treatment. There wasn’t any treatment left but they needed to be hopeful. Friends would talk to me and say, I hope our friend will find some treatment that will cure her. I wouldn’t say this to my friend or her family. But I told other people, that she wasn’t coming back from this unfortunately. People did not want to hear this because it’s very uncomfortable for them to think that you can’t be cured.
I had another friend who had a devastating stroke at a very young age. You know what most people did, they stayed away. Cut my friend off. One former friend of mine told me it made her uncomfortable to see our friend this way. It made her too sad to see our friend. Lots and lots of people felt this way.
I visited my friend, a small group of us made her get out. I quit groups I was in because they shunned my friend. It was the right thing to do.
I may not have said the right thing or known what to do. But I kept showing up.
I’m not very good at the smile and nod technique, unfortunately. I guess I’ve mastered it with not-very-good lawyer jokes that some people love to tell me.
My mother and I were talking only a few years ago about how my father used to lose his temper and hit me when I was a little girl. She said he shouldn’t have done it, but I needed to understand how stressed and overwhelmed he was. We moved on to other subjects, and about a half-hour later she says “He knew that if he ever laid a hand on me I’d leave him.” Smile-and-nod, the armor that saved me. I didn’t have to agree, disagree, change her mind, or expose my pain to someone who didn’t deserve access to it.
I still call her daily and take care of everything she can’t for herself, but that’s the moment she lost me.
My daughters were adopted from China. When they were children I’d often get insensitive remarks from people.
“I think you’re wonderful for adopting. They are very lucky.” Which implies that adopted children are lesser than birth children. No, I’m not any more wonderful than someone who had birth children. I’d just smile and nod and say that we were the lucky ones.
People would ask if they were sisters (they knew they were our adopted daughters). Many times right in front of the girls. I smiled and nodded until I thought to reply, “They are now.” Most people got it when I replied that way.
Other intrusive questions:
Why did you decide to adopt from China? I don’t know, why did you decide to get pregnant?
Do you know anything about their birth family? If I did, it’s not my place to share that information, it would be theirs.
They just throw girls away over there, right? Good grief. I tried to explain there were many reasons why they could have been placed for adoption. No smiling and nodding for that one.
Now that they are older, we don’t get many comments. I did think it interesting this January when we were all on a Korean Air flight and bibimbap was being served. The girls were sitting with me and a Korean male flight attendant asked them if they knew how to eat it. He kindly explained all the intricacies of eating the dish…to them, not me! They were the only Asians that I noticed getting the special attention, but I wasn’t offended, just kind of amused and curious about it. Besides, he was cute and they were loving it!
When my ex was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer, I got a book that basically said “cancer is all in your mind.”
I think people often don’t understand what you do or they have preset assumptions about it that can hit a nerve, unintentionally. I am a mortgage lender. We worked hard to get that license and it involves signing personally on million dollar warehouse lines. But whenever I tell people what I do, they inevitably come back with “so you’re basically just a broker” as if I’m making up some other job description. I know they don’t understand the distinction. If I have time, I try to explain it. But other times, I just…wait for it…smile and nod.
I had a dental hygienist, while working IN MY MOUTH so I was trapped, tell me that my facial paralysis was caused by stress and that if I were calmer it would get better.