The Need To Stand Up For Your Rights

I am a pretty mellow woman, and though I do engage in negative thinking like everyone else, I try to keep myself happy and on even keel. Of course a big part of that means maintaining smooth, mutually beneficial and harmonious relationships with others. So at times I find myself at loggerheads when through work or some other function I find myself having to stand up for the rights of either others or myself.

Now, not only am I pretty wimpy when it comes to confrontations, I am also not very brave. Fortunately though, I have a strong sense of ethics and I do not believe that anger is ever a good way to solve a problem. Sometimes though, you just have to be up front with people and tell them as clearly as I can (I often do it in writing though and dread the email response!) why you no longer intend on maintaining your relationship with them.

Let me illustrate with a recent example of mine. I live in Japan and as many of us expats do, practice a little English teaching on the side. Somehow I got stuck in a private English teaching situation with a drill sergeant mother and a cute but miserable five-year-old girl. It wasn't long before this mother was telling me how to teach and bringing her own materials. The worst part of it is that she would tolerate no mistakes and make her child repeat the same word over and over again until the child would begin crying. Then the mother would tell her to stop crying.

Well, I admit to having problems with pride and anger with this woman (I have been teaching English for twenty years after all), but far more important than that was the fact that I no longer wanted to have any role in the way that child was being treated. But I did not lecture the woman, which I regret. I regret it because sometimes it is your duty to spell the faults of other people- in a cool mannered way of course. Instead, I just explained that I was not the teacher she best for her and that I was sorry but I could no longer do her lesson. The mother was angry and accused me of being irresponsible, but she never came back. But that's just the way things are sometimes.

By: Dinah Jackson

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

This article was written by Dinah Jackson who enjoys writing about Pokemon and travel. We sell every Pokemon plushie that you can imagine. We have hundreds of Japanese Pokemon plush toys, pokedolls, plushies, figures, binders, deck boxes, sleeves, charms, straps, dice bags, and thousands more very rare Japanese Pokemon items. Direct from Japan to your door.