DW_a_mom wrote:
I'm glad they were nice strangers
My son still has a lot of trouble with the whole tact thing. He usually does pretty well, he is learning the rules on it, but he gets really mad at the world for making him bite his tongue. As he explains, why is it wrong to simply tell the truth? We go round and round and round discussing it; I don't think he'll ever buy it. Thing is, it doesn't really hurt his feelings when people say blunt things to him. He's happy with who he is; he knows he has bad points, but figures they are offset by the good points. So if someone tells him he runs weird, he just agrees with them. And so on. So the whole, "imagine how you might feel" thing is lost on him.
The 'putting yourself in another's shoes' thing doesn't work because other people may not see the tactfulness the way he sees it. The fact is that he's not intending to cause offense. That's why I was trying suggest earlier to try to explain why other people might take offense and also to think of something to say in case someone does take offense the next time round. As for me, I did learn as I got older but I still have lapses though
. As for the OP's story, I can't help but see the funny side of things as well, "The blind man can't see the animals", at least these strangers had a sense of humour
.