Team Kang Blog #1 (the adventures of red and blue shirt kid)

The Medium IS the Message.

"the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension to ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology." - Marshall McLuhan.

Imagine that you had two people coming to you bearing the same basic message, they're both asking you to apologize for the wrongs you've done, it's just that one of those people is the person you've wronged but you think you didn't, and the other person is say your mom.
Who would you rather listen to?
 If you have siblings you know that this is basically the equivalent of you and your sister getting into a fight which ends up with you hitting each other and then she goes to tell on you to your mom.
This GIF will show what I mean: -------------------->





So that happens.

And then that happens (just look at all that regret)

So yeah, this is basically what happens before the message is given. Now in this moment, the medium with which a parent chooses to get the message across will have consequences (now the worst it could be is that the older sibling is angry at the mom and the sister for a while but he'll get over it, he's like 6, he doesn't even know what the word grudge means), so say she gets the younger sibling to ask him to say sorry for hitting her (I know the GIF shows two guys but that's basically how all sibling fights go until puberty comes into the mix)
Take a look at the GIF again just to get a sense of context -------->
(in all honesty this is more for me to have some fun, because you have to admit that that kick is pretty impressive) ------------------->

Getting back to the point, the medium with which the mom in this case chooses to get the message across to her son is going to have a fair amount of significance. Clearly it shouldn't matter since the message is the same either way right?

Oh. You have no idea how wrong you are. You see, when an angry child is forced to apologize to another angry child who's also at the same time accusing them of wrong, you get something a lot like this: --------------------------->

So take that into consideration when formulating how to resolve the conflict between the two. (You could also hope that they eventually forget why they were mad at each other, which they will, but this is a lot faster)

And the situation is getting worse.
The kick was just the beginning, imagine if you will, that these kids form a deep resentment toward one another, and you can stop it by getting one of them to just say sorry.

I'm sorry for hitting you.
Simple, short, concise, and within a few days they're happy and playing together again. But in order for this paradise, you need to cross through Hell as you try and get one of them to stop being mad long enough to apologize.

Then it hits you (just like the kid in the red shirt)
You, as the one person that neither of these kids is mad at, decide to go to the older son, and ask him to say sorry, and of course kids will do almost anything that their parents tell them to. So you ask him to say sorry and the words come out, the kids are happy, and they're happy until they get into their next fight. In that case, you'll be prepared.