Strategic Intent For Developing Critical Thinking Skills

I was watching my Mom today. She is 82. Guess that dates me too, but she is amazing and I just have to talk about her because she is so relevant to the topic of strategic intent.

When my Mom was younger, she had a strategy for everything. I learned much from just watching her. She was so organized in her thoughts and in her actions that all I remembered when I was very young was that the house was always clean and errands were completed with minimal wasted efforts. My Mom was into everything. She would be there helping out at school, she would be teaching me how to make bread, she eventually worked into going back to school before I was out of school and became an Xray technician. 

I was impressed that my Mom could be so productive. She always told me to make a list, to make a picture in my head of all the things I had to do and make sure I had an order to do them in so I would not waste any time. She never did waste time that I could tell. 

She never liked TV, so she never sat with us except on the one night a week that we were allowed to sit in front of the TV to eat dinner. But she loved puzzles, she loved crossword puzzles and she loved board games and card games. So we had a lot of interaction and opportunities to learn strategy. 

Strategic intent is a plan, or a statement of what you intend to accomplish. That I think, was my Mom's middle name. But not anymore.

My Mom has a combination of things that affect her mind now. She has dementia setting in, she has glaucoma and eye conditions that cause her to see double. She has high blood pressure that is controlled by medications, but those medications along with her other conditions cause her to visually hallucinate. She has to be watched over every moment. 

Today was the day I was able to watch her for my Dad. I asked my Dad one day, he is 85, how I could help him take care of Mom. I knew it was futile to suggest that he place her in a home, although I really believe she would love it, and my Dad agrees. But he just stated, "I'm doing what I really enjoy doing. I really enjoy taking care of her." 

She can get very stubborn, but her fun nature and easy going personality now is making it very easy to care for her. She knows she is not thinking right, and it is very difficult for her, but I see a lot of peace in her life that I would like in mine. I don't know whether it is because she has lived a full life, or whether she is just accepting her situation better, but she stands out to me as a very real example of using and developing strategy; and also the harsh reality of not being able to develop a strategic intent anymore.