Yesterday we drove up to NY to visit my three kids who are in camp in the area for the month.  It was such a long, long day (over five hours of driving each way – left at 6:30 amd and got home at midnight), but so nice to see them!!  I really love our kids and it was so, so nice to spend the day with them.   And it was really nice to see how much they love us and their siblings, too. 

Two other moms came along with us to camp, and on the way home, one of the moms asked me two questions: how do you get your kids to take care of each other, and how do you get them to do what you ask without complaining?  I get asked questions like this not infrequently, but because I don’t want to sound like I’m trying to get more compliments, I don’t usually follow up with the questions I always want to ask.  Which is, what do you see specifically that makes you ask that, and is it something that’s unusual that made you comment on it?  (I once asked a close friend ‘what do you mean?’ when she commented on the kids’ character, and she said, “Oh, come on, you know your kids are special.”  It wasn’t very helpful feedback, but I realized that I needed to be more clear about what I was asking, too!)  As obvious as it is to the person asking what they’re seeing, I usually have to guess what they saw that prompted their comments. 

Since I have a lot of respect for the woman who asked me this – she’s is the mother of six, her youngest being almost the age of my oldest, and who gave a lot of time and attention to her kids when raising them – I really was interested in her thoughts.  But she asked in the van when the other mom was there, and I didn’t feel comfortable discussing it too much right then.   A little later, we all got out at the rest stop and I told her that I wasn’t looking for pats on the back, but on honest feedback and asked her my two questions. 

She said that she noticed that the kids all look out for each other and naturally do things to help each other.  As she was saying this she noticed my dd7 helping ds2 wash his hands in the bathroom, so she said, “Like that!”   Since I never sat down and planned a method to get my kids to be like that, I could only say that I communicate to my kids that we’re a team and that means working together.  They genuinely love and like each other so I guess it’s natural that they help each other whenever the opportunity comes up.  I suppose my biggest part in this is that I created an atmosphere where they all spend hours a day together and have requirements about what kind of interactions are acceptable and what aren’t. 

Then she went back to her other question, and said, “When you asked your son to feed the baby in the car when we were driving, he did it willingly.  But if I asked my children to do something like that, they would have complained and told me to ask someone else!  Don’t your kids ever refuse to do what you ask?”  The truth is, yes, sometimes they don’t want to do what I ask them to do.  I wouldn’t want anyone to think that we have a mantle of saintliness that’s spread over us all.  🙂 

I have one child in particular who is at this stage – maybe 30 – 50% of the time when I ask him to do something, his first reaction is, ‘could you ask so and so to do it?’  Every child has areas that are more challenging for him, and for this child, he really likes fun. Not work.  So this is harder for him that for some others, and it’s something that I work on with him, to help him internalize what an appropriate response is.  (I sometimes do that by replaying the scene.  Me, pleasantly: “I’m going to ask you again, and this time you’re going to respond appropriately, with a pleasant attitude and ‘yes, Mommy’, ‘sure, Mommy’, ‘I’ll be happy to’, or something else that shows me you’re happy to work together to do what needs to be done. ”  Child: says response properly and we go on with things, or says it grumpily, in which case we do it again, until child does it with the right attitude.) 

But generally they are pretty receptive to what I ask and there’s not much discussion or negotiation regarding the task at hand.  Here’s my feeling about this.  First of all, I try to be reasonable and fair about what I request of them.  Though they do a lot to help out, I don’t make my kids my slaves and give them jobs all day long.  I try to keep in mind how much I’ve asked of that child that day/week before asking for something else.  I have two categories that my requests fall into – those that I would appreciate if they could do it but they can say if it’s something they’d rather not do, and things that they have to do whether they want to or not, and tell them when it’s something they can refuse with no bad feelings. 

 Usually we work together to clean up, or cook, or whatever, so usually I’m not asking one child to do something while everyone else gets to play around.  So what they’re being asked is to do part of a project.  I don’t usually assign just one child to do a job.  If, for example, it’s time to set the table, I’ll break it up for two or three kids to do so that they share the work. 

Also, when they ask me for help, I try to help them accomplish what they want when they need my assistance. And I try to be as responsive and pleasant when they ask for my help as I expect them to be when I ask for theirs. 

The other mom summed what I said up by saying that it comes down to expectations, and I expect them to do what I ask.  And she’s right.  But I don’t expect that in a vaccuum, and I’ve shared what I’ve tried to do to create the kind of atmosphere where helping someone else or doing what a parent says is natural. 

Avivah