Category: Parenting

Okay, so I’ve addressed the lowest level of using threats in my last post. But I recently went to hear a parenting lecture (something I do very, very rarely) that challenged my thinking about this issue. 

The speaker described something so common that virtually all of us speak this way at some time as using threats.  And while I agreed with his points 100%, I still don’t fully embrace his conclusion.

Here’s a couple of examples:  “If you don’t finish your dinner, you can’t have ice cream.”  “If you don’t do your homework, you can’t play with your friends.”  Sound familiar?  It doesn’t sound so bad, does it?  And it’s not so bad.  I’ve done something similar (I’ll have to give my way later on in this post) to this plenty of times in the past and felt it was clearly defining what behavior was acceptable and what would happen if it wasn’t. 

He suggested a better way to accomplish one’s goals as a parent.  What’s wrong with speaking as the examples above show?  Firstly, you are still using negativity to get your child to do what you want – you’re stressing the negative consequence of not doing as you instruct.  And you’re still using the control model of parenting to a degree.  The opposite of the control model is when we release control and instead empower the child to do the right thing.  We want him to do the right thing eventually whether we are there or not.

I think it’s good to distinguish what is healthy guidance and what is unhealthy control.  We have a responsibility to our kids to guide them, to teach them the right way to behave, and to enforce our expectations.  I very strongly believe this is our absolute responsibility as parents, and to shirk it is not only irresponsible but cruel.  But we must approach our children (or anyone else we interact with!) from a position of respect and caring.  

The best alternative is to use our power to motivate them to want to do the right thing (this is what I referred to as empowering them) .  It means changing two things – one big and one small.  The small one – the area where I’m feeling challenged by this lecture, and unsure if his way is any any improvement over my way – is the way we phrase our expectations to our kids. 

Here’s an example of he suggested.  Instead of the ice cream example above, he suggests: “I’m so glad I’ll be able to give you ice cream when you finish your dinner.”  “You’ll enjoy playing with your friends when your homework is done.”   You’re showing your love and desire for them to enjoy good things.  They can infer that they won’t have those benefits if they don’t do those things, but it wasn’t the message that came from you.  It was something they figured out on their own. 

If you’ve read this blog for a while, you may remember that I’m not a fan of How to Talk So Kids Will Listen, because of my concern that parents get too caught up in the technique of speaking to kids.  Does this seem like more technique?  It could be if parents think that the words matter more than the tone.

The most important thing about how we speak to our kids (in my opinion) is the emotion behind the words more than the actual words themselves.  Parenting isn’t about using the right kind of phrases.  When we feel loving towards our children, they feel that.  They also sense when we are ambivalent, tired, or irritable.

We can feel loving and still use the higher level of ‘threats’ (using the speaker’s terminology – I’m not fully comfortable with this) to get our kids to do what we want them to do. 

This is where I have trouble with his ideas.  I don’t threaten my kids.  That’s not my attitude, and it’s not my tone.  So how much does it matter that I don’t phrase my comments in exactly the way he suggests?  I don’t know. 

The reason I’m having trouble with this is that I don’t phrase my requests of my kids as the example above shows.  To me it sounds like bribery.  I don’t pull benefits away from them if they don’t do what I want, and I don’t offer benefits for doing what I say.  So while I’ll say, “No ice cream until dinner is finished”, I don’t use it as a threat.  I don’t have much emotional investment in it, I’m not waving the ice cream in front of them to convince them to listen to me.  I’m matter of fact about it – we eat dessert after we eat the meal.  I generally expect that they’ll do what I ask, because I’m reasonable in my expectations of them, and try my best to be respectful of them. 

This brings us to the second of the two points I said was crucial in motivating our kids in a positive way.  The first was the words we use, and the second is the spirit in which we speak them.  This is super important!!  I can’t stress this as the most important underpinning of all enough.  We need to really believe our positive message inside ourselves when we speak.  You can’t say the words and expect it to ‘work’ when your body language is telling your child something else entirely.  So the number one area to work on is our thoughts about our children, to see them for the precious people they are. 

As adults, we want to be treated with respect, and for others to acknowledge that we want to do the right thing, just we sometimes appreciate a pointer in the right direction.  Our kids aren’t any different.  When we talk to them, let’s try to give them the message that we know they are good, they want to do the right thing, and we believe in them.

Avivah 

I hear a lot of parents using threats when they deal with their children, and because it’s so common, I’ve decided to address this today.  First of all, I’ll clarify the two levels of what I’m referring to as threats.

The first is when the parent tells the child something extreme and scary will happen to them.  I don’t even like to give examples of this kind of threat, since I find it so disturbing to even think of speaking to our children like this.  But here’s something like what I mean, just so you know what I’m talking about.  I once read of a mother who knew her child was afraid of dogs, so she told her very young daughter she would bring a dog into the house if the girl didn’t comply with whatever the mother was requesting.  Of course the daughter was so terrified that she complied.  Or something much more common but equally troubling, “If you don’t come right now, I’m going to leave you here in the store.”  Why would we frighten them with threats of abandonment just to get them to do what we want?

I’ve heard parents justify this by saying that some kids are motivated by rewards and some kids are motivated by fear.  I don’t like the idea of using rewards or fear to get kids to do what we want, both are very problematic.  But I’m just addressing the fear based approach here; the problem with rewards is another topic altogether. 

Our children look to us to protect them and take care of them.  They are helpless and trust us to keep their world safe.  It’s damaging and harmful to the short and long term emotional well-being of a child to undermine this belief. Kids need to trust their parents and that kind of communication breaks that trust. 

Trust is at the heart of the parent-child relationship.  When you break the trust of a young child, you’re creating large problems in the future with that child as an adolescent or teen.  Parents make the mistake of thinking, ‘Well, it gets them to do what I say and nothing else works.’  Parenting isn’t about forcing compliance from those in a dependent position.  When we speak in this way, we’re speaking out of our own desire to control and that is usually fear based.

So how can we verbally motivate our kids?  More to come…. 🙂

Avivah

It’s an important thing to keep the lines of communication wide open with our kids, because as they get older, they’re going to encounter things that are bigger than their life experience to that point has prepared them for.  Knowing there is a loving adult that they can share their concerns with is very, very important.

Today my 9th grade son came home and shared something that he witnessed while in class.  Another student who was sitting close to him, opened up a paperclip  behind his desk.  The boy then ran the sharp end down his arm, repeating this action until he had cut open his arm and the blood was running down his arm.  My son found it particularly eery how the boy started smiling broadly once the blood was flowing.

 My son obviously knew something was unusual, to say the least, about this behavior.  He found it so disturbing that he spoke to me about it as soon as he got home.  He didn’t understand the significance of what he was seeing.  But I did.  (That’s one helpful aspect about reading so much about so many issues – lots of info is sitting there in my brain waiting to be used. :))  Self cutting, or self mutilation, is usually a sign of depression and a tool that kids in a lot of emotional pain use to relieve the overwhelming their pain.  My immediate concern was to find out if there was an involved adult in this child’s life who could help him get the help he needed.

But my son said he lives quite far away, and is dorming locally.  I think I’ve written about this here before, when parents have problems with a child and then think they’re dealing with the problem by shunting the kid off to somewhere out of sight like a boarding school.  But of course the issues are still there, just the parents can tell themselves that they’ve dealt with it. 

So I decided to call their teacher about it, who I know to be a very compassionate person who the kids trust because they know he cares.  I described to him what I heard, and though I purposely didn’t ask the boy’s name, gave him details I felt would be obvious to identify him.  He said he will take care of it from here. 

So this leaves me hopeful that somehow this kid will get some help, but just as much, leaves me thinking once again about how our kids need us.  They don’t stop needing us because their bodies get bigger. 

Avivah

Remember I said last night I gave my oldest daughter a haircut?  Well, my son took the ‘after’ picture of her and showed it to me.  And I was taken aback by how much she looks like me.  I mean, I know she looks like me, but I didn’t realize how much she looks like me.  I never noticed it or thought much about it.  But now that her hairstyle is much more similar to mine, it’s really, really obvious. 

So this morning, the 11 year old was holding the baby, and he started to whimper when his 13 year old sis went by.  Usually he only cries when he sees me go by (it must make him realize that I’m not holding him :)).  They thought it was a coincidence – until the next time she walked by when he did the same thing.  And then they tried it again, and the same thing.  The baby thought she was me!  And he sees both of us every day, all day long.  That was a definite first for me, for one of my babies to mistake a siblings for me.  🙂 

And this week, I shared some of my clothes with her.  She’s five inches shorter than me and much thinner, but this was a fitted sweatshirt for me that was baggy on her – she loves it.   (So much that I told her to just keep it.)  And she loves the idea of borrowing my clothes. 🙂  They grow up soooo fast!

Avivah

Last year, my then almost 12 year old daughter got a haircut, donating over 10 inches of her hair to an organization that makes wigs for kids with cancer.  Since then, she’s encouraged her two younger sisters, who also have long hair, to do the same.  And today they finally did!

I usually cut my kids’ hair (saves time and money!), but I don’t know what to do regarding donating hair – they obviously don’t want mothers here and there sending them baggies in the mail with long ponytails in them!  So for this, they go to a professional stylist.   My mother in law offered to take the girls for hair cuts when they donate hair.  Though there are places that give free haircuts to kids who are donating hair, the salon she goes to isn’t one of them.  And since it’s something I think she really enjoys doing, I let her, though I would love to be there with them to watch them get it cut, after years of growing it out.

When my oldest daughter came home from her appointment last year, she was disappointed that the stylist just cut the hair, and didn’t do any extra styling.  After all, once you’re getting it cut, it’s nice to get something a little different!  Since I wasn’t there, I wasn’t able to help her out, but she was determined that her sisters would be able to have what they wanted.  So for the last week and a half, all three girls have been discussing new hairstyles.

I suggested they tell the stylist they wanted something different, and to ask her for ideas.  I also gave them some guidelines for what I thought were suit them.  When they walked in, my 11 year old daughter looked fabulous.  She donated 15 inches and still has hair to her shoulders, in a style that suits her beautifully.

But the seven year old?  I was horrified.  Really.  This little girl with gorgeous long hair came back with choppy bushy hair with long chunks hanging down each side of her face so fifty percent of her face was covered.  She looked like a neglected child who hadn’t brushed her hair in a week.  It is beyond me how a hair stylist could do something like that just because it’s the style.   I feel that part of a stylist’s job is to think about how a style will look on a given person, not just to cut hair.

When their little sister was on the far side of the room, my older two girls quietly asked me if there was any way I could fix it.  But there wasn’t enough left for me enough to work with, though it was nice that they thought I was capable of doing a better job than the stylist. 🙂

It was really hard for me not to cringe when I looked at her, but I didn’t want her to be aware of my ambivalence- she was so filled with the happiness of having donated her hair, showing me the certificate she received and running to show her brothers.  So after commenting with excitement about how different she looked (!!), I asked my oldest daughter to see if the front layers were long enough to pull off her face (since I was nursing the baby).   I was so grateful that they were.  And even more pleased to see that she looked quite adorable with some hair off her face in a clip.

Then my oldest daughter asked me to give her a haircut (since her hair wasn’t yet long enough to donate again, she’d just gone along to watch the others).  She wanted a style I’ve never done before (I usually stick to something pretty basic), something similar to the 11 year old.  After telling her I made no guarantees how it would look, I got started.

Just so you know, I don’t have any training in hair cutting.  I haven’t even read any books on the topic.   I’ve just done it for the kids since they were little, and I figure if they have enough confidence in me to be open to my experimenting, then I should trust myself.   I cut off five inches, layered both sides in the front, and then did a varying layering in the back, with the top layers slightly shorter than the bottom.  (As I did this, I told dd that it seemed backwards to me to cut hair like this, but there’s no accounting for what is stylish.)  I looked at the eleven year old’s hairstyle for a minute or two before I started to figure out a basic approach.

I’m glad to say that my 13 year old LOVES it!  It’s nice when you do something for your kids that is so appreciated.  It did take me longer than usual – it usually takes me about 10 minutes per child (boy or girl), and this took closer to 20.  I had to work a little more cautiously because I was figuring it as I went along.  Is it perfect? Probably not.  But I’ve already told you what the ‘professional’ did.  🙂

Avivah

Today is the last day of my 14 year old son’s six day school break.  It has been soooo nice to have him around all day again.  He just finished a game of Risk with his five year old brother that lasted several hours, because he kept letting his brother get more pieces to keep the game going.  It’s very sweet to see how his little brother idolizes him – he wants to sit next to him, walk with him, whatever – and it’s understandable, since my oldest is really nice to him and does lots of special things with him to make him feel good.

Today when I was out, someone told me about a speaker she heard yesterday.   He speaks across the country about drug abuse, and said that the amount of street drugs kids use pale in comparison to prescription drugs for kids, even young kids of 7, 8, 9.  These kids on prescription drugs are very often experiencing the drug highs common to street drugs, but all in legalized and parentally sanctioned manner. 

We’ve probably all heard how important parents are to keeping their kids off illegal drugs.  But what can be done about reducing the use of legal drugs?  Don’t kids really need them to function properly?  Apparently not as much as many would like to think.  The response of this expert was, “Parents need to be present for their kids.”  Meaning, parents need to be tuned into what is going on in their child’s heart and head so that kids aren’t left with too many tough emotions for them to handle on their own.  Why is it that something so obvious as a child’s deep need for his parents’ love and attention needs to be stated repeatedly by an expert to get parents to pay attention?  And even then it’s a tough sell?  Shouldn’t it be obvious that parents matter, that our kids need us in a deep and crucial way?  Guess not.

I’ll agree that sometimes meds are needed.  But definitely not in the huge majority of cases.  But it’s so much easier to deal with something superficially by giving the child a pill to pop than to figure out what’s going on that’s causing the problem.  And then taking the next stap and actually doing something to address the root of the problem.  But I know why most people won’t take that path – because it seems too hard.  But what seems hard and what actually end up most difficult are often very different things.

I’ve said it before, but it’s so important that I think it bears repeating – when you’re willing to do tough things in the short run, the long run will be much easier.  Yes, it’s hard to discipline your child appropriately when you’d rather let him do what he wants, or make time in your busy day to talk to a child who needs you when you’re so tired you’d rather just be left alone.  But the price down the road, of having kids who don’t need us, don’t want to be around us, and don’t care much about themselves or us is so, so, so much higher.  Catastrophically higher. 

So as the radio ads and billboards pronounce, “Parents – the anti drug.”  It couldn’t be truer.

Avivah

>>My situation is this- I yearn for adult conversation
sometimes! We just moved to an area where there are tons of
playgroups and Mom and Me activities and whatnot, but I’m not really
interested in shoving my son (21 months) into all of this. He’s so young, and I just don’t believe that he needs to be around so many other children all of the time. As it is, I meet with a new friend in a park on
Sunday mornings for an hour and a half or so – she has a 21 month old
girl. I really do it more for myself than for ds- as much as I
love being around him, sometimes an entire day will go by and I
realize that I haven’t spoken to a single adult! (Until my husband
comes home, that is) I feel like even the park can be too much for
him when it’s really crowded, as it was yesterday. He gets into
other people’s bags and toys and I hate saying “no!” to him all of
the time, even if it is as gentle as I can be, or if it’s actually
redirecting or whatever. He’s just so young, he doesn’t understand yet.

I hope I’m being cohesive. It’s not that I need or want a break from
my son, but at the same time, I would like some adult conversation
once in a while.<<

Yes, what you said made a lot of sense.  I’ve had the same dilemma myself at times, even now with older kids.  I really find that peer group interaction is mostly unhelpful but that’s the only time I get to see other moms!  So it’s a balance, weighing your needs and your child’s needs, and trying not to compromise either of you.  But sometimes there has to be a compromise, and then how do you decide what to do?

I’ll say for starters that I truly believe that ‘if momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy’.  I’ve seen too many mothers take this concept to an extreme and justify doing whatever they want regardless of the effect on their children because it makes them feel good and that’s what matters.  But that’s not what I mean.  It means that to be the best parent you can be, you have to be filling yourself up on an ongoing basis.  If you deplete yourself, physically, spiritually, or emotionally, you have that much less to give.  And when a mom ends up burnt out and worn out, she’s likely to be resentful and unpleasant to be around. 

So I think it’s good to preempt all that negativity and be honest and non- apologetic for having needs.  What your real needs and how you can meet them?  You’re around a very young child all day, and I think it’s really reasonable and understandable to want to touch base with another adult during the course of a day or week or whatever.  What if you went to the park for an hour each day – would that be enough for you to get out and chat with other moms?  When I had little kids, this really helped me. 

I understand the dynamics you’re describing of the situation that occurs when you do get out.  But let’s put it in perspective:  he has you all day long in an ideal environment.  When you do go out, doesn’t he enjoy himself, too?  Even with you needing to redirect him or stop him from some things?   

You have to do a cost/benefit analysis – does getting out however often justify the situations you have to deal with as a result of going out?  If it does, then do it, and don’t feel guilty for a second. Think how lucky your husband is to have a wife who’s not desperate to speak to him, and how lucky your child is to have a healthy role model for nurturing one’s self. 

One suggestion I have is to be very clear and firm about what you don’t want him to do, like go into other people’s bags.  He’s not too young to understand this (my son is the same age so I know it’s possible!).  Once he gets clear on the parameters, you’ll have to do less redirecting and can enjoy your time out more and so can he.  If you aren’t clear, then everytime you go out for the rest of your life (:)) you’re going to be telling him again and again what not to do.  Not fun for either of you.

Good luck! 

Avivah