What to do when......

I am often asked “what do you do when....?”
Or “What do you do to get [child] to do [x]?”
Do you reward, punish, time out, ignore, etc.
And if so, what do you do to punishment, to reward etc.

It’s a long list of questions when you fill in the blanks – and there are no specific answers that I can give you...

How you raise your child is up to you – assuming you do not abuse or neglect.

For each question asked, I can pose back a whole lot more:

Why do you ask?
What about the situation is important for your child?
Is this your issue or the child’s?
What else is going on in your home? Work?
Is this issue worth a big fight?
In the long run is it really that important?

I do not know your families and cannot answer specific questions...but I can give some education and advice.

Your child is yours; he/she is an individual with a set of experiences, feelings, thoughts and interests that are different from yours and different from all the other children in the class or neighborhood.

If you read some earlier posts, you saw that I wrote about uniqueness, cultural, familial and other differences. All these factors go into making your child one special being who is, at the same time, a citizen of your home, neighborhood and universe.

It’s tough being a kid – you need to learn a lot, to practice what you are learning and to ultimately make your own way in the world while still being a social creature who lives among parents, family, classmates and all.....

Here is a personal example... my son was never a good student in his early years. Did I punish him for failing classes or not doing homework? No - I explained that these were his choices and that no matter how he did in school I loved him – but that I was disappointed about those choices he was making.

Years after finishing high school, he finally decided he really wanted to go to college and was turned down in his first application due to his high school grades..[I did not say I told you so.]

So off he went to a community college and then transferred to the school that had turned him down - where he is now on the Dean’s List and invited to be part of the Honors College....

Would he be here now if I had forced the issue when he was younger? I don’t think so – neither does he...

One of his comments to me a few years ago was that I picked my fights carefully as he was growing up. There were issues I ignored and some I did not – but to the now grown-up him the one’s I picked as issues were the ones that he now knows are important as values to live by.....and it was great to hear him say that – because for me, in the long haul, having an adult child who is a caring, thoughtful human is the important part of child rearing.

Others may disagree -- but go back to where I started this post – how we raise our children is a choice we make. The scary part is that we do most of it in hopes that it works out.

But I am also a believer in the idea that we can always change - so if you make what you consider a mistake with your child – you and your child can always make changes in what you are doing.

Behaving - what does it mean?

We all want our children to "behave." The eternal question is what does it mean to behave? Each family, each culture, each society has it's own "rules" for it's citizens. What I want my child to do may not be what you want your child to do so maybe it's better to talk in developmental generalities?

Behaving is means following the rules of your own society - but in order to do that, people need not only to know what the "rules" are but to have the ability to distinguish right from wrong. they also need to want to act in a correct way, and they need the ability to control themselves.

That's a lot to ask of most people, let alone young children. Here's an example of "behaving." Long ago, a friend came into her living room to find her 5-year-old carefully smearing toothpaste on a wooden tabletop. After counting to at least 20, she asked him "What are you doing?" "Mommy," the child said, "the toothpaste cleaned my teeth so good, I wanted to clean your table for you." She thanked him for helping her and proceeded to explain that just as there was a special cleaner for teeth, there was one for tables and showed him where the table cleaner was.

[Before going on I do have to add that we now know that toothpaste is a good cleaner for tables and this kid was way ahead of the curve on this : -)]

Many parents might have said " Don't do that" or punished the child in some way....But what did this child learn about "rules?" He learned there are other ways to be helpful [wood polish] , that he was a good kid for helping mommy, and that we can discuss behaviors. The child may not have been aware at the time that all this was being learned, but it was a step on the path to making decisions about himself and his behavior.