Announce-and-Wait

...effective ways of getting them into the car, out of the house, to get dressed...

Every couple of hours I read a post of Facebook wherein parents describe the explanations they give their kids for why diapers need to be changed, or we all need to go outside, or it's time to leave the park, or go to school, or get out of bed, or go to bed, or put on shoes, or pack up for dance class... or whatever.

“You want to go to class...”

“If you don't, your bum will get sore...”

“It's good for your body to be out in the sunlight, moving around...”

“Besides, you like the seaside...”

Translation: “Blah blah blah blah blah blah bum blah blah blah.”

One of the recommended techniques to improve not only a child's vocabulary but also their ability to think for life is to chatter away at them about what is going on, what things are called, their descriptions, how they function, etc. Pointing out the world and describing it theoretically gives kids the mental framework they need to assemble their thoughts in order to understand what is going on around them...

...which is all well and good, up to a point.

That point is where parents are trying to convince them that a parent's ideas of what should happen next is a super great idea that all sane children will leap to agree with.

Is this where I mention that kids (especially little kids, but let's be honest: people of all ages) are not noted for their sanity?

Even after decades of study in marketing and the science of influencing people, adults struggle to convince other adults to switch to Pepsi or wear their seatbelts... and yet we expect to talk a busy toddler into changing activities while they're doing what they want to do. This is not rational.

And, more importantly, it doesn't work. Pretty much ever.

No child is going to be sold on the 'fun' of cleaning up their room, or putting the dishes in the sink, or going outside when they are happily exploring the texture of the carpet.

What Actually Works, Ever (not 100%, because, see above, re: sanity)

Get the child's attention.

Announce.

Wait.

Wait a little while longer.

Get the child's attention

When they're busy experimenting with the light and shadow on the tile by the door, their minds are not open to what else is going on... so to them, dad chattering away in the background is like talk radio in a different language that you can hear from someone's passing car.

Get down on the child's level, in front of the child so you are within sight. Touch the child gently. Wait until they make eye contact.

Announce

Just say what is coming up, with the first direction you need them to follow:

'Shoes on, we're going to the grocery store.'

'Time for a diaper change, meet me over there...'

'Get what you need for skating lessons.'

Wait

Simple enough. Hard to do. It helps to sit still and not say anything at all. Adding words or movement at this point is distracting from what you've just said is going to happen, and suggests that it isn't, actually... It suggests that something has happened to make that go away (because things do that all the time –I'm talking to you In-5-minutes-we-will-leave-where-mummy-is-talking-to-friends, and we don't go anywhere for 23 minutes!)

Things are moving inside where you can't see them. Gears are shifting, and because they are little and have hardly any practice, it takes a while. Watch their face ponder what you've said, and wait while it's integrated into their world in there.

They want to get along, they want to be part of the big world. They want to be clean and happy and fed and have a variety of experiences. They just don't want to be rushed.

They really don't want to be convinced.

Just wait. Just watch.

Say The Right Thing First

“How do I find the right words to explain ______ to my ____ -year-old?”

The question comes up frequently, on parenting lists, in groups, at events. Implied in this question is, often, “How do I fit the words and concepts into my child's head so s/he will know everything necessary on the subject at 20 without overwhelming them now or leaving anything out?”

My short answer is 'you don't.'

The slightly longer answer is 'you don't all at once.'

Amongst my friends and family we have what apparently is quite a unique conversational style. As far as I can tell it's uncommon to revisit a conversation that's been had already-- for any reason--at a later date. I find this quite bizarre.

Many a topic-opener in conversations with a very long-time friend is 'remember we were talking about blah blah blah a few years/months/days/hours/minutes ago?' We restart conversations, kind of in the middle, as new information is discovered, new thoughts or ideas are formed or found out there in the world, or just because we're not satisfied with our understanding or expression of our thoughts on the subject.

Since this was a normal kind of conversation for my kids to be around for, whether or not they were listening, there was always a strong underlying reality in our world: the subject is not closed, no one has had the final word on the topic, and there are many reasons to re-visit the issue.

So, instead of feeling like I had to explain sex and death and taxes and drugs and etiquette and tact versus lying, or whatever, once and for all... I always knew the conversation was developing. Developing because the thumbnail answer any 3yo can absorb at a time isn't ever going to be the way the same child will comprehend the subject at 8 or 13 or 22 (or 48 or 77...) and that means the discussion continues more or less where it left off the next time there is some reason to talk about it.

Reasons for restarting a conversation:

• I saw in the news
• that movie we just watched
• a story book we are reading
• someone else was talking about it and mentioned a new way (to me) to think about it
• I stumbled upon new information online
• someone else was talking about it and said ______
• your friend is dealing with the same thing now
• another death in the social circle or celebrity media
• I was thinking about what you, I, or they said the last time we talked
• it seemed like the conversation ended abruptly because of some kind of interruption, and we aren't finished with it... so, as I was saying . . . .

Adult View, Child Mind

or why what we think has no bearing on how children understand

“She hates breastfeeding.”

“He is fighting sleep.”

“They are testing me today.”

“Kids have to test the limits.”

“Teens have to rebel.”

Nope, nope, nope, nope. No to all.

A form of childism that pervades our culture is seen in the way adults talk about children's perceptions of the world –their aims, their understanding and their experiences.

Kids don't 'test boundaries' they struggle mightily to make any kind of sense out of the world, from gravity to unspoken social rules (like why we compliment people on weight loss but never mention gain, which is kind of related to gravity) and part of that is pure science experiment: what happens when I ...?

What happens when I pour the water on the floor? 

What happens when I pour it on the couch? 

The cat? When the sun is up? 

When the lights are on? 

When it's from a sippy cup? 

When it's from a bottle? 

When it's from a bowl?

Adults, looking at this typical exploration of the world will often say 'she's testing the boundaries' or 'she's testing her parents.' 

She isn't. 

She's trying to figure out why this cup-shaped stuff changes shape as it moves, why it makes some things lighter and some things darker and why it has not so far ever gone up the other way. If sometimes there is a lot of clapping and cheering and sometimes there is anger and shouting or punishment, she'll have to spend a lot of time experimenting to figure out how to fit that into her understanding of the world, too.

Years ago, John Bradshaw (Family Systems theory) told a story of how little Farquar would be happily jumping into a pile of cushions mum made for him in the living room, to cheering and laughter, who later spots a pile of cushions in the furniture store and can't for the life of him work out why he's being shouted at and dragged by the arm from the store... 'it looked like a pile of cushions to me...???'

We tend to personify our worlds, generally: people cut us off in traffic, they aren't distracted and hurried; the weather is for or against our plans, depending on if it rains on our parade; if we were to say that to someone only in anger, that can be the only possible reason anyone else said it to us, ever... et cetera.

A brief aside: the Fundamental Attribution Error is a common thought mistake whereby we excuse our own errors (we didn't 'cut off that driver' because they were going faster than we thought or we're just in a hurry which makes it fine or understandable or otherwise completely excusable) yet we attribute character flaws and/or malice to others who do exactly the same things (they are Bad Drivers, they are Selfish, Thoughtless, Idiots, Worthless, Reprobates.)

Becoming aware of this common thought error can help us enormously in life, not the least in preventing our own stress-caused heart attacks. Anyhow... back to the point...

When we are looking at our children's behaviour and attitudes, expressions and postures, it's important to remember a number of vital things before we react in anger or frustration:

1. Is this a Fundamental Attribution Error?
2. Is it possible to explain this behaviour in a neutral or positive way?
3. Am I attributing adult brain capacities to a child's brain?
4. Am I taking personally something which genuinely has nothing at all to do with me?

A friend's son once rollerbladed up the aisle at church. In his defense, he was a young teen and incapable of complex thought processes like abstractions (How will this reflect on my mother's parenting? What kinds of unspoken rules might this violate? How will the parish see this? What deeper meaning might there be to aisles in churches vis a vis casual sporting equipment?) and it was choir practice, not sermon. In her defense, she'd not encountered a lot of information about brain development and the differences between adults' and children's brains at that point. To this day, she tells the story wishing that she was anyone but his mother, so she could have laughed because it was hilarious. Instead, she felt constrained by her role as Mother to perform 'stern' and 'censorious' as she believed she was expected (peer pressure doesn't go magically away as we leave our teens...)

Surely you can see where I'm going with this...

It's hard to remember a time in our lives when we didn't have those brain structures that make thinking this way possible, because all of our memories are coloured by the rememberings using each new structure as it developed... so we are telling stories of ourselves as younger through the thoughts of our brains imagining those events while we are older.

It is easy and unchallenging to us to take things personally and make the other person wrong rather than struggling to see their point of view. It is so clearly so vastly different from our own pov, particularly when we're used to our adult brains and the idea that everyone else on the planet has the same adult-brain capacity we do.

Our children have a deep need to stay connected to us, to keep us on their side, and absolutely no interest in infuriating us. Attributing desires in them that disconnect or distance them from us and our approval is wildly inappropriate.

It is grossly unfair to punish someone for rules they don't know exist, particularly when we have great difficulty ourselves trying to articulate the specifics of these rules and how they vary from time to time and place to place.

Magic Calories

Ice Cream Cones by gordonramsaysubmissions

What reprehensible property does ice cream have before dinner that it doesn’t have after dinner?
What is this strange ‘ruin your appetite’ thing of which the Grundys of the world speak?
Earlier today, I wrote this in a Facebook discussion:

'What magical property of the calories and nutrients in ice cream at 5:20pm is different from the calories and nutrients in ice cream at 6:45pm?'

Why is popcorn okay at 8:10pm but not 7:45am?

If it's okay to displace x number of calories with nutrition-free (or high calorie, low nutrition density) food, what possible difference can it make to anyone, anywhere, if it is before or after dinner? Or noon? Or the 4th time the earth has rotated around the sun since the cancellation of Firefly?

Does anyone have the answer?

Basic Triage: deal with the victim's injuries first

More on anti-punishment in a pro-punish world...

We live in a punishment-happy world, where people's response to everything from one child grabbing a toy from another to serial rapists is some kind of revenge fantasy. Hit them back, abuse them back, get them back: tit for tat, at its finest.

This is not functional.

It is dysfunctional, but probably not how you think it is...

Basic triage of, say, a car accident with multiple injuries does not start with finding out who to blame and running them over with a bigger vehicle to 'teach' them that they made a mistake. First aid is given in order of the seriousness of the injury, not in order of who is the least to blame.

When this protocol is followed for other mistakes and injuries, a kind of miracle occurs... the perpetrator (whoever is to blame) can see clearly the result of their error without being distracted from what happened to defend themselves against an attack from an authority figure. Or, as a reader put it, in response to my last post:

YES. And adding extra to the natural reaction following a mistake means that the natural reaction is metaphorically (or literally) shouted over and the additional extra becomes the focus of the child's attention. Thereby muffling the natural learning reaction.

One instance where this was really clear to me was when our elder daughter locked the keys in the car, just as we were about to leave my grandparents' house to come home from a camping trip. She came into their house, her face white in horror, and cried as she blurted out what had happened. Her dad started shouting at her and I stopped him: 'she already clearly feels terrible, what are you shouting for? It won't get the keys out of the car...'

Punishment doesn't solve problems. Punishment doesn't 'teach' people to notice the results of their behaviour, or even to feel bad about what they did. Punishment shows people that the authority is not on their side, and will gleefully add to how bad they already feel about themselves and their actions.

Punishment teaches people to evade blame and to argue against the authority's assertion that their action was intentional or malicious, in order to avoid feeling worse than they already do about the mistake. Punishment takes people's minds off the results and focuses their attention on protecting themselves from an attack...

... exactly the opposite of 'teaching' them to take responsibility for their actions.

Focusing on the victim first, treating the injury and helping restore their sense of safety, gives the perpetrator an unobstructed view of the results of their action and space to think for themselves about what they really wanted to achieve. It helps them save face while also giving them time to take calm down and take in new information... the conditions necessary to learn anything.

Anti-Punishment in a Pro-Punish World

The long-tail from childrearing in a punishment-happy world is adults who believe that whenever they make a mistake, damage anything or get anything wrong, they must be punished: made to feel bad about what they’ve done.

Again.

Yes, that’s what I said: again.

You see, the natural result of doing something wrong, making a mistake, hurting others, doing damage or creating unnecessary costs is to feel bad. Even really little kids get upset when the item breaks, or the baby cries, the dog runs away. I am convinced that this is not something that needs to be ‘taught.’ The natural result of making mistakes or doing damage is self-recrimination, shame, guilt and a loss of self-esteem, and to know that one is capable of harming others (and stuff.)

Yet it is an article of faith among the pro-punishment that in order for people to ‘learn’ they must have some kind of personal harm applied: public censure, fines, thrashings, withdrawal of affection, restriction of privileges, dragging it up in every tangentially-related discussion to keep scraping the scab off to keep the wound perpetually at the top of the victim’s mind.

Perpetrator’s mind.

Hang on… this is one of the things I find to be problematic about the application of additional punishment: the scale.

Punishment can very rapidly go from ‘harming the perpetrator just enough to match the offense’ to ‘harming the perpetrator so much more than makes sense that the perpetrator is now the victim.’ It is a delicate balance that requires understanding of just how bad the perpetrator already feels, so the additional harm inflicted doesn’t tip the overall experience of the perpetrator into the victim category.

But, wait… if the perpetrator already feels bad, what is the purpose of additional punishment?


I honestly have absolutely no idea.

Parenting is Hard, resisting makes it harder

The child is standing screaming hateful words, throwing things, biting, scratching, kicking, hitting… totally gone ‘feral,’ as a friend calls it.

Everyone who has ever seen one will recognize this as an extreme temper tantrum, and just what they look like in a child older than about 3 (and adults.)

There are a lot of theories about how to handle a child whose brain has gone offline, and who is now fully out of control of all higher level brain functions. My personal favourite means is ‘don’t get there in the first place,’ but sometimes shit happens.

When it happens, it is popular to try to ‘stop it’ by doing common things.

Like the withdrawal of support and affection (sending to rooms, etc.) until the emotional expressions are all happy. Yay drugs! Choose uppers.

Like yelling. Yes, because yelling is going to calm anyone’s brain down.

Spanking has its advocates, because that won’t further overload anyone’s sensory input channels. It may push their brain into a traumatized fugue state, which probably looks like ‘it worked’ to some people who don’t know what that brain state means…

Counter-intuitively, what actually works is describing what is going on, in words.

You are really frustrated because that didn’t go your way.

How infuriating! You just want it to not have broken.

It is really important to you to get the red cup!

It feels like this method will ‘give permission’ for horrible behaviour. Kids don’t think that way, so that can be dismissed without really being addressed.

It also feels like this will amplify the feelings instead of eradicate them (the goal of the three options most often recommended by ‘experts,’ as listed above) It won’t, and I can tell you why:

When you have room in your world for the expression and understanding of emotions, they don’t hang around. Emotions are like hunger: feel and understand the message of the emotion and it dissipates, just as hunger dissipates with feeding.

So, instead of leaning away from emotions hoping they’ll just go away (or trying to shout them away, ‘cause really: how can that work?) stop resisting.

The emotion is the whole reality for this child right now, with absolutely no room for the child’s tiny body to hold anything else: learning, ‘getting it,’ the message behind punishment, ‘thinking about it,’ or ‘their attention’ to be on anything but this huge emotional reality.

Yes, even if it is something ‘silly’ like the colour of the cup.

It’s not about the colour of the cup, it’s about the feelings provoked by not getting the colour right, by not being able to decide which colour is right or not being allowed or able to pick the right colour, by frustration, disappointment, rage, grief, sadness, fury, and even by simply being totally overwhelmed by having to make a decision that doesn’t matter –again—about an issue that doesn’t matter but that stops the flow of everything until it’s decided.

It’s not about the cup, it’s about the feelings.