Have a New Kid by Friday - Dr Kevin Leman [32]
If your child doesn’t get around to a certain task, don’t cajole her, remind her, or lecture her. Simply hire someone else to do that task and take whatever you had to pay that person from your child’s allowance. There are no threats, no warnings—only action.
That action will speak much louder than any words you could use. I know, because it got swift results in my own home. Our teenage children were responsible to cook dinner for us one night a week in order to give my wife, Sande, a break. One night I arrived home from work, and there was no dinner cooking. So I decided it was a good time for a teachable moment. I took Sande out for dinner at one of her favorite places, where they serve food with real silver forks, not plastic picnic ware. When our children received their allowances the following week, the price of that dinner had been divvied up among them and taken out of their allowances. Do you think that ever happened again in our house?
Lesson learned.
Anger
“Mike would come home from school, go into his room, slam the door, and start punching his pillow. I’d try to talk to him, but he’d always tell me to go away—that I was butting into his business.”
“Shawnee pitched a fit—an honest-to-goodness screaming fit—every day when it was time to take a nap. I got so tired of it. I was the one who had to take the nap while she roamed the house freely.”
“It doesn’t take much for Tim to blow, and when he blows, it affects our whole house. Everybody gets really, really quiet and goes and hides in their rooms. It’s like, to him, he’s the only one that counts.”
“Monica doesn’t yell; she seethes. I’d rather she yell than give me the silent treatment.”
What’s the atmosphere like in your house? Is an angry person in control? Interestingly enough, a person can be loudly angry or quietly angry. Either way, you get the picture loud and clear.
When it comes right down to it, anger is an active choice to control someone else. It’s projecting your thoughts and emotions onto another person in an attempt to change their behavior.
The children above have learned that being angry wins them something. They get attention, they get their way, people feel sorry for them, etc. They are angry because that purposive behavior puts them in the driver’s seat in their home. Without it, they don’t have the control they crave. So they create, in effect, a temper tantrum that says, “Pay attention to me!”
Guess how they learned this behavior? Probably from a parent (usually a mom) who is a people pleaser and likes the oceans of life smooth. In order to keep them that way, she’ll do anything to avoid harsh words. The child is smart enough to know that regardless of age, throwing a temper tantrum will gain him exactly what he wants—everything from sympathy about a hard day to money for a movie to the car keys for the evening. Your child is a skillful manipulator.
How’d he get this way? Such maladies don’t just appear. They fester over time. They start with an 18-month-old who feels misplaced when little sister comes home from the hospital, so he throws a fit to make sure his place is still secure. What do we as parents do? We try to squash the behavior quickly when, in fact, all that child is saying is, “Hey, I feel a little left out here. Will someone pay attention to me?”
What would most parents say in such a situation? “Stop it, Buford! You need to learn to get along with your new little sister. Things aren’t going to be the same around here anymore, and you might as well get used to it.” This sort of statement just ups the ante on the fear and displacement the child is feeling. But what if the parent said, “Come over here, Buford. Are you feeling left out? I know things have changed with having a little sister. But I want you to know that you are just as important to me as you always were. You don’t need to throw a tantrum to get my attention. Just come to me and ask me for a hug, and I’d be happy to give you one.”
Anger isn’t