Have a New Kid by Friday - Dr Kevin Leman [68]
Kids can be as dumb as mud and will do stupid things in life (like hanging a camera out the window of a car and dropping it), but if they own up to them and say they’re sorry, they need to know that life will go on. You won’t beat them over the head for years for their mistake. The relationship between the two of you will still be okay.
Regarding lying, here’s the kicker: parents too have to be careful about their own lies; even those pesky little white lies are still lies. If you say to your child, “If someone from work calls, I’m not here,” and it’s not the truth, your child is smart enough to know it. And then your child thinks, If it’s okay for you to lie, it’s okay for me to lie.
Manners
Manners never go out of style. They should be taught to your child from day 1. If you haven’t taught them, it’s never too late. Any age can learn them.
When my grandson Conner leaves our house with his little duck suitcase on rollers, he says (without my daughter prompting him), “Thank you, Grandpa. Thank you, Grandmama.” Why does he, at age 3, do what many teenagers don’t do? And without any prompting? Because my daughter has taken time to train him to be courteous.
With all due respect, training a beagle and training a child have a lot of similarities. You have to tell them to do the same thing over and over and over until it sticks.
I’m a car-pool dad, and I really hate it when I’m driving children somewhere and they forget to say thank you. What’s wrong with kids today? I think. And then I wonder, And what’s wrong with their parents?
Common courtesy should be a given that you teach your child. Anything other than saying “please,” “thank you,” and “you’re welcome” is not acceptable.
One little girl I know takes things an extra step. When she has friends over to play and she and her mom take them home, that little girl walks her friend up to the door, and she thanks not only her friend for playing but the friend’s mother for letting her child come over. “You ought to see the startled looks from those moms the first time you hear Mei tell them thank you,” Mei’s mother told me, laughing. “Later they tell me how much they appreciated that, how unusual it is, and that they would love to have Mei over anytime.”
Manners will take your child a long way in life. Don’t miss teaching the basics.
Me, Me, Me
“But I want . . .”
“I don’t feel like . . .”
Children are naturally selfish and thoughtless until they’re trained to be otherwise. You’re the parent and the authority over your child, so that’s one of your very important jobs. Children need to learn that they are not the center of the universe. They need to learn that there are other people in that universe to think about.
Let’s say you have a 12-year-old boy, a 9-year-old girl, and an 8-year-old girl. You have many talks about how you’re all a family and you need to share in the fun and the work. Your kids get allowances. You all go on trips together. But your 12-year-old just doesn’t get it. He squabbles about helping do the dishes and cleaning the bathroom because he doesn’t feel like doing it. He complains about what you put in his school lunches. He critiques everything you do in the kitchen, including the way you cook dinner. And he criticizes everything his sisters do.
So what can you do? Let’s say the next night you’re preparing dinner. He’s standing there critiquing everything you and his sisters are doing. “You know, girls,” yousay, “I need your help in the bedroom. Evan, you can go ahead and make dinner yourself. That way you’ll make sure it gets done just the way you want it to.”
Think you’re getting the message across? Ka-ching!
You may also want to assign him to make not only his own lunch but also his sisters’ lunches for a week. And if he grouses about cleaning one bathroom, assign him to clean all the bathrooms in the house. He’ll get the idea fairly quickly that the world isn’t about me, me, me.
The point