Setting expectations and holding my kids accountable is exhausting! Something I discovered recently is the mere mention of the word “journal” or “writing” catapults my kindergartener, Brock, into shutdown mode. Brock is my mellow kid who generally demands the least amount of attention…and he is my silent protester. If Brock doesn’t want to do what I ask him to do, he doesn’t whine or complain…he just ignores me and simply choses not to do it. This tactic is more infuriating to me than dealing with the whining and complaining! At least with my other two kids they acknowledge that I asked them to do something in the first place. Another struggle I’ve experienced is how to handle leisure screen time. At first, as long as the kids had done their chores, but not necessarily all of their distance learning assignments, I was allowing screen time. Letting them zone out on screen time gave me a chance to crack my computer open and get a little work done, or clean the kitchen up from one meal so I can get organized for the next. The problem was, trying to get Brock to take any interest in doing more school work after allowing him to be hypnotized by Ryan's Mystery Playdate, was nearly impossible. SO, after a few days of me practically doing Brock's homework for him, I informed the kids I was changing things up. I was happy to let them use screens in the afternoon, as long as their screen time checklists were done and ALL of their schoolwork was complete. On day one of the change up, things got heated as soon as lunch was over and the kids realized I was going to hold them accountable for their schoolwork before handing over devices. Brock's kindergarten teacher has jokingly mentioned to me on several occasions that she could win an Oscar with the convincing way she delivers a classroom lesson. I tried to channel a little bit of Mrs. Lindmeyer, and enthusiastically presented Brock with story about what a fish needs to survive. He loves learning about animals so I figured it would be an easy sell. As soon as he heard the word "journal", Brock's silent protest began by slinking away like a cat when I got distracted after his little sister, Ryann, wet her pants. After I pulled my daughter's wet clothes off, plopped her in the shower so I could spray her legs down, and tossed a towel over the puddle of pee on the floor I returned to the "learning table" and discovered that I had lost my "learner." As I was walking back to the shower where my naked daughter was hanging out, I found Brock tucked into a corner of the couch playing a little bunny game on his camera (he'd found a screen time loop hole!). Lucky for me, I had to walk away and attend to Brock's little sister. As I pulled Ryann out of the shower and snuggled her up in a towel, a flicker of a lightbulb lit up in my brain. This entire ordeal was my doing. I was guilty of a classic Love and Logic parenting fail, because I was hoarding all of the control over homeschooling. The week before Distance Learning started, or what we call "homeschool" at our house, one of my strategies for getting a grip on the whole situation was to type up, print off, and laminate three daily schedules that I posted around our house for the family to abide by. I also set up learning baskets for each of the kids, and spent a good hour clearing off our typically cluttered dining room table and designated it as the "learning table". I imagined the kids seated at the learning table promptly at 9:00 am and methodically going through all of their school activities, one after another in the morning. I think I was looking to mentally check one big thing off my list before lunch so I could free up my brain for other things in the afternoon. I forgot that Love and Logic parents share control by offering choices. They allow kids to decide about little things, and the parents get to make all the big decisions. Brock didn’t get to decide if he was going to complete his schoolwork, but I realized there was a lot of wiggle room in how he could demonstrate his learning. I needed to be more generous. After getting Ryann dressed, I slowly and cautiously approached Brock curled up on the coach and asked him what level he'd gotten to on Bunny Jump. I decided that I loved Brock too much to get into an argument about whether or not playing a game on his VTech Camera counted as screen time. Brock looked up, smiled, and then showed me how far he'd advanced in Bunny Jump. Now that I had his attention, I asked him if he wanted to talk about school now or in three minutes. (I figured now that the light bulb had gone off I might as well start with the choices!) Brock quickly replied with the three minutes option and I asked Siri to set the timer on my watch. When the timer went off, I went over to Brock and asked if he preferred to give me his camera or put it away himself. Brock decided to stash it in his bedroom himself, and quickly met me back at the learning table. I gave Brock the option to either draw and label the fish picture and submit it on Seesaw or use Magna-Tiles to make a fish habitat. My son has been programmed to recognize when I'm loosening my grip on control hoarding, and quickly decided to take the option where he would have more creative freedom in how he could complete his schoolwork. I've learned that this creative freedom for Brock, even more so than my other two kids, is something that he really values. Brock got right to pulling the Magna-Tiles out, and I wrote down some labels for him. Ryann immediately gravitated toward Brock and his Magna-Tiles, and the labels I was making peeked my eldest son, Nolan's curiosity. For the next 30 minutes, all three of my kids created a learning experience for themselves that far exceeded what I am guessing Mrs. Lindmeyer expected when she assigned the fish labeling activity. I was able to sit back and let the experience create opportunities for cooperation, creativity, and fun, not to mention "what a fish needs to survive" is forever cemented in Brock's brain. We are born to choose. I started writing my fish habitat story a few weeks ago, and strange, didn't get a chance to finish it until today. Since the notion of hoarding control over my environment first came to mind, I've thought about it daily. One evening as I was winding down to go to bed, I came across a really cool research article called Born to Choose: The Origins and Value of the Need for Control by Lauren A Leotti, Sheena S. Iyengar, and Kevin N. Ochsner. In a nutshell, the article provides compelling evidence that supports the existence of a desire for control in animals and very young infants long before we can attribute this preference to societal or cultural norms. One of the examples I found interesting was, once an infant masters something like learning to feed him or herself, they start to resist being fed by anyone else. In other words, a very young child prefers the labor intensive process of using their clumsy little fingers to wrestle a spoon to their faces over opening up their mouths like little birdies and waiting for someone else to do all the work. Why? Because they want some control! They want to chose what and how and at what rate things happen. We all do. The desire for control is an essential component of what it means to be human. Let that sink in for a minute. The desire for control is an essential component of what it means to be human. We love options. We love choices. And something cool is quantity wins over quality when it comes to choices. The perception of control over our environment is related more to the number of opportunities we have to chose, rather than the gravity of each of those choices. That's why the "lots of small choices" thing works so well with kids. My three year old daughter, Ryann, DOES NOT like to be told when to go to the bathroom. Who does? If you were busy working on a project or visiting with a friend and someone came up to you and ordered you to go to bathroom, how would you feel? The problem with my daughter is she hasn't quite mastered where that fine line between having to go and HAVING TO GO is, so if she isn't prompted from time to time, she wets her pants. Cleaning up pee is a real pain, and ordering Ryann to go to the bathroom and then dragging her there kicking and screaming isn't real fun either. Not to mention the fact that once Ryann is on the toilet, I can't actually MAKE her pee. It took me longer than I would like to admit to realize there was a lot of room for me to share some control with my daughter at potty time. Now I start out by asking her, " Do you want to go on the little toilet or the big toilet?" then move on to a series of choices that make no difference to me what she decides....."Do you want help up or would you like to use the stool?" "Do you want to flush or do you want mommy to flush?" "Do you want the white soap or the green soap?" "Do you want to stand on the stool or the floor to wash your hands?" "Do you want turn on the water or do you want mommy to do it?" Once you start to think in terms of sharing control, you realize just how many clever ways you can do it without giving up or giving in on boundaries and expectations that really matter. If you, like myself, are guilty of hoarding control, I want you to take a deep breath and give someone important some GRACE. YOU. Guess what? Life as we know it has changed and many many many of the choices we once took for granted are not currently available to us. Maybe you used to choose what to wear to work each morning, and now you wish you had the choice to work. Isn't there a saying that friends are the family that we get to choose? I bet you could go for a happy hour or a coffee date or a trip to the mall with one of those friends. Freedom of religion is one of the cornerstones our country was built upon, but right now we don't get to decide where or whom we get to worship with. We can't decide at the last minute on a Friday to scrap our dinner plans and head to a local restaurant, and our weekly bootcamp class or Saturday morning yoga is on hold. The list goes on and on. Something to keep in mind is everyone around us, including our children, are experiencing their own version of feeling ruled by our current circumstances. We are human and we are all on high alert to focus on controlling what we can around us. Trust me, its been over two weeks since the lightbulb first went off in my head, and I am still catching myself hoarding away control that I would be better off sharing with those around me. The other night I told my son he needed to take a shower before bed. He asked if he could take a shower in the morning instead. At first I started in on him and told him to just get in the shower. Then, I had to take a step back and think about it. Did it really matter if he took a shower at night or in the morning? It's not like we were going anywhere. Also, I admit that sometimes I feel too tired to take a shower at night, even when I could really use one. So I choose to wait until the morning. It helps if I think of my tendency to hoard control in terms of the toilet paper shortage....mostly because it's toilet paper and it's ridiculous and a little funny, but also because there is plenty of toilet paper to go around and there always has been. It only felt like there wasn't when people got greedy and started taking more than what they truly needed. When it comes to control, your best bet at having an abundance when you really need it is by being generous when it matters the least. Leotti, Lauren A., Iyengar, Sheena S., and Ochsner, Kevin N. Born to Choose: The Origins and Value of the Need for Control Trends Cognitive Science 2010 October; 14 (10); 457-463 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2944661/
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It's all in the delivery...I recently had a phone conversation with a mother of a teenage daughter. Her typically respectful and responsible daughter had been slacking off at school and at home; she was dragging everyone in the house down with her gloomy mood. This mother shared with me that she felt torn about taking her daughter’s phone away from her. On the one hand, it was the only thing she had control over that got results. On the other hand, in today’s world, disconnecting her child from social media felt like cruel and unusual punishment.
Now, more than ever, technology is a teen’s lifeline. Their presence on social media acknowledges their existence as autonomous creatures. It is how they form friendships, communicate, learn new things, and express their creativity. Her daughter was causing problems not only for herself, but for everyone around her. If kids cause problems we expect them to solve them. If they chose not to solve those problems, it’s our job as parents to take care of it in a way that costs them something. This reflects what happens in the “real world.” If we don’t take care of our business, we end up paying for it one way or another. I helped guide this mother to coming up with an empathetic approach of delivering a natural consequence to not doing school work or pitching in around the house. Rather than “punishing” her daughter, which usually involves a lecture on who pays the bills around here or teaching this ungrateful teenager a lesson on taking things for granted, she decided it was her job as a mother to help her daughter learn time management skills by lovingly limiting her phone use. Rather than a lecture, which tends to have a similar effect on most teenagers starting with their eyes glazing over, this mother was able to let her daughter know as soon as she was able to manage her time well enough to get her school work done and take care of her chores at home, she would be happy to reinstate her phone privileges. By handing the problem back to her daughter, this teenagers phone privileges would be determined by how she chose to manage her time. As parents, when we take this approach, is allows us to validate our children and empathize with how difficult it would be to not have a phone. We get to be the cheerleader for our children and let the consequence teach the lesson. By letting go of the "punisher" role we are free to wish our children good luck and tell them we hope for the best! |
AuthorMy name is Alissa Anderson. I am the School Psychologist for the Esko Public School District in Esko, MN. I am also a mother of three and was certified as a Love and Logic Parent Educator in 2009. Archives
January 2023
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