Quotes to ponder

I mentioned Naomi Aldort's book Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves a few posts back. Here are a few quotes from the first chapter that have made me think about the way I love my children.

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"Control is ineffective because humans resist it by their very nature. Whether it is gentle coercion or covert manipulation, the very control we use causes the problems we are trying to solve. Most parents already know how to control children gently. What we don't know is how NOT to control them and live in peace and joy with them."

"Such love is unconditional - loving your child, not your idea of how he should be. Love is only love when there are no conditions. The moment love is used as a reward for behaviour or achievement, it ceases to be love and instead becomes a lesson in give and take. ...Loving unconditionally is its own reward."

"Parenting is much simpler when we realise that children come here already designed to bloom in their own unique ways. In this book you will find great relief from the impossible duty of shaping humans. God doesn't goof: it is not your job to turn an infant into an adult human over twenty years. It is your responsibility and privilege to care and nurture a human being while she grows."

Unconditional parenting

I really enjoyed this book by Alfie Kohn. It's pretty easy to read and he offers convincing arguments to show that much of what we think is good parenting is actually just techniques for control. Once you're convinced, he then gives real help for changing the way you parent.

One of his big arguments is that our main question should not be "how do I get my child to do what I say?" but "what does my child need -- and how can I meet those needs?"

He says: To focus on children's needs and to work with them to make sure their needs are met, constitutes a commitment to taking children seriously. It means treating them as people whose feelings and desires and questions matter. A child's preferences cannot always be accommodated, but they can always be considered and they need never be dismissed out of hand. It's important to see a child as someone with a unique point of view, with very real fears and concerns and with a distinctive way of reasoning.

He gives 13 principles to help do things differently.

1. Be reflective.
2. Reconsider your requests.
3. Keep your eye on your long-term goals.
4. Put the relationship first.
5. Change how you see, not just how you act.
6. RESPECT
7. Be authentic.
8. Talk less, ask more
9. Keep the ages in mind.
10. Attribute to children the best possible motives consistent with the facts.
11. Don't stick your no's in unnecessarily.
12. Don't be rigid.
13. Don't be in a hurry.

Reading

Most of my recent reflections and thinking (apart from how to get rid of my constant sore shoulder and RSI typing pain) has been about parenting.

Reading a great book from this stack by Alfie Kohn. It's the second from the top - called Unconditional Parenting - about why praise and punishments don't help our children. It's a challenge to me.

I loved the dark blue book I read earlier in the year - Punished by Rewards - it's along the same lines, but more about life and work than specifically dealing with children. The top one looks intriguing too...

Day Two of the Great Bedtime Shakedown

Our boys have been staying up up up in recent months. Bedtime has become chaotic and unfun - at least for the grownups in this house.

So I'm on a crusade to get everyone to sleep earlier, in secure, warm and loving circumstances.

Night One: It took the baby 45 minutes to get to sleep next to me in the darker than usual room with the door shut. It took the older boy 1 hr and 45!!! I was extremely patient and committed!

Night Two: Baby was a nightmare. (But he had had a day nap). But this time the older boy only took 50 minutes to get to sleep. His eyes closed about 8.45 - approximately two hours earlier than he has been dozing off in recent months.

We'll see what happens tomorrow!

Too much appreciation...

...can be cheesy. On Day 10 of my month-long blogging adventure, let me post what may be a controversial quote from Penelope Leach.

'When a big kid hits a little kid on the playground, we call him a bully; five years later he punches a woman for her wallet and is called a mugger; later still, when he slugs a fellow worker who insults him, he is called a troublemaker, but when he becomes a father and hits his tiresome, disobedient or disrespectful child, we call him a disciplinarian. Why is this rung on a ladder of interpersonal violence regarded so differently from the rest?'

Life is messy - I'm trying to get over it

I subscribed to this nice little email service from 'the daily groove', dispensing free parenting advice (link below). According to this particular one, I'm becoming a 'crunchy' parent because I am learning to cope ok with the messy bits.


"In man's quest to conquer nature, our culture has developed an unhealthy aversion to the natural messiness of life.

Heaven forbid you should eat an apple that isn't nice and round and free of bug bites. Those get made into applesauce so we never have to see their messiness!

And if our high-tech, Star Trek fantasies were real, we could avoid the messiness of birth and simply "beam" babies out of the womb -- without a drop of blood in sight.

Even if you're a "crunchy" parent who's not afraid of nature's messiness, there may be other kinds of messes you abhor, like the messy ways children learn, explore, and process emotions. Or the messy way *you* grow through parenthood.

Today, whenever you feel bothered about anything, ask yourself, "What 'messiness' am I resisting?" Are you not allowing your *own* process to be messy?

Well, get over it! Life IS messy. :-)

Let life's messes remind you how good it is to be ALIVE!"

www.enjoyparenting.com/dailygroove

Patience

This picture is proof that people can grow more patient.

Call me crazy, but I decided to cook with not one, but two little boys the other day. I never cooked anything with my first child when she was under three because I hated the mess. I certainly didn't let her get like this.

This time, however, I didn't really care. I'm so much better at cleaning it all up. Plus, I have both a washing machine and a bathtub, and enough water to use them.

The important thing was that the children had fun and did something together with me.

I used to wonder how patience grew. Change of attitude is key I think.

Clap your hands!

More from Becky Bailey's child-rearing wisdom:

Principle: Focus on what you want, not what you don't want.

My middle child has a tendency to push his little brother around. I have told him not to do it until I am blue in the face and it has not had one iota of an effect.

Bailey would say I am focusing on what I don't want to happen - ie. the pushing. Her solution would be to say to him what I actually do want to happen.

So instead of: "Don't push him!" I have been saying: "When you push your brother he feels sad. You need to keep your hands next to your own body."

It has changed things for the better. And in the car it works a treat. We did a lot of "hands on your head", "Let's clap our hands together" and "You can touch your nose" on our hour-long trip to Sydney yesterday.

If you think about it, it makes sense from a lot of angles, but especially because the positive instructions are the last words that are implanted in their head. Instead of keeping an echo of "...push him" in their ears, they remember "...clap hands".

Praise - discouraging?

Becky Bailey in Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline, believes that all encouragement is not necessarily helpful.

The forms of praise that she says can be discouraging are:

Too much general, all-encompassing praise. This can unduly burden your child and pressure her to live up to unrealistic standards. Eg. "You are always so sweet and helpful."

Too much praise that relies on value judgments, so that 'good' equals pleasing others and 'bad' equals not pleasing others. Children who make honest mistakes may believe they are 'bad' and become perfectionists. They also may grow up to be very hard on others.

Praise that focuses on what you think about the child's behaviour. He may conclude that he is only lovable when he pleases his parents or teachers.

Only praising for accomplishments. Children need to learn that the process of putting away toys (for example) counts just as much as the product of a clean toy room in the end.

Praising by comparing to others teaches her that in order to be valuable you must be special. Such statements say, "I only want the best" and promote competition over unity.

So what else is there? These are the ways I praise my children all the time. I don't know any other ways to do it!

Bailey offers two ways to encourage our children so as to promote a healthy sense of belonging.

1. Notice your children rather than judging them. Children want and need to be seen. Just giving them your attention is encouraging in itself. Feeding back to them what they are doing strengthens their frontal lobes and promotes language development and a sense of self.

Basically, parents should be like a polaroid camera for their children. If my daughter has just mastered a cartwheel and wants to show me, I can go and look at it. Then, instead of saying, "Well done, how clever you are", I can take a virtual snapshot and give it back to her like this: "You put your hands down in a perfectly straight line and your feet went right over your head. You look just like a wheel. You have worked so steadily on this for a long time, no wonder you can do it perfectly now."

Children ask to be seen, not judged. If we replace seeing with judging too often, the excited four year old who shouts "Watch this" becomes an anxious eight year old who asks, "Did I do this right?"

2. The second way to encourage your child comes from linking her actions to enjoyment and satisfaction rather than tangible rewards.

When we rely on material rewards, we teach children to value things more than relationships. Studies have shown that rewards decrease the quality of a child's performance, although it may increase the quantity. If a child will get a prize for reading 20 books, he may choose the 20 shortest books to rush through, rather than enjoying 20 books each for its own sake.

Punishments teach children to fear adults and rewards teach them to please adults. People pleasing may make 'nice' children, but it may lead to succumbing to peer group pressure in the teenage years.

Encouragement

I'm being challenged by the book Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline by Becky Bailey so I want to share my findings. Of course, it also means I don't have to have any original thoughts for my blog...

A 1997 study found that on average a child heard 432 negative comments daily, compared with 32 positive ones.

Becky Bailey* says that the way we speak to ourselves will be the way we speak to our children. Do we focus on our strengths or our weaknesses? Do we think about what we are doing, or what we should be doing? Do we accept ourselves or always want to change something?

"If you routinely discourage yourself, you will unconsciously discourage your children," says Bailey.

An encouraging home has neurological benefits for children's developing brains. But discouraging homes shape brains that are prone to depression, violents, addictions and impulsivity.

We need to be more encouraging and praising of our children. And ourselves. We need to use more positive language in general.

But... watch out. All praise and encouragement is not created equal. More about that tomorrow!


*in Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline