The art of leadership is saying no, not
saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.
Tony Blair
There are thousands of parenting intentions like the examples I gave above, but by comparison there are very few parenting actions you can take. The trick is finding an effective action to take in a given situation -- like when to address a behavior, when to ignore it, when to bring it up later, when to issue a consequence, etc.
Here is my short list of parenting actions which every parent should know how to employ:
• offer a choice
• say no (offer no choice)
• set a limit
• communicate an expectation
• apply a consequence
• reward a behavior
• model a behavior
• provide information
• ignore a behavior/do nothing
Sometimes more than one action fits an intention so don’t put pressure on yourself to always find a perfect fit between action and intention. Sometimes there are better actions to take than others depending on the circumstances. Sometimes a parenting intention requires more than one action. What I am telling you is this is not something you need to be perfectionistic about. Utilizing the techniques above is what provides purpose to your intentions. They help you move from thinking to doing. Since every child is different with respect to their temperament, you might find that some actions work better than others. It is okay to experiment, all of life is an experiment. Wear your lab glasses!
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PARENTING ACTION -- OFFERING CHOICES
Leaders Make Decisions and Direct Behavior: Give Choices but Limit the Type of Choice
Giving your child the opportunity to make a choice is a parenting “action,” but I find it is a source of great misunderstanding amongst parents. Your position as family leader requires that you take action, independently of what action your child wants you to take. Parents sometimes treat their children like “little equals” and somewhere along the line, parents have been given the impression that giving children choices is the best parenting tool you can employ. It isn’t. Some choosing is fine and recommended. If you give your child too many choices, she will think her opinion is as important as yours is, and her position with regard to family leadership is also equal -- and that will cause you to bicker with your child over things like why she doesn’t want to get in the car when you have some important place to go, whether she can have a new cell phone every other week, and whether she can order
the most expensive item from a restaurant menu when you know she will not finish it.
We all enjoy having choices, but there are certain times when the only choice you have is to follow the wishes of the person in charge. Choice is often a privilege and that privilege should be earned by prior good behavior.
Often parenting experts recommend giving a child a choice about just about everything. If you offer too many choices then it becomes an expectation for the child, so when you don’t or can’t offer a choice, control over the environment passes to the child, you will not behave unless given options.
The Intentions
Here are some intentions to practice when reminding yourself that giving choices isn’t the solution to every parenting issue you encounter:
I want to give my child choices but it is not a good idea to teach my child to demand them.
I will give choices to show my child that I am a reasonable leader, but not a pushover.
Sometimes my priority to get things done is more important than giving my child choices.
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It is not a good idea to teach my child to bargain and negotiate over every little thing.
Turning Intention to Action
A good way of helping your child understand the distinction of when she has a choice and when she does not is by making that distinction early on. Some things that you can say to help your child understand that it is your choice to give her a choice are: From 2-5:
“You pick, this time.”
“What would you like to do for now.”
“I would like for you to help me decide.”
From 6-12
All of the above plus...
“I will give you your choice this time.”
“You can decide this one.”
“I think you can make this choice.”
“I’ve decided to let you decide.”
Best yet, connect it to some behavior in the recent past to show your child that there is a relationship between responsibility and freedom of choice such as:
“Since, you did such a good job cleaning your room, you can choose xyz.”
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After watching parents give their kids too many choices (like the parent who asks the three year old, “Where should we go out to eat tonight?” ), I have given the question of why parents find the advice to give children choices so easy to take. The reason, I think is because not giving children choices can be so hard to do! Putting your foot down and letting your child know he has no choice can result in whining, complaining, foot stomping, mouthing off, aggressive language, and a host of other undesirable behaviors.
So, take a step back for a minute and answer this question: Is it more important to give your child choices or to accept the choices you make for him? The answer is that it depends on the situation. It is important to let your child know you are an open and fair minded leader, and not a self absorbed, tyrannical one. If you become the latter, then your kids will rebel against you and try to overcome your “government. “
Oppositional kids (kids who almost never want to listen) don’t know what they don’t know, and what they don’t know most is how important it is to absorb the wisdom of people who want to keep them out of trouble.
Here are some guidelines for giving children choices while remaining in a position of leadership:
Guideline Number One: Give choices when the choice is inconsequential (like the choice between two healthy food items).
What this sounds like when talking to a child:
“You can try the broccoli or have some carrots, whichever you want.” Then go back and give it the old college try, “Now why don’t you give some broccoli a try?” not “Would you like to give some broccoli a try?”
(Note about offering children food choices: Generally it does not pay to beg your children to eat certain foods. When parents have a very difficult time getting their children to accept healthy foods, it is because there are other not so healthy food choices in their lives. So if broccoli is what you are trying to get them to eat but fast food is a regular part of their food choices, good luck with that. Healthy eating is a habit. Fast foods are designed to have an impact on choice making. If the fast foods are not available, the healthy foods become the habit.)
Guideline Number Two: Give choices when you have specified a contingency that your child has successfully managed (like when you “make a deal” for a reward privilege, provide a choice of what privilege he or she may choose).
What this sounds like when talking to a child:
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“I think its great that you were able to keep your promise about cleaning your room. Now that you’ve done such a great job, you can have your choice of downloading five songs, or you can have Billy here for a sleepover. ”
Guideline Number Three: Give your child his or her choice of consequence for misbehavior, just make sure you specify what the choices are. Often, I tell parents to give their kids the choice between apologizing and taking a time out. However the apology cannot be lip service. When giving an apology, the child must be able to articulate what he should have done instead, or it’s straight to time out anyway. Also, if the child uses the apology as an maneuver to get away with whatever he or she is trying to get away with, straight to the time out as well.
What this sounds like when talking to a child:
“ You should not have tripped your brother. Do you have anything to say to him? How do you think you are going to handle
things next time? ”
“You should not have tripped your brother. Say something to him to apologize or go to your room. Your choice.”
Guideline Number Four: Give your child the choice of timing themselves out for a while or accepting a more se-
vere consequence.
What this sounds like when talking to a child:
“ You can either go to your room and take a time out, or there will be no television or video games after dinner. Your choice. ”
Guideline Number Five: Always praise good choices.
What this sounds like when talking to a child:
“ Thank you for walking away from your sister when she pushed you. That was a great choice. Let’s think of something special for you for your good effort.” (Always try to praise effort over results because if a child tries to do the right thing and fails, at least you can praise the choice to try to do the right thing. Since good effort always almost leads to good performance, eventually, it is important to reward and acknowledge effort.)
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Guideline Number Six: Discuss bad behavior as bad choices or decisions, but not endlessly or the conversation will have no real meaning when your child makes a really bad choice. Creating a link between behavior and choice helps your child develop a voice of reason. Ultimately you want your child to refelct on his or her own choice making as a way of developing good judgement.
What this sounds like when talking to a child:
“ Chatting online when you should have been studying was not a good choice. Computer will have to come out of your room and shut down at 7 PM until further notice.”
Summing Up
Giving choices might seem a bit confusing, but you can follow one basic rule of thumb and make the concept work for you with success: Give choices, but do not give up leadership. When your kids think they have as much say in the family business as you do, they have been convinced that they have the right to lead as much as you do -- they don’t and it is your job to tell them that. And that is the lead in for the next section which is about telling your kids they DON’T have a choice.
PARENTING ACTION -- THE TAU OF NO
The Hard Work of Parenting is Sticking to Your Guns
Most of the hard work of parenting is dedicated to being more stubborn than your kids. In a battle of wills, nine times out of ten kids have the superior advantage.
First, they have more free time on their hands to nag, beg or protest. While you are trying to work, cook, shop, mow the lawn, break 90 on the links, survive, etc., they can afford to spend copious amounts of time campaigning for a new backpack, cell phone, pair or sneakers, permission to go somewhere you don’t want them to go, and the like.
Second, a lot of us don’t like to argue. Being argumentative is often considered an an unsavory personality characteristic and most of us (except for the genuinely argumentative among us) want to avoid it. To top it off, we often do not want to deprive our kids of something they want, or are afraid kids will stop loving us if we cut them short in an argument over whether they can purchase a $2500 laptop on the spur of the moment. To be a good family leader you must not be afraid to stand by your “No!”, and puppy eyes and begging shouldn’t take you off your mark.
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Alas, if only it were that easy -- it isn’t, but it’s necessary.
Cutting Short the Back Talk
Good leaders do not take “back talk,” and have enough clout behind their admonition to make their warning about cutting it out to stick. Okay, easier said than done with your kids but it should be done and it must be done because if you let your kids out argue you, out negotiate you and convince you to do something “just this once” (five hundred times in a row) you are not doing them any favors. You are merely teaching your kids that enough persistence applied to anything will pay off.
I hear some of you asking, “Isn’t that a good thing? Shouldn’t I be teaching kids to be persistent?” Of course you should. However, persistence in pursuit of a goal that comes with appropriate work and effort is far different from annoying someone into submis-sion. Not everyone will have as much patience for begging, whining, nagging and relentless asking as you will, and those people who don’t owe your child the patience that you might give them will get annoyed at your child, develop unsavory impressions of your child, and also tell other people your child is annoying.
Many children ultimately become smart enough to reserve the super obnoxious behavior only for their parents, and thank good-
ness for that. The advice still stands though, because why should you be the recipient of such exclusive aggravation?
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter who your child is annoying, you or the whole world, the bottom line is that when you tell your child
“stop,” “no,” “not this time,” “maybe some other time,” “stop it now” (as when you are trying to leave the house while they are playing video games), the child should respect that request. The reason for this is when you tell a child “you can’t...” you are teaching them to respect a boundary. There’s a lot of attention paid to helping kids understand “you can do anything you want to do if you put your mind to it,” and it is wise to teach children that hard work and effort can accomplish great things. However, it is just as important to teach kids to respect what is not theirs, respect the fact that other people’s priorities might be more important than theirs are, and that the world does not present us with a menu of items that we can choose to be immediately bestowed on us.
Patience, respect, consideration, humility and self-control are all taught around the word “no,” and that is why “no” is an incredi-bly important word in your parenting vocabulary.
Have I Already Given In Too Much?
This should be a relatively easy question to answer. Do you...
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• Argue with your child (over everything)?
• Feel as though your child is always in charge of “negotiations” and will only settle on his or her terms?
• Feel guilty about “giving in” but just do so because you want to stop being aggravated?
• Get into situations where your child is able to make you feel guilty about not giving him everything he wants even though in your heart you know you give him plenty?
If the answer to these types of questions is yes, you have a “control issue” on your hands. I say it this way because most parents hate the idea of their kids being in control of their behavior. Your instincts as a parent and a leader should be telling you that this is not the kind of balance of influence there should be between a parent and a child.
What makes this an even more difficult problem to solve is that children with difficult temperaments can make your parenting tug of war a losing battle every time.
The parent who leads with intention makes the understanding of “no” a top priority in how they structure their relationship with the children. And it should be a priority because the flip side of this battle is once you get it under control a lot of other parenting challenges become easier as well.
The Intentions
Here are some intentions to help you center your thoughts on the importance of “No!” What they are really telling you is to “stick to your “No’s” so that you do not communicate to your child that they can lead by being stubborn:
It is a fact of life that we do not get everything we ask or wish for. Teaching that to my child is an act of love.
Saying “No,” to my child might cause my child to be angry with me, but that anger will pass.
If I do not say no my child will grow up believing she is entitled to everything she asks for. I will try to prevent
that.
I know that if I set a limit by saying no, future interactions with my child will be more pleasant.
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Turning Intention to Action
Parenting intentions for setting and keeping limits are very important to practice. Every time you practice the intention of saying no and sticking to it, you fortify your resolve, you commit to a leadership stance, and you show your child that their technique of wearing you down is not as effective as your technique of being the decision maker in your family.
In the long run some aspects of parenting are simple numbers games. If you say “no” and stick to it, what you are also doing is not reinforcing your child’s arguing behavior. When your child argues with you and wins, he will argue again because you have shown him that arguing pays off. Whenever arguing works, even if it works one time, you are giving your child a coupon to argue and nag in the future. However, if you teach your child early on that arguing is a “dead end” there are much better odds that you will achieve the longer term objective of making “no” mean “no.”
When you are in your “intentional thinking” mode, reflect on the following:
When I do not give in to my child, I am teaching him to respect boundaries.
When I stick to ‘no’ as my answer I am contributing to raising a child who will not be seen as obnoxious and inap-
propriate.
I imagine my child whining and nagging to me and ignoring her because it will only give me more/worse prob-
lems later on.
I do not want to see myself as a parent who is at the mercy of my child’s nagging.
Temperamental Variability and The Rule of 1000
Some kids are easier to lead than others. This is an unalterable fact of genetic variability. What I am saying here is that some kids are born “difficult.” Stubbornness, behavioral inflexibility and oppositional behavior can (and pretty much does) appear in all children from time to time, but there are children who completely excel at it. If you have a difficult to manage child it is easy to feel like a bad parent. If you are doing your best to lead, you are not a bad parent, you just might not know enough about kids.
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One of the most important things to know is that while children vary greatly in terms of their temperaments, their willingness to listen to their parents, and their desire to conform to the demands of the environment, the actions you take will remain the same.
What will vary is the time and the number of repetitions it takes for those actions to produce results. That’s where the Rule of 1000 comes in. When parents say, “Dr. Peter, I did what you told me and it didn’t work.” I usually reply, “Well don’t worry, you only have 999 repetitions to go.” When you are telling your child “no,” you are teaching them not to argue and they are learning not to argue. Ever try juggling? With good instruction, some people learn after a dozen times. Some, however, take hundreds of tries. If you try to teach someone to juggle who could care less about juggling, but has no choice but to learn, it can take THOUSANDS of tries. So, learning is a matter of:
• instruction
• repetition
• motivation
Good leaders are also good teachers. They are patient with respect to the number of repetitions it takes people to learn. They also realize that not everyone has the same motivation.
Doing something right doesn’t mean immediate results. Always remember that you are shooting for enough good parenting to get
your kids out of the house and self sufficient with enough time left for you to be able to have your own life while all your parts are still in tact. And, on top of that, giving your kids enough love to make them want to take care of you when your some of your parts stop working.
Here are some actions that you can pair with the intention of “making no mean no.” Making “no” stick is part of a three step process:
Step One: “The Listen”
When working with stubborn, oppositional behavior, less is more. Let your child express what she needs to express, then say,
“I’ve listened to you. I can’t give you what you want,” or
“I’ve listened to you. I can’t do that, ” or
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“I’ve listened to you. I can’t make that happen,”
or
“I’ve listened and I can’t give you permission for that.”
Substitute “won’t” for “can’t” when kids are really coming after you with a lot of negative emotion, insinuating you are bad, evil,horrible,cheap,tyrannical, etc. (you know, the usual). Do not add “I’m sorry.” “I’m sorry” is a way that parents give up their leadership position.
Say you are sorry when you have done something wrong and when your children deserve an apology. Saying you are sorry is a
great thing to model for your children because it models personal responsibility taking. When you say you are sorry for not caving to unreasonable demands (or demands that are reasonable but not practical) what you are saying is, “I’m sorry, but when I am behaving less badly I will give you what you want.”
Step Two: “The Reminder”
“The Reminder” is only required when there is push back after “The Listen.” Children will continue to campaign after a request is rejected. Depending on their temperament and their past history, you might see them “winding up,” in response to your decision.
As their energy goes up, yours should go down. The reason for this is that if a child cannot get what she wants, sometimes making you upset is a good enough substitute. You have to show kids that they do not control your feelings (even though they do influence your feelings you can’t give them permission to make you feel bad after you have made a decision they do not like). “The Reminder” sounds like this, delivered in a calm tone, with less energy than your child is being driven by:
“I am still listening but I have already made my decision, and I don’t intend on changing it.”
With younger children (two to six) you can say:
“I am listening but it is still no.”
Once you give “The Reminder” your kids will never have a legitimate claim to you “not listening. Of course that will not stop them from saying you are not listening, but you just told them twice that you are.
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Step Three: “The Shut Down”
Have you been a good listener and fair with respect to listening to your child’s perspective so far? At least according to me you have been. But wait, the pecking continues. Time for “The Shut Down.” The Shut Down represents your leadership option of closing a conversation. It sounds like this:
“I am not going to listen to this anymore. The conversation is over.”
With a younger child it is appropriate to ignore, simply walk away or give a time out. By the way, we are going to talk more about time outs as a parenting action but I will give you a quick tip here as well: Never threaten a time out. Just do it. Threatening a time out just gives kids the sense that they can continue behaving badly until you decide to take action.
Summing Up
No is probably the single most important word you can say to your child. It teaches respect for boundaries and it clarifies and reinforces your role as family leader. As with every other parenting action, children who have difficult temperaments will resist your attempts to control and direct them, but with time, patience and repetition, even stubborn kids will fall in line.
PARENTING ACTION -- LIMIT SETTING
Limit Setting: Not Always A Close Cousin of “No.”
If you do not set limits for your children, they will not have a good reference for self control. They might learn self control from other important figures in their lives, but in a world where people have a difficult time resisting unhealthy temptations like smoking, drinking too much, overeating, etc., it’s tough to disagree that self control is important--and that the best models for self control come from you.
Within a strong leadership model, you can teach self control by practicing it in your own habits (and to be perfectly blunt, if you are not in control of yourself, likely that you will not raise healthy, well functioning kids), and by teaching your children about the relationship between freedom and responsibility, by setting limits and then gradually reducing restrictions based on your child’s ability to show they can handle autonomy.
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Do As I Say...
...not as I do. I would hate if someone were to point out my flaws and shortcomings and then suggest that these flaws are screwing up my kids.
Unfortunately there are instances where the habits and behaviors of parents do have a very negative impact on kids, and there are some very obvious ones. For instance:
• If you want to reduce the chances of your kids taking up smoking (because it kills you), you shouldn’t smoke.
• If you don’t want your kids to suffer all the impairments that people suffer when they are obese, don’t buy junk food, don’t sit around the house watching television, and do promote a family value of running around outside until you are breathing a bit
hard.
Becoming a competent family leader means you can’t deny the obvious outcome of being a bad role model, because if you do, your kids will be oblivious to the relationship between lifestyle and well being. All I am saying here is, that with respect to limit setting the first order of business is to lead by example, and of course to do it intentionally.
The Relationship Between Freedom and Responsibility
OK, no more lecturing you to straighten yourself out if you want to be a model for good self-control. That was only a few short paragraphs, but they are important ones.
Parents often confuse limit setting with the prior topic (“The Tau of No”), but they couldn’t be more different. You say “no” to stop the topic of a conversation happening “right now.” You set limits as part of an ongoing campaign to teach your children the relationship between freedom and responsibility. Take a look at this list of common parenting challenges:
• teaching your kids to save money as opposed to spending it the second it hits their itchy li