George McGurn
May 2, 2001
We just completed our six-week parenting workshops in Beverly,
Peabody, Danvers and Salem. The same
topic was offered four nights a week in four different communities so a parent
who was tied up on one night during the week could attend the workshop in three
other communities on a different night.
On the last session of the series we take time to talk about
the workshops and how we have changed our attitudes and techniques about
parenting. So many of the parents said
they had cut down on the questions in the family. They had given up the inquisition when their kids come home from
school and replaced it with a safe, welcoming statement like, “Nice to see
you.” Many of the parents said they had
replaced the “Did you?” with a more effective “I Hope.”
We talked a lot about trusting and respecting our kids and
allowing them to make some decisions in their lives. And we reminded ourselves that when a child takes on a new responsibility
like making his bed he will start at the bottom of the skill level and
hopefully work his way up. And as
parents we need to give the child a chance to do the task with a minimum of criticism
and contradiction and a lot of encouragement.
The parents said that it was so difficult to watch their kids
begin a new task without jumping in and taking over to “do it right. We talked about our new skill of “close your
eyes, cross your fingers and walk away” and allow the child some time and some
space to complete a task.
Some parents said they had learned to avoid accusing their kids
by using the “noticing” technique. “I
noticed that there are still toys on the floor.” We talked about the difference between describing what you see on
the outside compared to making assumptions of what a child is feeling on the
inside. When you see a child with a
frown on his face you say what you see—“I see a big frown on your face.” Instead of, “You must be really angry
today.”
My daughter-in-law, Kristin, gave us a creative idea about getting
parents off the hook when they allow their kids to dress themselves. Sometimes the kids look very silly when they
dress themselves. And when their kids
look very silly there is a lot of peer pressure from other mothers who can say,
“What kind of a mother is she? How
could she allow her child to go to school dressed like that?”
Kristin told us about her friend who has a special button she
puts on her child when he is dressed in something unusual. It says, “Don’t blame my Mom. I got dressed all by myself today.” My son, Ross, gave us another technique
about birthday parties. His three
year-old son, Danny, was invited to a birthday party. His five-year-old son couldn’t attend because the host mother was
having the birthday party for her three-year-old son. And she didn’t want any older kids to be at
the party and take over the activities.
Ross said the “birthday boy” was the star of the show. And all the young kids got along very well.
We had a great example of how one parenting technique does not
fit all. One parent said that she had
experimented with different problem-solving techniques with her daughter and
found that taking away privileges when she did something wrong and giving her
extra privileges when she did something right did not work. She found out that her daughter was very
sensitive to words. And now she only has to use the appropriate
words with her to get her to cooperate.
Right after this mother talked about privileges not being
effective with her daughter, another mother had the opposite experience with
her son. She said that she had been
using all the new, creative words she had learned in the workshops but they
were not working with her son. Her son
kept getting out of his bed at night and coming downstairs. She simply stopped with the words and took
his bicycle away from him for the next day and had immediate results. What works for one child may not work for
another.
One parent said he was having trouble every night getting his two kids
to pick up their toys and books before they went to bed so he decided to try something
different. After he asked the kids to pick up the toys he took a large spoon and pretended that it
was a microphone. He then began to
announce their efforts like it was a competition. He said the kids really got into it and were
racing around trying to get the toys into the toy box. And
even his wife heard the noise and joined in the fun.
I love it when parents give us creative solutions to parenting
problems. And I especially love it when
they do it with creativity and humor.