Have a New Kid by Friday (34 page)

In “Interruptions” I talked about a woman who, while talking to her girlfriend, put her children outside the door and didn’t realize until 45 minutes later that they were still outside! When she went to let them back in, the children had found an old paper bag and written a note on it:
Mom, we love you. Can we come back in?

That mom certainly made her point! It’s all about action, not words. And her actions said,
I am to be respected in this house,
and you are to be quiet when I’m on the phone.
Do you think those children did a dog and pony show in front of their mother when she was on the phone the next time?

Temper Tantrums

I hear these sorts of things over and over from frustrated parents:

“He explodes every time I ask him to do something he doesn’t want to do.”

“I don’t take her to the mall anymore because she throws a tantrum if I don’t take her to McDonald’s. And sometimes I don’t have the time or the money to do that.”

“When he has to share with his brother, he starts screaming, kicking the floor, and throwing things.”

Let me ask you: when your child is throwing a tantrum, what’s the purposive nature of the behavior? To get attention. To exert authority over you. And if throwing tantrums has worked in the past, your child will continue to throw them in the future.

If your family is one of faith, you might be interested in what St. Paul said in Ephesians 6:1: “Children, obey your parents. This is the right thing to do because God has placed them in authority over you.” That means you are to be in charge of the home, not your child.

Two-year-olds will throw tantrums, and those tantrums need to be addressed. My favorite suggestion to deal with tantrums is to step over the child (reigning in the temptation to step
on
her), totally ignore the behavior, and move on with whatever else you were doing. If it happens in the mall, just ignore her and move on ahead. (For those of you who are worried, I can guarantee you that any 2-year-old who sees Mommy or Daddy moving away into the crowd will stop the fit she’s throwing and
run
to follow her parent. She won’t be out of her parent’s sight because she’s not that confident.) And without an audience there, there’s really no need for the temper tantrum to continue.

If you handle the tantrums when your child is age 2, you’ll change the behavior, guaranteed, by using my tried-and-true method:

You won’t be dealing with the behavior down the line. But this method requires consistency, follow-through, and no looking back to see if the child is following. Otherwise she gets clued in:
Hey,
Mom is nervous about this. She’s checking to see if it works. Aha!
That means she doesn’t want me to be out of her sight. So she’ll
come back. I’ll just continue this fit thing a little longer.

If children are still throwing tantrums at age 8 and up, however, they’ve got your number. They know what it takes to win the fight because they’ve always won in the past. They are going to show you in full, bloomin’ color just how unhappy and miserable their life is because you haven’t given them a toy or a treat, let them go somewhere, etc. With older children, the same holds true (no matter where you are):

If you’re not in the vicinity, it’s less likely your child will continue the tantrum (especially if you’re in a public place). What’s the purposive nature of the behavior? To get your attention. It defeats the point if you’re not there!

If you’ve allowed tantrums to control your actions in the past, you’ll need to hold especially firm. Now is the time to stop the power tantrums. (Power is really what they’re about, isn’t it?) Do you really want your child to grow up to be a 13-year-old who’s kicking the magazine rack in Wal-Mart, or an 18-year-old who has poor impulse control and a bad temper and throws tantrums when he doesn’t get his way?

After a temper tantrum is over, the child must apologize before life moves on. And that doesn’t mean you say, “Young man, I want an apology out of you.” It’s like asking for a hug. That hug doesn’t mean very much because you had to ask to get it. Asking takes all the emotional fulfillment out of it. In the same way, making a child say “I’m sorry” doesn’t carry the same weight as a heartfelt response without the prodding.

Remember that in all things, “B doesn’t happen until A is completed.” Until you receive a real apology (and you know the difference!), life doesn’t go on.

Thumb Sucking/Blankies

How many junior highers have you seen sucking their thumbs in public? How many take their blankies on field trips?

So many parents get hyper about a child sucking his thumb after a certain age. They hear all the horror stories about how it’ll ruin the child’s teeth and he’ll have to get braces. They worry about how babyish their child will look. They wonder why their 4-year-old still sucks on a blankie during his nap.

But what harm will it do to suck on a blankie? Will it hurt the blankie to get wet? Will it make the blankie gross? Gross never bothered a kid yet. I know that from personal experience. When I took out my cell phone this morning, it was amess. My granddaughter, Adeline, had her sticky fingers all over it at lunch yesterday. Sticky and gross certainly didn’t bother her.

What I’m trying to say, parent, is that if you pay attention to all these little things that will change anyway as kids grow and mature, you’ll drive yourself completely nuts.

Everyone has a different view of thumb sucking and blankies or certain stuffed animals as psychological crutches. But will any of this mean a hill of beans to you or your child in a couple of years? Most likely not.

Then don’t make a mountain out of a very tiny molehill. If your child is still sucking her thumb in kindergarten, just let a little peer pressure take over. The minute she’s called a baby for doing so, her thumb sucking might just stop by itself (at least at school).

Undereating

There’s a big difference between the way young men eat and the way young women eat. It’s not uncommon for a 14-year-old boy to come home from school, take a serving bowl (not a cereal bowl), fill it with half a box of cereal, cut up 2 bananas on it, and chow down the whole thing. In 2 hours he’s ready to eat a big dinner. It’s that time of life where he’s growing by leaps and bounds and expending a lot of energy, so no wonder he comes home hungry.

Young women are much more mindful of what they put in their mouth. It’s not uncommon today for 8- to 11-year-old girls to tell their parents, “I’m too fat” or “I don’t like my body.” If you are hearing such words from your child, that’s a sign your daughter might be headed in the wrong direction because she’s becoming preoccupied with how she looks.

Take a look at billboards, movies, and magazines, and you’ll see in a second that those of us in America put a premium on how people look at a very early age.

Years ago, Charlie Gibson, Joan Lunden, and I did a
Good
Morning America
show on Barbie dolls. They asked me to comment on them. “Notice how perfect and thin they are,” I said, then proceeded to talk about the pull of anorexia, a disease that strikes young women primarily in their teen years (90 percent of the time), when looks are becoming so important. When young women who are perfectionists see how perfectly thin all the models are on television, in magazines, on billboards, and in the movies, they want to be like them. That drive tobe perfect begins a downward spiral into anorexia (undereating or not eating) and/ or bulimia (binge eating, then throwing up to purge the system).

Anorexics believe that, in order to be accepted by others, they must be stick thin. Oftentimes they don’t feel supported by their parents in their ventures, so they feel alone. Feeling out of control, they secretly find a way to control their world—by not eating or eating very little. By doing so, they feel they will be able to reach perfection, and everyone will like them.

If you suspect or discover that this is happening with your child, get professional help immediately. Some symptoms include sneaking into the bathroom immediately after eating to purge the food she has eaten, claiming “I’m not hungry” meal after meal, excusing herself from the table and saying she doesn’t feel well, and losing weight unnaturally quickly. Both anorexia and bulimia are serious conditions that need to be addressed by health-care providers because of the long-term impact they can have on your child’s growth patterns, overall health, teeth, stomach, mind, and emotions.

If your child talks a lot about her body and not liking it, show your own imperfections. (Children rarely realize just how airbrushed the photos of models are.) I like to pull my sweater up and show people a side view of my gut—now there’s perfection! And then I tell them the story of how I ate a whole pumpkin pie, slice by slice, out of the refrigerator; then I had to hide the pie plate from my wife so she wouldn’t know I’d gotten a 2-for-1 deal at the pie shop and eaten a whole pie by myself. Children love to hear stories about you and how you fell short. It gives them the freedom to also be imperfect.

So tell your children (especially your girls) how you fell short. About the time you got a bad grade. When you got into trouble with your parents for lying. When you did something really stupid. Believe it or not, children still see parents as model-like. To children, parents can do no wrong. Explaining that you have done some dumb-as-mud things shows your child that everyone does goofy things sometimes. No one’s body is perfect. By showing your imperfections, you give your children the courage to be imperfect in an imperfect world. That’s why I applaud the cover model who insisted, “Don’t airbrush my wrinkles out. I’ve earned every one of them. They’re a part of me.”

Let your imperfection show. Even flaunt it at times. It will give your child the freedom she needs to be imperfect—and healthy.

Unkindness

Children, by their nature, are very unkind. They’re all about “me, me, me” and “gimme.” Unless they are taught by their parents to be kind, they’re not going to do so on their own.

When your child speaks or acts unkindly right in front of your eyes, the best thing to do is pull her aside and say, “That was a very unkind thing to say. Is that really what you meant to say? Did you mean to be unkind?”

After the child has a chance to respond, then say, “That made me feel [used, taken for granted, etc.]. Is that what you wanted to communicate?”

Such wording brings the situation to an immediate head so the child realizes that what she said was unkind. It also sets up the possible response, “Mom, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

If you get that kind of positive reaction, life goes on. If you don’t get that kind of reaction, then lifedoesn’t go on for long. Remember, “B doesn’t happen until A is completed.” And A demands an apology and a removal of privileges until the point is made.
Then
life can go on.