Don’t eat the marshmallow!

Posted on by peeinpeace

If you were four-years-old, could you resist these?

It is really hard work to teach children how to work hard.  Zach and Eliza often take the easy road.  Here are a few examples:

Eliza: “Mommy, can you do motorboat with me?”  Me: “Sure, after you get those horses off the bottom of the pool.”  Eliza: “I don’t want to do motorboat.”

Zach: “Mommy I want eye keem (ice cream).”  Me: “Zach, after you eat your dinner you may have dessert.”  Zach: “Mommy, I want eye keem.”  Me: “Sure, after you eat dinner.”  Zach: “No mommy.”

(And while getting out of the car) Eliza: “I want to carry everything by myself.”  Me: “Eliza, this is a lot of stuff, are you sure?”  Eliza: “Yes.”  (Here are your lunchbox, backpack, jacket, sandwich, and painting.)  E: “Mommy (crying hysterically) it’s too much I can’t carry it I need help I’m AFRAID OF CARS!!!”

In some cases, they’re trying to establish their independence, and in others, they obviously do not want to do the work required to get what they want.  Part of our jobs as parents is to figure out which of those is happening and adjust our reactions accordingly.  And when it is obvious that they are being lazy, I am trying to come up with ways to help motivate them.  I think humans often give up easily if what they’re doing requires effort or discomfort, or if they have to be patient for longer than they deem worthy (which, for my children right now, is generally anywhere between a millisecond and a few seconds).

So how do I convince them to work for what they want?  Or to have self-control and patience?  I have read about the famous marshmallow study.  What is so scary to me about this study is how great a predictor it is for later success.  Kids in the test who delay gratification do well in life; kids who can’t, don’t.

Now that Eliza is four-years-old, I have started going over a responsibility chart with her each night.  She has five things on the list every day, and my goal is not to nag her about them, but to ask her once to feed the dog or unload the silverware from the dishwasher, and if she chooses to do her chores, she gets stickers.  If she does all five chores, she gets a quarter.  If she does four, she gets a dime; three, she gets a nickel; two, she gets a penny; and one or none, she gets nothing.  At the end of the week, if she has 30 or more stickers, she gets a $1 bonus.  This is working well because she is taking pride in doing the work and putting up her stickers.  She gets to control things.  She can choose to do her chores and be rewarded, or choose not to and accept the consequences (not getting stickers and coins).

And when we go to church on Sundays, there are doughnut holes.  When we arrive, she gets to choose whether to eat one immediately, or wait until her class is over and get two.  So far she has chosen to wait two-out-of-four times.

With Zach, we are teaching him that we mean what we say, so that when he doesn’t eat, he doesn’t get dessert.  He definitely shows us through crying and screaming that he is unhappy with us, but he’s learning that his choices have consequences, too.

I guess this is just another example of how it’s hard to know exactly how to teach your kids what you deem to be important.  I don’t want to be so rigid and ruled and stressed about making sure we cover all these “important” things that we don’t have time to be silly and messy and spontaneous.

Yet again, I’m struck by what hard work parenting actually is.  If you have ways you are helping your children learn to be patient and self-controlled, let me know!  I love getting help and suggestions from other parents.  And now that I’ve finished my work (writing this blog), I’m going to go have some tea and cookies.  And perhaps a marshmallow, too.

Parenting lesson #3: You are embarking on a new phase in life that many see as an invitation for unsolicited advice and judgment.

Posted on by peeinpeace

They certainly look like a fun way to pass the time …

As with everything else, not everyone will agree with you when it comes to parenting.  And it seems like more so than in any other occupation, family and strangers alike feel the need to voice their opinions about the job you’re doing.  It’s possible there’s nothing else we do in public that’s as judgment-inducing as how we deal with our children.  When you have a newborn and you’re already nervous about being out, inevitably some little old lady will tell you that your baby – who is in a fleece sleeper and covered in blankets – is cold.  When Eliza was four-weeks-old and I was dealing with feeding issues, my mother-in-law came to visit.  I had just fed Eliza and she was crying.  My MIL said, “Do you think she’s hungry?  Why don’t you just give her some formula?”

I wish I could say that these unsolicited remarks end at some point, but they do not.  It happened to me Wednesday while traveling alone with the kids, and I know it will happen hundreds more times.  After spending 1 1/2 hours driving to the airport, and the next 1 1/2 hours going through security and traipsing the kids across the terminal for 3 gate changes, I was already spent.  Honestly I was just thankful I hadn’t lost my kids in an elevator or bathroom.  But the wait wasn’t over.  There were storms that were keeping our plane circling above, and in the end, our flight was delayed an hour-and-a-half.  When your kids are at the past-exhausted, giggly, we’re going to hit each other because it’s funny mode, you can only do so much.  I decided that getting them some exercise on the moving walkways was a good way to expend energy and pass the time.

Once there, I felt a little like perhaps this wasn’t the best decision.  I didn’t want to be in the way of people hurrying to make their connections.  I did a decent job keeping the kids to the right so people could pass on the left.  Regardless, there was one older couple traveling with a single female companion, and they all huffed and puffed as they walked around us and threw me disapproving glances.  Then the single companion said to my kids after passing them, “Children, hold on to the railing!”

In some ways, it’s entirely annoying that others – especially strangers – do this.  I am not perfect and I might not always make the best decisions, but I would appreciate it if people assumed I have thought through what I’m doing.  Were my children in danger of falling?  I don’t think so.  Were they in the way of others?  Perhaps a little.  Did their presence on the moving walkway hinder anyone?  Maybe by a few seconds.  But honestly, if you’re a stranger and you want to help a parent, sending dirty looks at her is not helpful.  If this woman had looked at me and said, “Do you need some help?  Would you like me to hold their hands and help you get through the walkway?”, I would have known she was concerned for their well-being, not trying to chastise me for what she thought was carelessness.  There’s a part of me that wishes I would have reacted how Greg would have reacted, which would have been by saying, “Yes, and kids, remember not to speak unless spoken to.”

I really hope that regardless what stage I’m in with my kids, I give others the benefit of the doubt, and if I really want to be helpful, that I’ll offer actual help, not judgment.  When I see a woman holding her baby in one arm and feeding her toddler some candy with her other while loading groceries into her car, I’m going to offer to strap her baby into his car seat or load her groceries, not shake my head at her for giving a toddler candy.  Because I’ve been there, and I don’t want to forget what it’s like to live that tough moment.

This parenting journey is hard, with lots of twists and turns.  Sometimes what we need least are these opinionated naysayers.  But if we can laugh it off, and perhaps take any bit of truth from these incidents for the next test, it’s all part of the experience – the wonderful, challenging, beautiful experience.