Choice Theory (29 page)

“But you’re going to be different, very different. She’ll notice it tonight, you’ll see.”

“OK, what I’ve been doing hasn’t done much good. I’m willing to let it go. Now what?”

“Now I’d like to get back to her boyfriend. Do you know anything about him?”

“All I know is he’s on the basketball team and he comes from a nice family. But she never brings him home.”

“And you’re worried they might become involved sexually?”

“Yes, I’m worried sick about it. I’ve preached till I’m blue in the face. She used to tell me everything, and now she won’t talk to me.”

“Would you like to go out with her and the boy, sit in her ear where he couldn’t see you, and give her advice if you think she needed it? I mean be there but be invisible? Only she could hear you?”

“Now you’re getting silly. No one could arrange that.”

“No one has to arrange it. It’s already arranged. You’re actually in her head right now, just like she’s in yours. The only thing is, she isn’t listening to you very much; you know that. If you can get closer to her, she’ll listen to you again like she used to.”

“I hope it isn’t too late.”

“I don’t think it’s too late. It’s never too late to get close to a child.”

“I’ve been missing what’s most important, haven’t I?”

“Come back next week, and let’s see what happened. I don’t think you’ve done any real harm; she hasn’t been that easy either. But this way may work; let’s see. During this week, I want you to think about it. Not only with Samantha but with all the people in your life—your boss, your mother, your ex, everyone you have
anything to do with:
Whose behavior can you control?
We’ll talk again next week. If you want to talk to me during the week, call me and I’ll get back to you.”

That session got things well started. I didn’t hear from Linda during the week. Samantha did the dishes for a few days and then stopped for a day. Testing. Linda didn’t take the bait; she did the dishes herself without saying anything. Samantha has now done them again for two days, and Linda plans never to say anything about the dishes again. Linda and I talked, and I spent some time introducing her to choice theory. She said that she is going to do everything she can to get close to Samantha and she could already see how much closer they were just this week.

About a month later, Linda told me the following. Samantha wanted to talk with Linda about her boyfriend. He is putting pressure on her for sex, and they have come close to doing it. Linda didn’t respond with horror. She just asked Samantha calmly if she wanted some birth control pills, but Samantha said no. Samantha told Linda that her boyfriend carries a condom with him and has promised to use it. Linda told her it could be a bad experience at her age unless she is deeply in love, and Samantha said she’s not. It’s just that a lot of her friends are doing it with their boyfriends and she’s curious.

I told Linda that’s all she can do, and I complimented her on handling the situation so well. What she said has brought them closer, and that’s the best thing for Samantha as she struggles with her own and her boyfriend’s hormones. Early sex is part of today’s culture. Whatever Samantha does, it is better for her that she and her mother are now talking and that Linda has stopped preaching, criticizing, and controlling.

Using this session as a guideline, I would like to try to explain how to rear a child using choice theory. As I look back, I think I
learned a great deal about choice theory from my experience with my children. Both my late wife, Naomi, and I did not know any choice theory until our three children finished college. We almost always agreed on what to do with them, so we didn’t cast any blame on each other for the lives they have chosen to live. We used very little punishment in our child rearing and never had any of the usual problems with them that many parents have. They were never rebellious, and we all got along well. Our children had many friends who were always welcome at our house, and almost all their friends are successful and productive adults. For a hint of how to use choice theory with children, you might watch how grandparents behave with their grandchildren. We all seem pretty good at that job.

I am well aware that many people will disagree with what I am going to say. Just as there is a great deal of chance in marriage, there is no foolproof way to rear a child or to get along with every member of a family. If you try what I suggest and it seems not to work, I may be wrong. But there is also the possibility that you may be more committed to external control psychology than you realize.

Choice theory is much more effective when it is used to prevent problems than to solve them. If you look honestly at the lives of the people you know who have long-standing relationship problems or at your own, you will see that few of us are able to come up with a good solution to any of these problems. In most instances, the problems drag on and are never really solved. Eventually, we learn to live in unhappy marriages by expecting less and less from the relationships. I believe that we do the same thing with children. We deal with our disappointment not by rejecting them, but by expecting less from them and they from us.

The biggest concern of most parents is the future of their children: Will they lead happy and successful lives? To me, what is equally important is, Will they like to spend time with us and we with them? If they are happy and like spending time with us, as parents we are well satisfied. Most of us do not aspire for our children to be extraordinary; we seem to know enough choice theory
to realize that beyond a certain point there is nothing we can do to push our children to the top in any endeavor. We can help and support, but much of what children ultimately become is not within our control.

Following the third belief of external control psychology,
We know what’s right for our children,
most of us reward and punish to attempt to get our children to do what we believe is right. We can keep doing so until we have destroyed our relationships with them without succeeding in getting them to where we want them to be. Even if our children become successful and do what we think is right, we may, in our zeal to push them to where we want them to go, lose the closeness that most of us want. Some people say that as long as their children lead the lives they want them to lead, the closeness doesn’t matter. I don’t accept this belief at all. To be unable to share success is unsatisfying to both parents and children.

I can explain only the basics of choice theory child rearing: a lot of love and no punishment. I have no day-by-day prescription for what you should do if the child is way out of order, but sending a young child who is acting up to her room or a calm-down chair, with a minimum of yelling, is usually effective and does not harm the relationship. When you send her, use the admonition, “When you feel calm, come out. I’d like to talk to you about what happened and see if we can help it from happening again, but if you don’t want to talk, that’s OK. I’ll settle for you just calming down.” And when she comes out, do something enjoyable with her that tells her it’s over, no hard feelings.

Creativity is at the heart of any good relationship. Do things that are unexpected. With very young children who are carrying on, I fake crying and carrying on. They are so amazed that they start to laugh or come over and comfort me, and I tell them how much I appreciate it. They often forget what they wanted or what they were doing, and I don’t remind them. Sometimes when they are about to cry, I teach a little choice theory and say, “You can cry now or a little later, which do you want to do?” They learn that whining and crying is a choice and maybe not such a good
choice for them. It does give them something to think about: They can choose not to cry if they want to.

As a choice theory parent, it is helpful if you teach children a little choice theory directly. Explain the needs and the quality world first and total behavior later. Children as young as five years old are now taught this theory in some of our schools that are trying to become quality schools, and it certainly can be done at home. Material to do so is described in the appendix of this book.
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Teenagers can read sections of this book and easily learn from it. They will be especially interested if you tell them that much of what you are trying to do with them is taken from this book.

As far as love goes, don’t connect love with any specific behavior. Make it clear that you love your children no matter what they do, but be candid that if they are totally out of order, loving them isn’t easy. The best way you can communicate that you love your children is always to be open to talking and listening. With this openness, you have a right to express your opinions and should
feel free to tell them if you disagree with what they are doing or intend to do. But don’t harp on what they are doing over and over. When you disagree, expressing yourself twice is usually enough. Things get much more difficult, however, when your children want you to support what you disagree with.

For example, your daughter wants to change colleges to follow a young man she is in love with. You don’t agree. What do you do? There is no good answer. If you have a strong relationship with her, it probably won’t make much difference. It is up to you to judge whether what you do or don’t do will keep you from separating farther from her. Your obvious disagreement has already precluded your getting closer; what you don’t want is to get further apart.

Ask yourself, if I do or say this, will we be closer or farther apart? Tell her that whatever each of you does, you don’t want to be farther apart after this incident than you are now. Explain why and ask for her help. This is the child-parent solving circle that is comparable to the circle used in marriage. Teach it to your children as soon as you believe they are ready to learn it. And teach it at a time when you are getting along well, so you can use it later when there is a problem.

In or out of the child-parent circle, the best thing to do with the daughter who wants to change colleges is to lay your cards on the table and tell her why you disagree and tell her you find it difficult to support what she is going to do because you fear she will be hurt. But also tell her that your relationship with her is more important than anything else and ask her how both of you can work out what to do that will keep the good relationship you have. Her chances of doing anything that will ruin her life are much less if you do so. But keep in mind that when romantic love is involved, no one can tell anyone what to do. Choice theory says strongly,
Do what you can to keep close to her. The relationship takes precedence over always being “right.”

When you deal with a child, offering advice is better than barking out instructions. Keeping as close to him as you can without getting deeply involved in his future is probably as good as offering
much advice. If you offer advice, don’t repeat yourself or nag. It is almost certain he heard you the first time and knew what you wanted him to do before you gave him your advice. Don’t rake up the past if what he has done previously has not been successful. What’s done is done; to keep this failure alive is divisive.

Going over past successes, however, is an excellent idea. It takes a long time before any of us get tired of hearing that we have done a good job. When the child is very young, try to establish the idea that, in time, most mistakes can be corrected or lived with. Very little is so bad that it can never be corrected or let be. Present yourself as always being ready to help but not ready to do it for him. One serious mistake I made with my oldest son was to intervene too fast and do too much to try to help. Love them, but let them flounder when they are young when floundering doesn’t carry the penalties it may later on.

The basis of a choice theory relationship is to establish trust. Parents can’t start too early to behave in a way that encourages their children to trust them. Establishing trust means that there is nothing the children can say or do that will persuade you to reject them. Later, when they are teenagers, it gets much more difficult to do, but it is always best never to reject your children. This does not mean you support what you disagree with. There is a big difference between not rejecting and not supporting, and children easily understand that difference and your position if you are close.

As I explained, parents are in their children’s quality worlds, which means the children either trust their parents or want to trust them. Children keep parents they do not trust in their quality worlds because there is no one to replace the parents. And as long as parents are there, children want to trust them. When a child no longer wants to trust a parent, it’s as if the parent has become an inactive member of his quality world community. You are there, he may even enjoy your company, but he does not trust you. The only way you can regain his trust is to spend some time talking with and listening to him and moving toward each other in the process.

When you are dealing with a child who you do not believe trusts you and you make a mistake, be quick to admit it. You don’t expect him to be perfect, and you are not perfect either. The admission that mistakes are possible builds or rebuilds trust. Parents who are the first to admit a mistake are seen by their children as much more trustworthy than are parents who are
always right
and have a hard time admitting they are wrong. Children need to trust their parents. If they can’t, they are living on quicksand.

Choice theory parents begin to teach their children by three years of age that they have to be willing to take responsibility for what they choose. But taking responsibility does not mean being punished. Sending them to their rooms is the maximum you should need for control. There is no punishment in a choice theory upbringing. Punishment is external control psychology to the core—an imposed consequence that always increases the distance between parents and children. Almost all punished children spend time and effort to avoid or resist punishment, time and energy that could be spent learning how to expand their lives and satisfy their needs. Punished children tend to contract their lives, to concentrate on evading responsibility rather than accepting it. Children should not be made to suffer any more than the natural consequences of what they chose to do.