Choice Theory (30 page)

For example, if your son is consistently late for dinner, he should still get dinner, but it may be cold and some of it may be gone. He may even have to fix something for himself, but he should not go hungry unless he is too lazy to get some food. If you believe that punishment solves problems, try doing without it. You will see that with a little conversation and guidance, your children will solve their own problems. Or they will accept your solution, not because you can punish but because they trust you. This way you don’t risk harming the all-important relationship.

Instead of punishment, the choice theory parent continually sends the message:
I
want you to learn from your mistakes. My job, if either of us is dissatisfied with what you chose to do, is to get together and help you to figure out a better way.
There is almost always a better way. I will, however, step in and stop you
when I believe you are too young to know what you are getting into, but my focus will not be on stopping you. It will be on letting you learn before you do something that you may regret. Here trust is all-important; if your child trusts you, he will listen to you.

Many parents struggle with their children over bedtime, and up to four years do the best you can without punishment. But when the child is older than four and still doesn’t want to go to bed, you can use this situation as an opportunity to teach him a valuable lesson in personal freedom. As soon as you believe that he is safe to leave up around the house, tell him that you trust him to figure out how much sleep he needs. This statement sends the message that you are not rigid or always right and are more than willing to give him a chance to do what he wants as long as he doesn’t hurt himself or anyone else.

After the hour that you feel he ought to be in bed, tell him it’s bedtime but that he doesn’t have to go. He can stay up as late as he wants, but he can’t have any more attention from you or anyone else who is up. He is on his own. He can play or, if the television is not in use, watch it with the sound turned down low. When you, the parents, go to bed, close your door and tell him that he can’t bother you anymore or anyone else who is up. If he bothers anyone, you will put him to bed even if it takes a big fight. But since he thinks he is getting away with something, there will be few fights. Tell him that you will get him up for school and expect him to go even if he is tired. If he falls asleep in school, don’t worry about it; his admission to college is not in danger.

This is the time to begin to teach responsibility, not later when your child is a teenager and there are some real opportunities for him to get hurt. If you struggle over bedtime, you waste a lot of effort that could go into teaching your child that whenever there is a choice in which no one can be harmed, you will give him the freedom to choose. When a child goes to bed harms no one else. If he’s too cranky to have fun the next day or to do his schoolwork, he’ll learn to go to bed earlier. That you and he are not adversaries makes it possible for you to give him some advice and likely that he’ll listen. All through early childhood, look for these opportunities.
In most cases, letting him choose his bedtime works out fine. It gives him the chance to take care of himself in a safe situation and not depend on anyone else.

Talk with him about how things are working out now that bedtime is up to him. Ask him if there are other things he could do to take care of himself and tell him that you will try to go along with what he wants. Tell him you hate fighting and arguing and that you appreciate that he is taking care of something you used to argue a lot about. Never tell him,
I told you so
if he tells you that he needs to go to bed early; just say bedtime is up to him, early or late.

This approach changes the relationship. You are not the automatic,
my way or the highway
person many children believe their parents are. Your child learns that you don’t impose rules for the sake of rules or because other people do things a certain way. You are his partner as well as his parent, and you want to give him as much freedom to choose what he does that you believe he can handle. But if you don’t think he is ready to handle a situation, your way will prevail until you think he’s ready. And you are always open to talking it over to try to find out when this is. There are no automatic or nonthinking no’s in a choice theory upbringing, and you are not going to fight or argue anymore. That’s not the way you want to relate to him.

Now here is an example of when you don’t think a child is ready to make a decision; a time when it has to be your way. Your eight-year-old daughter refuses to go to school, and reacts with a great deal of hysteria when you try to get her to go. You have not been a choice theory parent, but up to now there was no reason to worry about her upbringing. She has been given a lot of love, and this school problem comes as a surprise. She had always been a little resistant to school, but this much resistance is new. When you talk with the principal, she tells you just to get your daughter to school and the school will deal with her. The principal has seen this behavior before and believes that the child will calm down as soon as she realizes this situation is not negotiable. Still, you are concerned. The idea of using force does not sit well with you.

But now as you are learning to become a choice theory parent, you tell her that going to school is not a choice. It’s what all children, including her, do. You do it with love and concern, but you are careful to do it in a way that the child gets the clear message that this is not a negotiable situation. You are good parents, you love her, and this situation is very difficult; her hysteria seems so genuine. But the longer you allow her to control you with hysteria, the harder it will be to convince her that school attendance is not a choice.

If you had been a choice theory parent, then she would know that you are flexible in many situations. You have, however, gotten along well with her. She knows you love her, and you must be ready to act firmly in this nonnegotiable situation. No matter how much she cries, bodily take her to school, give her a kiss, and drop her off. You will have alerted the school that you are going to do so, and the staff can deal with her in any reasonable way, but you are willing for her to cry all day if she wishes. Once she sees you mean it, she will not cry very long. The trust that you have built will pay off. You may never find out what was wrong or she may tell you, but either way this is the way to handle this problem. Stand firm, without threats and punishment, when you believe it’s necessary. Be flexible as often as you can.

Eating is another hang-up for parents who know
what’s right
and punish to enforce it. Rather than get stuck in this easily lost battle, this is a good chance to be flexible. Your daughter who is not malnourished eats only a few foods. If it is convenient, give her those foods and say nothing. If it is inconvenient, give her what you are making for everyone else and that’s it. Say nothing if she picks out what she wants from her plate and leaves the rest. The clean-plate club is one of our charter external control organizations. If she is willing to prepare her own food, let her do it. That’s all. No arguments, no coaxing, no cajoling. No telling her “I told you so” when she eats the food or terrible concern if she doesn’t. She is not going to starve. If you make too much of a fuss over food when she is young, you may be setting yourself up for dealing with anorexia later.

Choice theory says that all I can give you in this book is information, and this is what I’ve done. Nothing I have said takes precedence over you using your own judgment. Enforce what you think is worth enforcing, but try to do so as little as possible. Let the rest go. Don’t protect your children from minor problems or try to get them to do it your way when it doesn’t really matter. In this way they will learn from experience, one of the world’s greatest teachers, what’s smart and what’s stupid. They will also learn that you are not rigid or overly opinionated, that you don’t care very much about many things their friends’ parents care a lot about. But they will also learn at an early age that when you do care, you will hold the line no matter how much they protest.

When they were young, you managed fine with giving them control over their bedtime and with what they ate and wore. A little later, things you cared a lot about like school, health, and safety were not negotiable. But by beginning to let them choose many things most children don’t get to decide on, you are teaching them the value of negotiation because by the preteen years, much of what they want can only be negotiated. You can’t physically control them as you could when they were young. You can ground them, but grounding them is difficult to enforce and you risk weakening your position in their quality worlds if you are too strict. Now, more than ever, you need to have a strong presence in their quality worlds. They can get into a lot of trouble during the hours you can’t ground them, such as before and after school.

Whether you like it or not, you have no control over what your children choose to do when they are on their own. Drugs, sex, alcohol, and crime are all available, and the only thing that may keep them from these destructive behaviors is your picture, front and center, in their quality worlds. It is not just being there; you are almost always there. It is how strongly you are there that will have a lot to do with the choices they make on their own. Your willingness to negotiate most of the time, plus the fact that you have done a lot of negotiating during the years you could have been coercive, keeps you and what you believe alive in your
children’s quality worlds. Start to teach them to negotiate as soon as possible by doing it.

Your son is nine years old and wants a dog. You don’t particularly want a dog, but you agree that this is a reasonable request at his age and you don’t want to be arbitrary. When he asked at age six, you said that he had to wait until he was nine, and he waited. This shows he respects your judgment. But he will lose this respect if you don’t show that you respect his judgment. At nine, he is old enough to learn to negotiate, which means that you will work out how much he is willing to do to take care of the dog. The best way to start this, and all negotiations like it, is to talk to him a lot about the dog and to show enthusiasm for his request. If the request is reasonable, avoid being a wet blanket. If you really don’t want a dog in the house, hold the line. It’s easier to be firm in the beginning than to vacillate, postpone, and then get tough later.

Discuss the breed, the size, whether it should be a puppy or a housebroken dog and have long hair or short hair, its temperament, and the cost. Encourage him to read a lot about dogs, which is also a good way for him to appreciate how useful reading is. If you are in a large city, go through the classified ads with him, especially those about adopting a good free dog. Take him to visit some dogs. Make a big deal about it; it’s a way to get close and sets up the negotiation. As you do so, talk to him about the care of the dog, how much he will do and how much you will do. He is only nine, so you should not expect too much, but walking and feeding the dog are reasonable tasks.

If you are in a city, explain why a pooper scooper is needed and how to use it. I would not ask him to clean up after a puppy inside the house; that may be too much for him, and housebreaking is only a short period anyway. You may both decide that getting a dog that is already trained may be a good idea for a first dog. Try to get him the dog he wants, not the one you want or wanted as a child.

Keep in mind that teenagers need a lot of love. Certainly as much as younger children, who have less potential for trouble
than teenagers. We tend to forget that fact and treat them as grown-ups, but they are not grown-ups. It takes a lot of creativity to love teenagers enough so that they will listen to you even if they don’t agree and still keep you strongly in their quality worlds. Don’t wait for trouble. Anticipate it by talking, laughing, and doing things with your teenagers. All this is a savings account, which you can draw from later when there are serious disagreements.

If a husband and a wife have formed a circle and extended it to the parent-child circle, it is natural to extend it further into a family solving circle. If you look at families who get along well, you see this circle in action. The family joins together as a supportive unit to help each other deal with whatever comes along. Members of external control families tend to blame each other when there is a problem. Each knows what is right for himself or herself but rarely thinks of what’s right for the family. Trust keeps the circle strong. As long as you and your children are in that circle, whether you are together or apart, you have the best chance for happiness.

If the abuse is currently going on, we must do all we can to stop it, which usually means taking the child out of the abusive situation. But often, when the abuse is found out, it has already stopped. The child, however, still needs help to deal with what happened. Even more often, the abuse is never reported and stops sometime during childhood but surfaces later as the possible cause of an adult problem. The abuse can be physical, but nonsexual, as when the child is beaten. It can be psychological, such as being reared in a torrent of threats, criticism, and blame alternating with neglect. Or it can be sexual, which is mostly physical but also psychological. Most often it is some combination of all three.

Abused children are usually damaged by one or more of the
people taking care of them. Natural parents, stepparents, grandparents, uncles, cousins, foster parents, even neighbors, someone the child tends to trust, are most often responsible for this injury. The conventional wisdom is that an abused child, especially a sexually abused child, will never be able to deal with what has happened unless he or she is made aware of it and, perhaps, goes so far as to confront the person who did it. It is believed that the abused person cannot deal alone with what happened and needs a psychotherapist to guide him or her through what is called a healing process. Whether they do so purposefully or not, therapists who believe clients are damaged tend to teach them that they are helpless victims and that unless they can revisit what happened in the past through counseling, they will remain victims.