Have a New Kid by Friday (21 page)

What I’m talking about is the child who spends
all
of her time in her bedroom. Knowing when the child is spending too much time in her room is a parent’s judgment call. Only you know, from your child’s behavior, when she simply needs time alone and when she is literally walling herself off from the rest of the family. Some kids become recluses in their own home.

If this is happening in your home, the first place to start is by evaluating your own behavior. When a child separates herself from her family by isolating herself in her bedroom, here’s what she’s really saying:
I don’t like being around
you. Every time I open my mouth, you
correct me and judge me. Every time I wear something, you look
at me funny. You don’t like my hair, my clothes, or my music. I’m
done with you.

When a kid is ragged on all the time and told how to do life and when to do it by a hovering parent, that kid will always duck out and head toward her room to escape it. Who can blame her? Would
you
want to be ragged on all the time?

So you need to ask yourself,
What am I doing to contribute to
my child’s behavior?
If all you do is pry and ask questions, stop! The best way to shut children down is by asking questions. Instead, listen to your children. If your daughter mentions something that happened at school, simply say, “Tell me more about that. That must have been fun/hard.” Leave the door open for dialogue, but don’t push. When you stop pushing, you’ll be amazed what you begin to hear from your child.

At the heart of this behavior is a child’s need for acceptance. When your child talks to friends, those friends accept the hairstyle you think is goofy (they think it’s cool or at least don’t rag him about it), her too-tight shirt, and his baggy pants. When you look at the long term, those things are not mountains, they’re molehills. (Think about the stupid things you wore in eighth grade. Enough said?)

Your child needs to know you accept and love him unconditionally. That is the foundation for a lifetime of communication.

Know-it-all Attitude

Children know it all. They’re born with knowing it all, and you can’t tell them any different.

“The show starts at 6,” you say.

“No, it doesn’t,” your daughter argues. “It starts at 8.”

“The program says 6,” you say.

And on the debate rages.

You can’t tell a know-it-all anything.

So why not let reality do the teaching? If you know something starts at 6:00 and your child insists it’s at 8:00, follow her lead. Show up at 8:00, when it’s all over, and let your child experience the reality of misinformation. Sure, you attended an event you knew wouldn’t be there. But you also let your child experience a very important lesson: maybe, just maybe, she’s not always right!

Often we do too much thinking for our kids. We do too many things for them. We’re too good as parents. We try to protect them from themselves. But sometimes they need to experience the consequences of their decisions. They need to lose out on something they wanted to do.

Reality can be a very wonderful teacher.

Lack of Cooperation with Family

“He always refuses to do what the rest of the family wants to do. It’s always got to be what he wants to do, or he’s a sore loser and makes us all pay for the rest of the day.”

I’m not talking about a onetime occurrence here (let’s face it: each of us has our moments). I’m talking about the kid who’s got attitude. He keeps you running from crisis to crisis. You put out one fire and another one pops up immediately. He makes it clear that his wishes are the ones that are important, and no one else matters.

What can you do about this? I’ve got a prescription that works well: Give ’em the bread-and-water treatment.

What does that mean? Your child is used to getting all sorts of things: an allowance, lunch money, guitar lessons, trips to friends’ houses. All of a sudden, all of those perks stop. No warning. No fanfare. No anger. Things just stop. Your child heads out the door for guitar lessons and gets in the car. He sits there . . . and sits there . . . and sits there. You don’t come out, so finally he’s ticked off enough to come in and say, “What’s the deal? Are we going to guitar lessons or not?”

Now is your teachable moment.

“I called and cancelled your lesson,” you say calmly.

“What?” he says.

“Well, your dad and I have been talking. It seems like you want to drop out of the family, so that’s the way it’ll be for a while. Being a member of this family has some perks, I think, but you’ve got to live your life the way you want to live it. I can’t force you to do things, but there will be changes on how the family will function. I’ll no longer be driving you to guitar lessons, nor will we be paying for them.”

This method works very well with older kids. Sometimes you just have to hit kids where it hurts (figuratively speaking, of course) for them to get it.

Lateness

“No matter what time we start, she’s always late for school.”

“Whenever we plan a family dinner, he always shows up late . . . just in time for dessert.”

Ask any businessperson who hires people and he’ll tell you what he looks for in his employees. One of the key qualities is promptness. Why is this? Because business folks know well that the person who is always running late will, in the long run, put himself in a situation in which he’ll come up a loser rather than a winner. And that wouldn’t be good for the business.

Why would someone always run late?

It doesn’t take a psychologist to figure this one out. If a child always runs late, it’s because she’s stacking the deck against herself. She doesn’t feel like she’s worth anything. She doesn’t think highly enough of herself or believe that she can accomplish what she sets out to do. It’s her way of making life difficult for herself.

If you have a continually late child, also read the “Procrastination” section. The child who is always late is, in all probability, the one who is living with a critical-eyed parent (you?) who can spot a flaw at 50 paces. Being late is your child’s excuse. She’s late so she doesn’t have to play her piano solo and hear your critique afterward about her one wrong chord, because the program has already moved on. She’s late so she doesn’t have to set the dinner table (because the last time she did, you harped on her placement of the utensils).

There’s a practical way of dealing with lateness. You can tell your child that you have to leave at 7:30 when you actually need to leave at 7:45 or 8:00. But it won’t take long before your child catches on. That’s only a short-term solution.

If your child is always late, do a gut-check on yourself. Are you one of those flaw-picking, hovering parents? If so, your child would rather be late and not do the activity than risk failure in your eyes. It all goes back to the fact that your child needs unconditional love and acceptance. And the person she needs it from the most is you, her parent.

This doesn’t mean, however, that you don’t address the lateness in your child. If you want to curb the lateness in 5 days or less, tell your kids when you need to be out the door. “I have to be out the door at 7:45 in order to go to my meeting. If you are ready, I’ll drop you off at Hannah’s on the way.” If your child isn’t at the door at 7:45, leave without warning or fanfare. (This only works, of course, if there is an older sibling or another adult home to stay with a younger child.) Let the child stay behind and suffer the consequences of not being ready.

If your child is continually late in getting out the door for school, go ahead and leave on time with your other children. Let the other child stay behind. It will mean, of course, sacrifice on your part because you’ll have to make two trips to school. But welcome to the world of parenting! Sometimes it is inconvenient.

If a child experiences being late and is held accountable by an outside person (maybe she has to go to the principal’s office or is given a pink slip she has to give to a teacher), all the better.

If your child has a record of lateness, you may also want to talk with the teacher or principal and say, “We’re trying to work on Sarah being on time. Anything you can do to help us on that would be appreciated.” In other words, home and school can work together.

Let’s say your eighth grader misses the bus, and you have to drive him to school. What would you normally do? Run out of the door in your bathrobe without your coffee to get him there on time, right?

I suggest something different. Take your time. Take a shower, blow-dry your hair, pour yourself a cup of coffee. Quietly make a phone call to the school without your child knowing and tell them why he’s going to be late. Encourage the office to give him a stiff warning on that pink or blue slip. Ask the teacher to say something to him in front of the class about his lateness.

Why would you choose to do this to your child? Because the long-term goal is for your child to become a responsible adult. Some children need a little kick-start in that direction, and your child may be one of them.

Laziness/No Responsibility

“Frank Jr. moved back in with us after he graduated from college and couldn’t find a job. Because he was back home and jobless, we continued giving him an allowance. But it seems like all he spends it on is take-out pizza and going out with his buddies. I sure don’t see him looking for a job.”

“Keri spent her entire summer just lying around on our deck, sun tanning. Now she wants to shop for school clothes. I’d told her at the beginning of the summer that we wouldn’t have money for new clothes since her dad’s company is downsizing and we don’t know what’s going to happen. She could have earned some money herself. She was offered a great job. But she just didn’t want to do it.”

Let me ask you: are you running a home—or a hotel?

If, like Frank Jr., your son is 24, still lives with you, and is bilking you for money and showing no responsibility, then you’re running a hotel. And guess what? You’re the maid service! Why would he look for a job? Frank Jr.’s got it pretty good right where he is. You do all the work, and he just hangs out eating pizza and not growing up.