Have a New Kid by Friday (25 page)

To change a child’s overeating habits, you need to change your lifestyle. Sit down for dinner together as a family (this often requires the biggest change in the parents’ schedule). There’s nothing like a home-cooked meal for satisfaction, for lower fat content, and for bonding conversation. So don’t miss out.

There’s another aspect of overeating: bulimia. Ninety percent of the children who struggle with bulimia (overeating, then throwing up to purge the food from their system) are teenage girls. The underlying, driving reason is perfectionism. Teen girls see “perfect” bodies all around them on television, on billboards, in movies, and even within the “popular girls” group. In order to be accepted, they assume they have to be stick thin. If these girls don’t feel supported by their parents, they may find another way to control their world—by binge eating a whole pan of brownies, then gagging themselves in the bathroom so they throw it up. If you suspect or discover this is happening with your child, please get help immediately from a professional. Bulimia is a serious condition that needs to be addressed by health-care providers because of the long-term impact it can have on your child’s overall health—physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Overcautiousness

“Mindy is afraid to try anything.”

“Before Dave turns his homework in, he checks it over and over and over.”

It’s good to be cautious but not overly cautious. The key word is
overly
. When kids are overly cautious, perfectionism is in full bloom in your house.

A lot of children who don’t start projects fear that if they do start, they might do them wrong. They fear criticism more than anything else, so the worst thing that parents can do is criticize them. These children live life with a boulder around their neck:
I have to produce . . . or else.

How did these children develop this fear? Because parents have used praise rather than encouragement. (For more on this, see the chapter “Thursday.”) They have overused praise with everything the child has done until the child tells himself,
I only
count in life when I do things perfectly. If I don’t, I’m nothing.

Here’s the surprise. You may have a child who doesn’t look like a perfectionist. He may be always late, his room may be a mess, and he may look like a mess, but underneath it all, he’s a perfectionist. He may get his homework done and get it done right, but then a month later the teacher finds it in his desk at school.

“Why didn’t you turn that in?” you ask. He has no answer, because he doesn’t know how to voice his fear that if he had turned it in, someone would evaluate it. Someone would give it a star or a black mark. And what if it was the black mark? How could he live with that?

If you are constantly praising your children for what they do, giving them the rah-rah treatment, and rewarding them with a prize every time they get a good grade or win a speech meet, then perfectionism will run its course and make your child overly cautious. You may not see it come into full maturity until your child is in his late teens or early twenties, but it will be there.

Interestingly, this type of perfectionism happens especially with firstborns and “only” children in a family. It makes sense if you keep in mind that their models in life are adults. Just Ma and Pa are around. No younger siblings.

What is the purposive nature of the behavior of being overly cautious? To get out of a task the child doesn’t want to do for fear of failure. In overcaution, as in all things, your relationship with your child is what makes the difference. So tell your child what you do well and where your blind spots are. She needs to see you laughing at yourself instead of taking yourself seriously and getting upset when you make a mistake. Then, when she needs to get a task done, take her by the hand and do together what needs to be done. Don’t let overcaution be a deterrent to completing that job or task.

As you work through overcaution together, your child will gain confidence. Then her fear of failure will be dimmed, with some successes under her belt.

Parties (Birthday Parties/Teen Parties)

Do you feel like you have to give your children to-die-for birthday parties? Why exactly is that? Do you fear your child will miss out on something? That you won’t be labeled a good parent if you don’t deliver—and deliver big?

Whatever happened to “invite the kids over after school forcupcakes in the backyard”? In the quiz in the preface, I mentioned these overthetop parties:

Oftentimes I’ve found that it’s the
parents
, not the children, who up the ante on themselves. Under the surface is the drive to prove themselves as good parents in keeping up with the Joneses. But is that really what children want? Most young children I know just want to run around the yard, have fun, maybe play in the sprinkler or with water balloons, and eat ice cream and cake. To them, that’s a party they can enjoy.

The Lupkin family has a birthday party rule that everyone in the family follows. Other than immediate family members, each child can invite one additional special guest each time he turns a year older. That means the 6-year-old can have 6 friends over for an at-home party. The 15-year-old can have 15 friends over. That has kept this family of 6 children out of the craziness of inviting an entire classroom over for each child’s birthday.

For teen parties, why not offer to have the party at your house? You don’t need an expensive limo for prom—and who really wants their child off somewhere with a date you barely know and a lot of pressure to drink and have sex? But you do need to know exactly what is going on (you don’t have to hover, but a few well-timed and well-placed walk-throughs are important). Even better, your child will be home and in a safe environment, and you don’t have to be up late worrying about who is driving her home (or if that person is drunk). When you weigh the food bills against the worry and safety issues, who cares about buying some extra party food?

The most important thing to decide is what kind of parties you will do and not do—and then stick with that decision, even if you’re challenged by the child or a well-meaning friend or relative, who thinks you ought to do more than you do.

Peer Group/Friends

Peer influence is extremely important in your child’s life, and it only ramps up as your child reaches the adolescent and teen years.

Years ago a classic study of peer pressure was done, in which groups of 10 children were brought into a room. Three lines were drawn on a board, and the children were asked to identify which line was the longest. The first line the experimenter pointed to was definitely the
second
longest line, but when he asked, “Is this the longest line?” 9 children shot up their hands. Why was this?

Those 9 children were actually in cahoots with the experimenter. They had been told to vote for the second longest line. The subject being tested was actually the remaining child. Would the child cave in to peer pressure when his peers were undoubtedly wrong?

Well, you can guess what happened. An expression of disbelief would cross the face of the child. Then, in three-fourths of the cases, even though the subject child could plainly see with his own eyes that the 9 other children were absolutely wrong in their vote, he would raise his hand to vote with the peer group. Why? Because he didn’t want to stand out as different from the others in the crowd. Is it any wonder, then, that teens do really stupid things sometimes when they’re together? No one wants to be the naysayer.

There’s nothing you can do about the strength of peer influence. It’s a part of life. But what you
can
do is to be aware of your child’s activities and who her friends are. That means having the peer group over at your home as much as possible. Make your home the hub of activity—the comfortable hangout place. Rent a movie, buy pizza, invest in a good CD player, whatever it takes. If you do, you’ll have the home court advantage (for more tips, see my book
Home Court Advantage
). It will give you an up-close and personal chance to see who your children are hanging out with.

You can also get to know the parents of the children your child hangs out with. In today’s world, it takes effort to do that. It’s not like the old days, when children mainly played with other kids on the block, and you just walked over to your neighbor’s for coffee. Why not call the parent of your son’s friend and say, “Hey, I just got a Starbucks gift certificate for a present. My son talks a lot about a Starbucks gift certificate for a present. My your son, and I’ve never had a chance to meet you. Want to meet me for a cup of coffee—my treat?” That’s a simple way to open the door for communication. And it also gives you the heads-up about what kind of person that parent is.

For example, when my friend Mike was 16, he smoked openly in front of his parents. So I knew I could go to his house and smoke cigarettes, and no one would say anything. But at my house? My dad would have had my hide for even trying them. It’s pretty obvious, even in one conversation, which parents would buy beer for the kids and rent hotel rooms for prom. That kind of information is very important for you to know so you can encourage your kids to spend time with those who share similar values.

Sometimes your child will have a friend that you really disapprove of for one reason or another. My advice? Have the friend over to your house. The best time to do that is when your very stiff, blue-blood, conservative aunt Sally is coming from out of state to stay with you. Just say casually to your child, “Aunt Sally is coming into town. I’d love for her to get a chance to meet Philip.” That ought to make your child think.