Have a New Kid by Friday (30 page)

To reinforce the concept, later that day you can sit down with an aromatic bowl of popcorn. When your son comes up and asks for some, simply say, “No, I’m not sharing my popcorn tonight. I don’t feel like it.”

You’re not being mean. You have a level tone. Then you explain the importance of sharing and how you felt about what happened earlier that day. “We’re all part of one family, and we share things. But if you choose not to share, I can choose not to share.”

Let’s say older children are fussing over the last piece of cake. Just hand a knife to one child and say, “I’ll tell you what—you cut it.” To the other kid, say, “And then you choose which piece you want.”

That keeps the ball in the court where it belongs and doesn’t get you into the discussion of who had the bigger piece last night. One kid cuts; the other chooses the piece. And you stay out of the Judge Judy role.

Ditto with the skirmishes between teenage girls over a sweater. If your child bought it with her money, it’s hers. If you bought it with your money, sharing would be in order. If they can’t share it, simply take the sweater and add it to your own wardrobe until the girls can come to an agreement. The skirmishes over clothing may still go on behind the scenes, but there’s less likelihood they’ll draw you into the midst of them.

Something that can help children understand sharing and how each member of the family contributes is helping you pay bills online or writing checks for bills. Younger children can even put stamps on the envelopes and see how many bills go out and come in. When children understand the costs of running a family, they are even more thankful for the privileges of being a member of the family.

Showing Off

Boys will always be boys. They’re forever flexing their muscles in front of each other. But there’s a difference between flexing in a group of boys on the playground and doing it in front of your business guests who are over for dinner. There’s also a difference between boys having a burping and farting contest among themselves and doing it at the family dinner table. Kids are kids, and they’ll do dumb things. And the dumbest of all are boys who are trying to show off for girls. But eventually they too will grow up, become adults—and still do dumb things.

Let’s say you have company over, and your daughter runs into the room, trying to do somersaults to get your attention. What should you say? “Would you come back and do that again so I can give it my full attention?”

That would stop most children in their tracks, because most kids, contrary to how they act, shy away from the spotlight.

You could also say, “Honey, would you mind showing off outside?”

By saying either of these things, you’re acknowledging to the child that you know she is trying to get your attention. However, the way she’s doing it is not appropriate in the situation.

“Dr. Leman,” some of you might be saying, “how could I do that? Why, it would embarrass my child to say those things.”

Now, let me ask you. You came to this book because you wanted to see things change in your home. I’m telling you how, in 5 days, you
can
change them and not let these behaviors linger. Will one embarrassing comment ruin your child—or propel her into behavior that will make her acceptable in society for the rest of her life?

If you are the kind of parent who says, “Well, I could never do that to my child,” you’ll be facing these same sorts of dilemmas—and many more—down the line because you didn’t follow through on disciplining your children earlier in life. And later the stakes will be much higher than doing somersaults in your living room.

For a number of years I taught teachers who were enrolled in grad courses. I told it to them straight: “If you have a child who is disrupting your classroom, ask everyone to put down their work and stare at that child for 5 minutes so he has the entire room’s attention. When the bell rings, children are conditioned to run out the door. That’s when you say, ‘Now we’re going to make up the 5 minutes we wasted watching Timothy today.’ Hold the class in for 5 minutes from recess. Let the peer pressure take over.”

A lot of tree-huggers and social do-gooders got mad at me for saying this, but the teachers who tried it raved about how well it worked. And amazingly, it took only
one time
to curb the behavior.

When kids show off, you can surprise them by saying, “Would you mind doing that again? I can tell you’re looking for attention, so I want to give you my full attention.”

I was a child who loved getting attention, but that approach would have stopped even me in my tracks.

Shyness

“She doesn’t have any friends because she won’t talk to anyone. She’s really shy.”

Did you know that an extremely shy child is an extremely powerful child? Shyness becomes a way of making sure the adults in that child’s life do things the way thechild wants to do them. It’s actually a form of manipulation.

Perhaps little Annie says she’s too shy to go over and play with other children at the park’s sandbox. What is she really saying? “Dad, I don’t want to go over there by myself. I don’t know what to say, and I don’t want to go out of my way to even try it. I want you to walk over there and break the ice for me.” But does that do any good for little Annie in the long run?

To become healthy adults, children need to learn how to relate to others. That means communicating with others. Your child will never learn to do that if you’re always putting yourself in the middle and snowplowing her road in life.

What should the father do with his little Annie at the park? “Oh, that’s too bad, Annie. I thought it looked like a great day to play, and those children look like they’re having fun. I broughtyou here so I could get some work done while you have fun, but I guess we just need to go home. I can work from there too.”

In 95 percent of the cases, that remark would prod little Annie to become more proactive about going over and starting to play with those children. Why? Because in her heart of hearts, she really doesn’t want to go home. She wants to play with those children. She just wanted everything her way, the easy way.

The wise parent won’t fall for it.

The other day I overheard an interesting conversation between second graders who were on their way to visit a retirement home for their school field trip.

Kimmy, the first little girl, declared, “Well, I’m not going to talk to those old people. I’m shy.”

Kayla, the second child, paused. “You know what shy is? My mommy says that being shy is thinking about yourself instead of thinking about others. It’s being selfish. It’s saying, ‘I’m more important than you.’”

I wanted to cheer Kayla on. Especially when I saw the look of utter confusion on Kimmy’s face.

What Kayla said was entirely true. Shy children are saying “me, me, me”—but in a way so quiet that oftentimes parents miss it. The wise parent, however, will see shyness for what it really is: a manipulative tool for a child to get her way. (See also “Selfishness.”)

Sibling Rivalry

Years ago I wrote a book on birth order and how it affects children in the family. My working title was
Abel Had It Coming
, but my publisher said we couldn’t have a title like that. So they sloughed it off and came up with a more provocative title:
The
Birth Order Book
.

Sibling rivalry has been around forever, ever since Cain and Abel duked it out in the backyard and Abel lost. If you have more than one child, you will always have sibling rivalry in your home. But if you want to keep it to a minimum, make sure the children are accountable for it.

Let’s say your daughter complains, “She wore my sweater and left it in a pile. Now I want to wear it, and it’s dirty!”

If you as a parent get in the middle of that battle, you’ll get chewed up and spit out. What is that saying—“where angels fear to tread”? You don’t get between warring siblings.

Since fighting is an act of cooperation, both siblings need to be held accountable. Get them in a room together and let them duke it out. I can guarantee that one of them will end up washing the sweater so it’s wearable again.

If your children start fighting in the car (see “Fighting in the Car”), turn the car around and go home. Then don’t go anywhere the kids want to go for the rest of the day. Once you do that, your children will think either,
Mom’s losin’ it
, or,
Guess we got her attention. But it didn’t
work out quite the way we thought it would, that’s for sure.

Either way your smart kids will figure out that it doesn’t make sense to do things that don’t get rewarded. Too many parents unknowingly reward the negative things their children do as a result of an immature personality. When the rewards stop, the behavior will stop.

I guarantee it.

Slamming Doors

Bang!
There it goes again—another slammed door down the hallway.

Slamming doors gets old, really old. Even worse is the attitude that’s implied by the behavior.

The attitude is saying,
I don’t like you. I don’t want to talk to
you. I don’t really want to be a part of this family.

If this is happening in your home continually (I’m not talking about a onetime situation—who hasn’t let a door slam just a little louder than needed when ticked off?), you have a kid who’s got attitude with a capital A. He keeps you running from crisis to crisis. His mood controls the rest of thefamily’s moods, including yours.

That child needs the bread-and-water treatment. I talked about this in “Lack of Cooperation with Family” in more length, but let me summarize here. Everything stops. That means you do nothing that he wants to do until he stops slamming doors. When he wants to know, “What’s the deal?” you answer calmly, “Rob, you don’t seem to want to communicate with us anymore, other than saying you’re mad about something by slamming your bedroom door. Part of being in this family is communicating with us. So since you’re choosing not to communicate, you’re losing your perks as being a part of this family. Dad won’t take you to your baseball games; in fact, you won’t be going at all. And you also won’t be going over to Jason’s for that computer game night you planned either. Nothing happens until we get the problem of the slamming doors solved.”