Have a New Kid by Friday (31 page)

There it is again: “B doesn’t happen until A is completed.”

It’s amazing how quiet your house can get when you take this tactic. And how respectful your child can become in a hurry.

Smoking

Smoking is a mountain. I ought to know; I used to smoke. At age 7 I tried out my first cigarette—a Viceroy—on the back of my friend Eddie’s bicycle, and I thought I was cooler than cool. I smoked all the way through high school and into college. A few months after I met Sande, who has now been my wife for 4 decades, I quit cold turkey because she hated it. For those of you who have struggled with smoking, that says a lot about my wife, doesn’t it?

I also know some parents today who think that smoking’s no big thing. They even allow their 15- to 16-year-old kids to smoke in the house and endure the secondhand smoke. They don’t even have a standard that says you can’t smoke in the house because they don’t want to offend their children or take away their rights.

That’s crazy, in my view. Do you know how bad secondhand smoke is for you? Not to mention that those parents are allowing their children to run their home—and ruin their own and others’ health.

When you catch a child smoking, have him do a 5-page research paper on the ills of smoking. The paper has to be handed in to you before the child can do any other activity he wants to do. In other words, life doesn’t continue until he’s done with the paper and you’ve had the time to read and approve it.

Why are some children drawn to smoking and others aren’t?

Psychologist Sigmund Freud had an interesting perspective on smoking. In summary, he said that people who smoked cigarettes were fixated at the oral stage of development. They didn’t get enough stimulation through nursing from their mother.

Psychologist Alfred Adler, whose thoughts were westernized by Rudolph Dreikurs in
Children, the Challenge
, said that people who smoke do so for one of two reasons: (1) they’re trying to draw attention to themselves, or (2) they’re stupid.

Whatever the reason, smoking is harmful to your body. If you think your child is smoking cigarettes, smoking pot, or doing drugs, it’s time to take action. Some parents I know wiretapped their own home to find out what was going on while they were gone for the weekend. Other parents checked the history button on the computer and read their child’s comments on MySpace. com.

“But, Dr. Leman,” you might be saying, “what about my child’s privacy?”

When it comes to the safety of your child, there are no privacy rights. If there is something going on, you are responsible to find out. You’re the parent.

If you believe that your child is smoking dope (meth/crack cocaine is very big today, and so is heroine in affluent neighbor-hoods), set up a doctor’s appointment for your child. Do it without any fanfare, but make sure the doctor knows (out of the child’s hearing) that you want a urinalysis done to see if there are any illegal drugs in her body.

If the results come back positively, you need to take action. Drugs are habit forming, so some kind of intervention might be necessary. Get a few key people together that your child respects, sit down with the child without any warning, and lay your cards on the table. Tell her that you know what is going on in her life. If your child drives the family car or her own car, all privileges are rescinded immediately because it is clear she is not responsible.

Where are the finances coming from that are supporting the smoking or drug habit? If from an allowance, discontinue that allowance immediately. If your child works a part-time job, go to that job and disengage your child from it. Tell the employer that your child no longer has your permission to work there. It’s hard to support a drug habit when there’s no cash coming in to pay for it. Bumming money off friends for cigarettes or other drugs goes only so far.

A wise parent will take a hard-line approach to get the behavior stopped immediately. There is far too much at stake.

Spaceyness

“Oh, she just forgets to do it. She’s kinda spacey.”

Most parents live in La-La Land. They have a ready excuse for their child at every turn. What are they really saying? “Oh, my child’s accountable for nothing.”

Well, what happens later when your child is 21 or 22 years of age and still isn’t held accountable for anything? How will his employer (if he has one) feel about that? What about when he wrecks your car and still isn’t accountable?

Why is it that we feel we must project our children as winners at every turn? That we must make up for what they don’t do? Why can’t we hold our kids accountable?

I’m convinced it’s because many parents today are too lazy to parent. They take the easy way out. They’ve grown up with the “me, me, me” view too, and life is still all about them, so children run amok without parental supervision. The parents do this all in the name of letting their child be an “individual,” I might add.

If your child spaces out on his homework, let him suffer the consequences the next day. If your child forgets to bring in his bike from the driveway and someone steals it, don’t buy him a new bike. That’s a good lesson on taking care of your possessions, one that he’ll remember for a long time—especially when his buddies want him to go biking and he has to explain why he doesn’t have a bike anymore. (Sometimes peer pressure can be very useful in changing behavior.)

It is through failures that children learn diligence and discipline so that they can become successful later in life. Excuses regarding their spaceyness will only weaken their development.

Children will be spacey. They will be daydreaming sometimes and not hear your instructions. Other times they’ll simply forget. But for every action there is a consequence, and the sooner children learn that, the better.

Spanking

This is a hot topic, and parents are polarized on their perspectives. But you’re reading this book to see what I think as a psychologist and an expert, so I’ll tell you.

There’s a time and a place for giving your child a whack on the behind as the most appropriate discipline you can come up with. That is when your child is defiant.

What do I mean by defiant? Let’s say your child is playing with an electrical outlet, and you tell him, “No, I don’t want you to play with that. It’s dangerous.” But then he looks at you, narrows his eyes, and does it again. That’s defiance. It’s an active choice that says, “I am not going to obey you. In fact, I’m going to do exactly what you say not to do. I’m in charge.”

Now don’t you think that deserves a swat on the behind? But let’s also define what a spanking is. Spanking should never be done when you, the parent, are angry. You need to remove your child from the situation and calm down first if you are angry. You won’t act rationally if you don’t. A swat on the behind needs to be preceded with an explanation of why you are spanking the child and should not be done simply as a knee-jerk reaction. “I don’t appreciate what you did just now. It showed me that you are choosing to disobey me and to do exactly what I’m asking you not to do. That is not respectful of me as your parent.” Then proceed with the swat.

Let me clarify what I mean by a swat, though. A swat is an open hand on a kid’s tush. It’s a onetime shot.

That is very different than a prolonged, angry spanking that whales on the child. Using your hand (so you can feel how hard you are swatting your child) is also different than hitting a child with a belt. Many angry parents, sadly, proceed to abuse their children instead of disciplining them to correct a behavior. If you were physically abused as a child, you should never use spankings as discipline for your children. There is too much baggage attached to it for you—and too many emotions. It would be very easy for you to lose control and do what your father or mother did to you.

Some children are so sensitive that one spanking will do the trick for a lifetime. Other children will need more frequent reminders.

But if you choose to spank, you have to keep the goal in mind: to correct the child’s behavior, not hurt the child. For example, if you tell your child he cannot play in the street, and he continually runs out into the street, a swat is in order. His behavior is dangerous. What happens when that car comes around the corner and doesn’t see the child, who is the height of a yardstick?

Discipline should always be for the child’s best, not an angry response that makes you temporarily feel better—and guilty later.

Spitting

This is one of those habits that a lot of folks find repulsive. Little boys spit, and sometimes little girls do too. Some adults are also spitters.

I’m a spitter myself. I’m one of those guys who just generates a lot of saliva. It’s all this postnasal drip. I can either hawk it out, asgross as that sounds, or, worse, swallow it back down. For years if I had to spit to clear my throat in the car, I’d roll down the window and pop one out, yelling “Fore!” (as you would in golf), then, “Look out below!” One day 3-year-old Lauren, who was always so serious, was in the car with me, and I proceeded to pop one out the window. A calm voice said from the backseat, “Uh, Dad, you forgot to say, ‘Fore!’” Another time when Kevin II was little, I had to spit out the window. I heard a little “aargh” from next to me. Kevin had attempted to model his dad’s behavior, and guess where it landed? Right on my neck.

Don’t think spitting comes from thin air. The humor is that we get what we deserve. Our kids model themselves after us. What are you going to do about it? Your child is watching what
you
do and say. If you have a child who’s a spitter, there’s often a parent who’s a spitter.

Sports Activities

“He said he wanted to play soccer. We went twice, and he already wants to quit. He says he’s no good at it. But we spent so much money on the equipment, we don’t want him to quit. What should we do?”