How to mess up a kid

How can some young parents avoid the bad behaviour their children display in public places? I say ‘avoid’ as opposed to ‘stop’ because such exhibits should never have been enabled in the first place.

Difficult though it may be, picture yourself as a six year old boy accompanying his mother through the aisles of the local grocery store. You reach the cereal aisle and there you see two families. One, has a mom and dad and a little boy of eight, and the other is similar but the boy is nine.

Each boy has seen an attractive cereal box on the shelf. One spies the Choco Crunchies, and the other, the Sugar Nut Stars. By now you should suspect that neither the type of cereal nor the gender of each child is significant. Now, you witness a common, everyday occurrence. The eight and nine year old each play out a scenario in turn, pleading to have his mother buy the cereal.

In one case, mom says ”No, we have lots of other cereal at home that you don’t eat.” More pleading... “Absolutely not; now behave yourself”. “But mom???” “That’s enough, just stop it, your being silly.” “But I’ll eat it, I promise.” “I’ve had enough, go ask your father. If he says it’s OK then fine.”

In the second case, a similar dialogue takes place, but this time dad steps in to deliver some fire and brimstone to quiet the child. Alternatively, he may have grabbed the child by the arm, pulling him over to the side, and threatening with the usual array of punishments. By the way, none of the punishments will come to pass, but you won’t be around to verify that wise omission. Mom bought the cereal anyway.

Now, considering what you, as the six year old, just saw, and given that you had never seen such pleading before, what might you have learned? In the first case, that you can likely get what you want if you beg long enough, also that you can get things from mom and dad independently. In the second case, dad gets angry for all kinds of things, though you never know why, but it still works

Sometime later, if you see your favourite box of tasty Berry Bongos, what might you do? Chances are pretty good that you will try the pleading, whining approach because you saw how effective it was. You had no alternative... nothing to compare to.

Some may say that these scenes don’t happen with their child, and that’s great. Share your experience. And if they don’t occur, do you know why? And please don’t answer “Because we’re good, loving parents.” That just doesn’t cut it.

The rest of you have probably observed theatrics like this elsewhere. The words may be different but the outcomes are usually the same. The notion I would hope to impart upon you is the need to work toward my ‘50-50 Behaviour Rule’.

Stipulating that a young child is virtually a ‘clean slate’, the assumption is that there is a 50-50 chance that your child will behave well, or poorly, given a new stimulus that he or she has not yet encountered. Now as far as I’m concerned, a 50% chance of an otherwise innocent child behaving poorly in any new situation, is far too high.

If what the same child sees is predominantly bad behaviour in any given situation, then the odds only become worse. The bad behaviour will likely get passed on, from one child to another.

Likewise, if bad traits are observed by the child within the family unit, the chances are very high that bad behaviour will be displayed outside of the home as well. The whole idea is to shift the odds in your favour, assuming that good behaviour is what we all strive for. Unfortunately, things don’t always move forward as we had planned. We must continually make conscious efforts to achieve our goals

Law-abiding citizens need special documents in order to buy a house, a car and a gun. We need proof of citizenship to enter a country, good marks to get into university, and a young couple needs to get a license to get married, but neither a license, certificate nor tutorial is needed before having a child. So... because procreation is a natural occurrence, we should let it give rise to an army of innocents, only to have them tainted by blissfully ignorant young couples, their parents, friends and in-laws? Something is seriously wrong with our priorities.

Unless each and every one of us has examined their conscience, studied Spock, discussed their preferences for days on end, and sought outside counseling, we need to find a way to tip the scales, and hopefully guarantee that our children will behave favourably when faced with new situations.

First, a few common sense, critical concepts should be put in place. So let’s now imagine a young couple, Reese and Jamie. They are recently married, have good jobs and are eager to start a family. They will have to carefully evaluate their finances and emotional stability. If either of these are in doubt, delivering a proper environment for an infant may be in jeopardy. Emotional instability will introduce untold stresses for the child, and financial instability can easily lead to emotional instability before long.

Before the marriage took place we can only hope that Reese and Jamie discussed their anticipated personal lifestyle desires. Perhaps Reese was hoping for a lot of world travel for the couple, or maybe Jamie had an unspoken dream of quitting work after they got married. Who knows, maybe the soon-to-be four year old will need to be pulled out of daycare because of contracting frequent colds, and one or the other parent will be forced to quit work to tend to the child. Real life has a way of taking hold.

Ours is not a perfect world, and even lots of money, and planning, does not necessarily make for a happy home life. The least young parents can do is to not treat childbirth as an excuse to shop for a crib or to bond more with grandma and grandpa. Hopefully their child-rearing expertise will go beyond painting the nursery yellow to avoid gender stereotyping. And the RESP, although a nice touch, needs to be backed up by the right amount of gentle nudging toward higher learning.

Going back to the 50-50 Behaviour Rule; think now of Reese and Jamie’s pre-schooler, Tyler, as a dry sponge. Tyler will absorb all of the stimuli and reactions, liquid, in the vicinity, good or bad. As parents, there are two simple jobs they need to perform in this regard. First is to keep the bad liquid away, whatever is within their control, but without obsessing. Second is to pour lots of good liquid into the area so Tyler can absorb more good than bad. Pass beyond that 50% barrier and keep pouring. Fill up that sponge with the good, remembering not to obsess.

What happens once a sponge is saturated? It can absorb no more. Instead, for every new drop added, another is lost. Once Tyler has absorbed a huge array of possible responses for countless untold stimuli, this very important job will be complete. Parental input will show diminishing returns from that moment onward.

The good stuff is more than cuddles, the proper food, medical care and a safe place to sleep. It is talking, guiding, questioning, answering, testing and validating, with Tyler, and all with an eye toward the future. And, as much as it’s fun and easy to speak to Tyler at Tyler’s age level, the point is to push ahead a year, two or even three. Tyler will be absorbing faster than Reese and Jamie can control, faster than they can imagine. Even if Tyler can’t understand it today... the message, the intent and the attention will be absorbed. The trick is for Reese and Jamie to provide the correct content and be the ever-present positive influences in Tyler’s face.

Eliminating the bad influences can be just as difficult. Parents need to be constantly vigilant, and ready to react to each situation in a way that will promote some future benefit. Saying ‘No’ to merely exact control is counter-productive, television is not a babysitter and grandma may not be the perfect substitute. The best intentions in the world can spoil a child for life. And merely reacting to a child, without a purpose in mind, is fruitless.

When we were kids, it was the small events that molded our memories. Think back to when you were young and what you remember about interactions with your parents. Were they major events, wrapped in ribbon and smiles, or so grievous as to be traumatic? It is more likely that there were many small encounters, much like a stroll down a grocery aisle. Our mission is to provide many small, mentoring events and not think the family vacation will be the panacea.

This busy world is moving at an ever-increasing pace. When you grow up with the latest invention, it becomes common place; yet we will all experience the same difficulty dealing with coming innovations that our parents had with MP3s and the Internet. Every generation is over-confident that they know what they are doing with their children. That has always been the case, but will the current batch of new parents be able to deal with a faster rate of technological and societal change, as well as children who will surely reach saturation even quicker?