Have a New Kid by Friday (29 page)

Saying Thank You

Saying thank you is a common courtesy. Everyone should say thank you. That includes parents and children. But saying thank you doesn’t come naturally. Every 2- and 3-year-old couldn’t care less about others unless a parent teaches him to do so. And if 2-year-olds are not taught to say thank you, they won’t automatically learn to say thank you as teens either.

It always annoys me, as a car-pool dad, when children in my car don’t even say thanks for the ride or for the little surprise treats I sometimes bring them.

Contrast that to the little girl who was chosen as 1 of 10 children to play as a guest violinist with a local college orchestra. After the performance, that little 6-year-old, of her own accord (no prompting from Mommy), walked up to the director of the orchestra and said, “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to play with you. I loved it. I hope you enjoyed it too.” Theorchestra director was stunned. He waved the mom over and asked, “Do you know what she just said?” After repeating it to the mother, he continued, “I’ve been directing an orchestra for 12 years, and we’ve invited scores of children to play with us for special events. But not one child has ever said thank you . . . until yours.”

See the impact that a simple thank you can make?

Don’t be remiss in teaching your children the basics of manners, including saying thank you. That means that until your child says thank you for a gift, life doesn’t go on, and she doesn’t use that gift either. If your child forgets to say thank you for playing at a friend’s home, the answer is no the next time he asks to do so.

Insist that your child say thank you, and hold him accountable to do so.

Screaming

“Her screaming is driving me crazy. I jump up every time I hear it and run out into the yard because I think something’s wrong.”

You need to understand something basic about child development: young children scream. That’s a given. Children are beginning to explore life, and that includes not only their surroundings but the way their bodies work. Children from 14 months old to 2 years old discover that they have voices. Even more, these delightful voices can create wonderfully high-pitched noises that bring a parent running. It’s quite a game to try it out! It’s like a new toy, and they have to see how it works. So a child tries out one kind of scream to see how his parents will react. If they overreact to the scream, the child will say to himself,
Hey, that was fun. I scream
and they come running. They do that funny
little hand motion and get a funny look in
their eyes, and those veins on their necks
pop out. Ah, so that’s the game we play
and how we play it. Oh, I get it. Let’s do
it again. . . .

The point is, children will scream. But they won’t continue to scream unless that behavior has paid off. Rushing over to hush them is a way to reinforce that negative behavior because it gives them attention. Unless you overreact, your child won’t see the screaming as a negative behavior.

That’s why it doesn’t bother me if I see a child 2 years and under screaming. That’s part of his development and body exploration. But if a 9- or 10-year-old is screaming, he’s doing it for a specific reason. He wants to show you who’s in charge. That needs to be nipped in the bud because it has moved from experimentation with how the body works to a respect issue (see “Respect”).

Selfishness

Kids, by their nature, are selfish, having little “social interest” in anyone else. We parents ought to take a clue from the first thing they say when they’re born: “Waah!” All they care about is themselves—and whether they’re warm,cuddled, and fed. Life is truly “all about me.” The human species is interesting and different from most other species because it takes a while for a young child to become fully functional (versus this happening much faster in the animal community). For the first year, the child doesn’t usually talk, feed herself, etc. She is completely dependent on Mommy (Dad doesn’t quite have the body parts needed).

When the child begins to get mobile is an important time for training, especially in the area of sharing (more on that in “Sharing”). You see blatant examples of kids’ selfish natures all the time. When this happens, say to the child, “That was a selfish thing to do. Did you mean to be selfish?”

Many times the child will say, “No.”

“Can you think of a better way to handle the situation?” you ask. “Why don’t you call your friend back now and suggest something different?”

In this situation, your responsibility is to be the shepherd guiding the sheep. Like a good shepherd, you sometimes have to guide them gently in the right direction with your staff (even when you feel like whacking them over the head).

Every parent has a responsibility to guide their child toward selfless behavior and thinking of others.

In my seminars, I ask parents, “Why do we stop at stoplights?”

“Because it’s the law, and you don’t want to get a ticket,” they usually say.

“The best answer,” I say, “is that we stop so we don’t hurt someone else.”

Note the difference between the answers—and the fact that the unselfish answer isn’t the first one that came up. All of us are selfish. We live in a self-driven society. There’s even a magazine called
Self
.

When you teach a child not to be selfish, you’re actually teaching him to be antisocietal, to be unlike everyone else. But why do you want your child to be like everyone else anyway?

Learning to be selfless is an important trait for a healthy child. We’ve worked hard at instilling that in our children. From age 10 on, Lauren has taken the time to write to the child we sponsor in El Salvador. It’s good for her to understand and see that the majority of the world has far less than she does. We also deliver groceries during the holiday to needy families.

Modeling giving as a family and as an individual to those who are less fortunate than you is very important. Friends of ours volunteer on Saturday mornings in a soup kitchen. Their teenage children go with them. Funny thing is, before they started serving in the soup kitchen, those teenagers were always bugging their parents about getting another car so they wouldn’t have to be inconvenienced when their parents’ car wasn’t available. After 3 weeks in the soup kitchen, the request wasn’t mentioned again.

When your children show selfishness, they need a little dose of reality, like the teenagers who served in the soup kitchen. Or like the “only child,” whose mom decided she wasn’t going to share her treat with her child since her child had refused to share
her
treat with a neighborhood child earlier that day.

Teaching selflessness pays off down the line. I’ve always seen that character trait in our fourthborn, Hannah. Ask anyone who knows her, and they’d say selflessness is the way she lives her life. Last winter, one of Hannah’s classmates needed a winter coat and didn’t have money for it. Hannah, who heard of the need, just quietly bought the young woman a coat and gave it to her.

Trust me, it’s not because her father is a well-known psychologist. It has everything to do with how Hannah was reared—how her brother and sisters interacted with her, how we interacted with her—and that she saw her home as a loving, giving place where she thought about the welfare of others. Do I say this to pat the Leman family on the back for being so great? No, I use that example to explain a simple principle: children model what they’ve experienced at home. If you create an environment where children feel loved and accepted for who they are, and they are a part of giving back to your family, then when they leave your home and go out on their own, guess what happens? They do what they’ve been doing in their own home!

What’s the alternative? Look through your city’s paper tonight.

You’ll see all kinds of cases of people who didn’t grow up in that kind of environment. Their crimes are documented in newspapers and on news reports across the nation. Prisons are full of people who never learned selflessness.

Teach your child selflessness. Then she’ll emerge into society as a giver, not a taker.

Sharing

Children don’t understand sharing. They don’t have a capacity to even contemplate it when they are 14 months old. If they’re holding an item, there’s no sharing. They own that item. It’s theirs. And no one can tell them any different. It doesn’t matter if they can break it or it’s worth 5,000 dollars or 50 cents.

However, with each passing month after that age, children become more acutely aware of others, so they must learn how to share. However, young children will not share unless sharing is modeled for them. Role-playing sharing is important. “Okay, it’s your turn. . . . now it’s my turn.” Or, “You take a bite. Then I’ll take a bite.”

When young children willingly share with others, parents need to reinforce that behavior by saying, “What a big girl you behavior by saying, are! You shared that with your brother!”

Three- and 4-year-olds can be extremely territorial. They have a difficult time sharing because everything is “mine.” But does that mean they can’t learn? Absolutely not. Let’s say 4-year-olds are playing and arguing over a ball. The best way to teach sharing is to take the ball away. “If you can’t share this ball,” you tell them, “no one will play with it. I’ll put it away for now.” By taking away the object, you are holding the children accountable for learning how to share it. You can also add, “When you are ready to share, let me know.”

With such words, young children will quickly figure out that sharing can be to their advantage. Otherwise, their fun disappears with that ball!