Have a New Kid by Friday

by Kevin Leman

  Sure enough, he did—within minutes, as he plopped down to watch TV. He nearly choked on his Coke. Then he turned bright red. “What are these doing there?” he finally managed to say.

  “Oh,” the mom said glibly, “I found these magazines with beautiful women in them under your mattress. I thought I’d just place them out here, where your sister and your dad can enjoy the pretty pictures too.”

  At that point, the son looked like he was going to puke. He’d been caught red-handed.

  “Or maybe there’s a better place for this stuff,” the mom continued matter-of-factly. “Like tearing it up and putting it in the trash. But I felt like that’s something you should do, rather than me doing it for you. After all, you’re the one who brought it into the house.”

  The mom sat down with the son, talked with him about what the magazine was all about and how it depicted women, and asked, “Is this really what you want to spend your time looking at? Pornography is highly addictive.”

  And that’s true. Addictive long-term behaviors start with brief encounters with such material.

  Is it natural for an adolescent or teenage boy (11 to 14 is the age at which 9 out of 10 boys view pornography) to want to see what a woman’s body looks like? Yes. But there are healthy and unhealthy ways of viewing a woman’s body. And pornography is definitely unhealthy because of its lewd poses, raw view of sexuality, and degrading perspective of women.

  Every boy since the beginning of time has been interested in and fascinated by a woman’s body. But today’s culture ups the ante of parental watchfulness because of the types of objectionable material that are so readily available. When I was a kid, porn wasn’t easily available like it is today. My buddy Moonhead and I got our sex ed from his father’s subscription to National Geographic.

  With the Internet, pornography steps right into your living room . . . if you let it. Did you know that Internet pornography is a $12 billion industry?6 Wise parents set up blockers for objectionable material and periodically check the history button on their computer. You would never let your child wander through an adultbookstore, right? Well, I’ve got news for you. Your child can see a lot worse than that on the Internet with just one click of the mouse. Wise parents need to become savvy about everything their children are viewing—whether in magazines or on the Internet. Stats say that 9 out of 10 children will view pornography on the Internet. Will your child be one of them?

  There’s also an additional danger—adults whose mission and business is preying on unsuspecting children and teens. According to Donna Rice Hughesof Enough Is Enough, an organization that has been working hard to make the Internet safer for children and families, “Child pornography has become a multi-billion-dollar commercial enterprise and is one of the fastest growing industries on the Internet. And 90% of youth receiving sexual solicitations are teenagers ages 13–17.”7

  You can’t always protect your child from every danger, but setting up safeguards in this area is extremely important. Once pornographic images have been viewed, they are hard to erase from your child’s brain. And you certainly don’t want to give a sexual predator an easy way to get to your child.

  Potty Training

  There are three basic things that your child will do, no matter what—eating, sleeping, and going potty—and parents make a bigger deal out of them than they should.

  Have you ever seen a second grader who isn’t potty-trained? A fifth grader? An eighth grader? Potty training will happen. Some kids are merely on a faster timetable than others.

  Numerous people have written books about potty training, but the basic gist is this: look for signs of “I’m ready” in your child before you begin the toilet-training process. Otherwise you’re fighting an uphill battle (and a trail of pee down the hallway to the bathroom). Then ramp up your rewards. Get some new Thomas & Friends underwear for the big boy or some special My Little Pony underwear for the big girl. Buy one of those little potties where your child can sit close to floor level and be comfortable trying it out. Or some parents simply get a padded smaller seat that can fit on top of the big potty (but be aware that some little bottoms can still slide through that space)

  Of course, these little tools won’t potty train your child. But they’ll be good aides along the way. Make the case to your child that he’ll be a big boy and can do it “by self” (very important to a toddler). The important thing is that the child needs to be responsible to feel those urges of when he needs to go instead of Mom asking him every couple minutes, “Do you need to go?” If Mom tries to help too much, she’ll weaken her child’s self-confidence. Will you have accidents along the way? Sure. But as the child has an accident and helps to clean up the mess (instead of Mom racing to do it for him) he realizes, Uh-oh, I waited too long. Gotta get there when I first feel I gotta go.

  Some parents use pull-ups at night. They see it as a progression. But if you really want to potty train a child, I would say, “If he’s old enough to say ‘I want a pull-up,’ he should be toilet trained.” If you tell the child, “Honey, we ran out of pull-ups and don’t have any more,” most children will accept that. By not having the pull-ups available, you make it incumbent on the child to take charge of his own bladder.

  A talk show host once said to me about his son, “Hey, Doc, little Jake won’t do #2 unless we put a Pampers on him. Then he does it in his Pampers. What can I do about that?” That’s simply crazy, to put it bluntly. If the child can ask for a Pampers in order to do #2, he can get himself to the potty in time. That child is manipulating you and enjoying every minute of it. He’s in charge of the house, not you. And that’s not good for the child or for you.

  My wife made a colossal mistake with the firstborn of our brood of 5. She decided she was going to pick the day Holly would be toilet trained. She had read a book by two psychologists about toilet training and was determined to do it by the book. I reminded her that I was a psychologist too, and I saw things differently, but that didn’t matter. My firstborn wife, who knows how things are, banished me from the house for the day and demanded no interference. With potato chips and M&Ms—things that would clog your veins and kill you 20 years down the road and weren’t normally in our house—she proceeded with “the plan.” By the end of the day, Holly was patting the potty and saying, “Potty, potty”—as the “potty” ran down her leg.

  We parents often think we know what’s best for our kids, but the reality is that all children have a time clock implanted in them for potty training. It’s called readiness, and you can read the signs. The child begins to mimic your behavior of going potty, asking questions and wanting to follow you into the bathroom. So you take the next step. You buy the Kmart plastic potty, put it on the floor, and let it become a fixture in your bathroom. You don’t make a big deal out of it, so the kid doesn’t think it’s a big deal (and thus a way to control Mom or Dad).

  When the child sees that potty, you explain calmly that it’s her potty, one she can use. It’s low to the ground and easy to sit on. With this method, many moms are pleasantly surprised at how easily potty training happens when they’re not pushing to get the job done. Often the curious child will be found in the bathroom, trying out that new potty for herself!

  When the child hops on that potty and goes #1 (the easier of the two), then make a thing of it (but not a huge thing). “My, look at that. You did that all by yourself!” are encouraging words to a child. If you want to back it up with a treat, you can do that. But I don’t think it’s a good idea. Why not? If you surveyed all your friends and asked them, “How many of you have gone potty today?” the majority would look at you like you were crazy and say, “Of course I’ve gone potty.” Well, did anyone give them an M&M for going potty? No. So why would you do that with your children?

  Going potty is one of the most natural things in the world. We’re the ones who make it into something big and complex. It doesn’t deserve to be. If your child doesn’t respond topotty training within a few days, don’t make a big thing
of it. Just put away the potty for a short time and then bring it out again. Sometimes 1 to 2 weeks is enough time for the child to decide now is the time.

  When your child goes #2 in the potty, you can say, “Oh, look at what you did; that’s Most children are prepared to potty train at age 2 or 2%½. great!” But as excited as you are for such an accomplishment, don’t make too big a deal of it. One mom I know “saved” the poop to show her husband when he got home from work. That night she, her husband, and the two other siblings gathered around the porcelain throne to worship the doo-doo. They thought it would encourage the little nipper to go more frequently. Instead, all they did was show the hedonistic little guy, Hey, this is a big deal. Mom really likes it when I go poop. Hmm . . . I wonder what she’ll do if I refuse to go. What will she give me? So that mom’s good intentions actually backfired on her. All of a sudden, that child couldn’t create a 4-inch Picasso without her or someone else sitting in the bathroom with him.

  Most children are prepared to potty train at age 2 or 2 ½. If a child is developing normally (and isn’t developmentally delayed), there’s no reason for a child not to be toilet trained by age 3. If your child isn’t toilet trained by 3 ½, you’ve made far too big a deal of the job with rewards and punishments. That kid’s got your number, and he’s in charge of you.

  Keep in mind that even when a child is 4 years old, he can wet his pants. “But, Doc, he’s been potty trained for 2 years. What’s the deal?” you ask.

  What will that kid tell you? “I forgot.”

  The child didn’t forget. He has the same feeling in his bladder that you and I have when we have to go potty. He simply got so involved in playing that he got lazy and wet his pants.

  The law in the Leman house has always been that there is a certain number of underwear you can wear in a given day. If you took a poll of people in your community, you would find that the mean, median, and mode are one pair of panties a day. That means if a child forgets to come in to go potty and wets his pants outside, he comes into the house, and his day outside has come to an end. It’s a simple cause and effect that makes a child responsible for his own bladder. If that child’s day with friends ends because he wet his pants, do you think he’ll remember next time to come in and go?

  Power Games/Domination/Power Struggles

  The key question is, who’s the parent in the relationship—you or your child?

  I was standing in the store the other day, and a teenage girl was definitely calling the shots. In no uncertain terms, she was telling her frazzled-looking mother exactly what to buy and what they were going to do when they left the store. And you know what? That mother was falling for it!

  This is a mountain, one that you need to climb as early as possible in your child’s life. Does that mean you dominate your child? You act as an authoritarian figure that orders your child around? Someone who projects the view “I’m better than you are”? Certainly not. We’re not better than our child; we simply have different responsibilities. And one of those is to be a parent. We are the ones who need to decide what’s best for the child—and the family.

  Instead, what happens? A child becomes the deciding factor just because she whines, complains, cries, and screams. Or she may also dominate by being shy and quiet and not saying anything, thus putting the parent in the role of always prodding. Let’s say a parent is concerned about her 3-year-old’s language development. If a powerful child gets wind of that, she’ll just shut up and not say anything. Before long she’s only using motions to get people to do what she wants—and everyone is feeling bad and concerned for her and goes out of their way to help her.

  How does powerful behavior develop? It doesn’t come out of thin air. When I teach about power games in seminars and someone tells me, “Dr. Leman, I have anextremely powerful young daughter,” my first response to that parent is, “Which one of you is the powerful one—you or your spouse?”

  Children learn their behavior from somewhere. It’s modeled for them. That means parents need to be very careful about how they express their frustration.

  I understand how tough it is to be around young ones all day. I’ve had 5 children myself. So when my daughter Krissy phoned me one day and said, “Dad, I just need to get out of the house,” I could relate. “Sure,” I said, “I’ll meet you.” Being around children all day is exhausting. There are constant demands, and they take their toll on you. But if your frustration with those demands you chose when you decided to become a parent is taken out on your children, then you’ve got a problem that needs to be addressed. After all, you are the adult.

  If you get into a power struggle with your child, you are destined to lose. A child can hold out much longer than you can; she’s singularly focused on that one thing she wants, while you have multiple things you’re thinking about. You’ll give in every time just to have the power struggle over. And then the child wins.

  If your child is trying to draw you into a power struggle, the solution is simple: don’t go there. Don’t get drawn in. Don’t fall for it. Instead, calmly begin withdrawing the norm—no fanfare, no threats. If your child says, “I’m not going!” in no uncertain terms, leave the child at home. But then when she wants to go a friend’s house, you don’t go. If your child says, “I’m not doing my homework!” drop the matter. Then the next day write a note to the teacher:

  Elizabeth refused to do her homework last night. Would you please give her an F on this assignment and do whatever you need to do to encourage her to do her homework from now on? Many thanks.

  What’s important is that your child learns she is accountable for her behavior. “I don’t want to” and laziness are no excuses. Is this tough to do as a parent? Sure. It’s easierto just drive the kid where she wants to go for a few hours and do her homework yourself. But what are you teaching your child in the long run? Hey, if I don’t do something, no worries. Mom will do it. It comes back to this: are you running a home or a hotel? If it’s a hotel, most likely you’re the maid. Is that how you want to spend your days?

  It’s time to get tough. Children need to learn that the jig is up. If they don’tdo what they’re supposed to, there are immediate consequences relating to that behavior.

  Procrastination

  If you’ve got a kid you always have to push to get anything done, there’s one thing I’d bet my paycheck on: your child has at least one perfectionistic, flaw-picking parent. Is it you or your spouse?

  Kids who procrastinate do it for a reason. What’s the purposive nature of procrastination? It protects them from criticism because you can’t criticize what’s not done. Are they capable of doing that job? Yes, in most cases. But they fear criticism so much that they will fail to complete the task. They might even run right up to the finish line on the project, but just before the end, they’ll make an abrupt right turn and involve themselves in something else. They run in spurts: when they’re hot, watch out. But then they hit a cold streak and stop. If you find this to be true in your home and family, I’ve got a great book for you: When Your Best Isn’t Good Enough.

  These children love piles. They surround themselves with books and papers. They have multiple projects that are unfinished. Why do they love mess? Because procrastinators are stacking the deck against themselves. They feel they don’t measure up, so they’ll draw a picture, then say it’s no good and tear it up in front of your eyes. They’ll do their homework but not hand it in. They’ll stop short of completing nearly every task.

  All these behaviors stem from fear. Procrastinators fear evaluation because their parents are perfectionists who have set standards so high that the children can never meet them.

  In many families, firstborns are the achievers—the ones who are born to fly high in their adult life. They’re the adults who always hit the home runs and become airplane pilots, civic leaders, surgeons, etc. But let’s say that the firstborn has an overly perfectionistic parent. Then the firstborn will become a procrastinator. There’s a role reversal that happens as
the firstborn takes the initial emotional hit from a perfectionistic parent. Then it’s the secondborn who becomes the superachiever—the self-motivated, mature, in-control-of-life person who proceeds through life with great skill and ability—while the firstborn flounders in expectations. This phenomenon plays itself out in life, especially when there are 3 years or less between the firstborn and the secondborn.

  If your child thinks he can’t measure up to your standards, he won’t try. Or he’ll try only so far and won’t get to the finish line.

  This is why it’s so important to know the difference between praise and encouragement. (Refer back to the chapter “Thursday” for more specifics.) When you praise a child, it’s analogous to sticking a carrot on a stick in front of a donkey and letting it swing. “If you’re a good boy, I’ll give you a carrot.” The problem is that every time the donkey tries to get a bite of that carrot, it moves! If you’re a perfectionistic parent, your child knows he can jump higher and higher for you . . . and never win your praise.

  Praise focuses on the actor: “You’re the greatest kid in the world!” Encouragement focuses on the act: “Thank you so much for doing that. That was very helpful.” “Oh, that’s terrific. The extra studying really paid off, didn’t it? Great job!”

  The perfectionistic parent who says, by his own words and actions, “You better jump—and jump higher—to measure up in my book,” has a high probability of creating a carrot seeker who will always be looking for an emotional star.

  In contrast, children who grow up with encouragement rather than praise feel a sense of support, rallied trust, and confidence all throughout life. They are finishers rather than procrastinators.

  Punching Holes in Walls

  This is one of the most common behaviors I’m asked about in counseling, and usually it’s boys doing the punching. Girls tend to slam doors and yell, “I hate you!” Guys are more likely to lose it and punch holes in the walls (hey, even adults do it—dads especially). One dad told me shamefacedly that he was so mad at his teenage son that he himself smacked the car window, broke it, and had to take himself to the hospital for stitches. (And he wondered where his son had learned to punch walls.)