by Kevin Leman
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!
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 wo
uld 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.”
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.
