RAISING GOOD CHILDREN--By Thomas Lickona, Ph.D.
THE MORAL DEVELOPMENT APPROACH TO RAISING GOOD CHILDREN
What does it mean to be "good"? Is a good child one who obeys without question? Or does being good include a certain amount of independence, an ability to think for yourself & follow what your conscience tells you is right?
What does it take to raise a good child? In the old days, Mom & Dad were part of a bigger team. Home, school & church all taught the same basic values & pulled together to keep kids on the straight & narrow. That's certainly far less true today. In the old days, kids had many "parents." If your own mother or father didn't catch you when you were up to no good, your grandmother did, or your Uncle Nick, or the lady next door. Now, with the rapid rise in single-parent families, the whole job often falls on one parent's shoulders.
Parents not only have less help than they used to, but they're also up against a lot more. They face a social environment that is actively hostile to many of the values they would like to teach their children. TV, music & movies present violence, law-breaking & casual sex as standard human behaviour.
Not everybody sets a good example for the children. Said a high school principal to the mother of a failing student, a boy who was known to be a heavy marijuana user: "Your son is smoking a lot more dope than is good for him." Replied the mother: "He gets better stuff than we do."
This book shows a way to go about the complex & challenging job of raising good children. I call it the "moral development" approach.
Ten "big ideas" make up the moral development approach. They are:
1. Morality Is Respect
The core of morality is respect: Respect for yourself, respect for other people, respect for all forms of life & the environment that sustains them.
2. Kids Develop Morality Slowly, & in Stages
(Editor: It is impossible to equate spiritual, emotional & moral development with physical growth & age, as it is very difficult to say at what age a child will reach the various Stages of Moral Reasoning described here. Children who have been blessed with extensive training in God's Word are way ahead of secular worldly standards in many cases. However, the basic principles presented here may provide a helpful guideline.)
A morality of respect doesn't burst forth, fully formed, at a particular age. Instead, it develops, slowly.
The Developmental Periods From Birth Through Three: You can think of the first four years of your child's life as consisting of four developmental periods: Infancy (year 1), 1-year-olds (year 2), "the twos" (year 3) & "the threes" (year 4).
At all of these ages, given the opportunity, kids can do a lot of moral learning. They can learn about rules & limits, & to be responsive to the needs of others as well as their own.
The Stages of Moral Reasoning--Preschool to Adulthood: The chart below gives a thumbnail sketch of the six stages of moral reasoning. Think of these stages as theories of right & wrong that we carry around in our heads as children, teenagers, or adults. Each stage or theory has a different idea of what's right & a different idea of the reasons why a person should be good. Each new stage of moral reasoning brings a person a step closer to a fully developed morality of respect.
What do these stages of moral reasoning tell us? They tell us, first of all, that kids are not short adults. They think differently from us. They don't see the World the way we do.
Even in the early stages of moral reasoning development, you can't be sure of a child's moral stage just from knowing his or her chronological age.
Moving up through the moral stages, from one level to the next, is called vertical development. But there's another kind of development, horizontal development. Horizontal development is the process by which a brand-new stage slowly becomes a well-established way of dealing with the World. It means applying a stage of reasoning with increasing consistence to all different kinds of situations you come in contact with.
One final & very important point: Even after a new stage of moral reasoning gets "horizontally established" as a well-practiced way of dealing with the World, lower stages still get used. We don't always put our best moral foot forward. All people use different stages in different situations. In some cities, for example, otherwise mature people seem to regress to a Stage 2, every-man-for-himself morality whenever they step into a car! You could interpret today's "new morality" of looking out for number one as a lot of people backsliding into the self-centered spirit of Stage 2.
Understanding the stages of moral reasoning can help you in the work of raising good children. The stages take you inside a child's mind for a child's-eye view of morality. They help you appreciate your child as a thinker, somebody who's got his own ideas about what's right & what's wrong. They help you understand why kids say & do the things they do. Morality develops slowly. The higher the stage, the broader the child's respect for others. Kids, just like adults, often slip down the staircase & use lower stages. Some kids move faster through the stages. But moral development isn't a race; it's a process. The important thing is to keep the process going.
3. Respect Kids & Require Respect in Return
The first step in raising a moral child is to treat a child morally. As one mother said, "I have to remind myself that my children are human beings with rights, not puppets waiting to be manipulated by me." Treating kids like persons means trying to be fair with them. Being fair means relating to kids at their level & making some allowances for the immaturity of their development stage.
In the area of discipline, being fair means asking for & at least considering kids' opinions when setting up rules & consequences. It means giving kids the feeling that you're trying to consider their point of view.
It's a mistake, however, to think that just because we respect kids, they'll respect us. So, to develop respect, we need to give it to our children but also require it in return.
By giving kids respect & requiring it in return, we teach them that morality is a two-way street. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
4. Teach by Example
Teaching kids respect by respecting them is certainly one way to teach by example. It also has to do with how we treat each other as adults.
5. Teach by Telling
Kids are surrounded by bad examples. They need our words as well as our actions. They need to see us leading good lives, but they also need to know why we do it. For our example to have maximum impact, they need to know the values & beliefs that lie behind it.
Parents don't have to be perfect to teach by telling. They can say to their children, "I do the best I can. I don't know everything. I've made my share of mistakes. You'll make some, too. But I want to tell you what I've learned."
Within the same stage of moral reasoning, a person can do good or bad. One Stage 2 child, growing up in a home that stresses mutual helping, might reason, "I should be good to others so others will be good to me!" Another Stage 2 child, growing up around selfishness, might reason, "Other people just look out for themselves, so why shouldn't I?" The difference is that in the first home, the parents are making an effort to teach the value of helpfulness. By directly teaching our children positive moral values we increase the chances that they'll use their moral reasoning to choose good actions rather than bad ones.
6. Help Kids Learn to Think
A father describes how his parents taught him to think:
"Whenever I did something wrong, my parents didn't just demand that I stop my behaviour. Instead, they almost always asked, `How would you feel if someone did that to you?' That gave me a chance to reflect on whatever I did & how I'd like to have it done to me. I feel this has helped me throughout my life. Now I always try to stop & ask myself that question before I do something rather than after the fact."
Kids who think about & discuss moral issues make better headway through the stages of moral reasoning than kids who don't.
7. Help Kids Take on Real Responsibilities
To develop responsibility, kids have to have responsibility. That includes responsibility for themselves--taking care of their person & possessions, doing their homework, keeping their commitments, earning & budgeting their spending money when they're old enough. But even more importantly, developing responsibility means having opportunities to care for others, to make some tangible contribution to the welfare of other human beings.
There was a time in our history when the survival of the family required contributions from all members, even young children. Today, many parents limit their kids' responsibilities to doing their schoolwork & taking care of their room.
Kids very much need other-oriented responsibilities, like supervising, playing with, or reading to a younger brother or sister; sharing the housecleaning; helping in the kitchen (with the cooking as well as the clean-up); caring for a pet; or pitching in on the gardening, yardwork, or house repair. The more kids help, the more they'll be accustomed to helping. As the moral reasoning develops (giving them a better understanding of why they should help others), they'll have the force of good habit going for them.
Kids learn to care by performing caring actions. Sometimes it's more work to get kids to help than to do the job ourselves. But we need to remember that work that serves others is critical for their moral development. If more kids learned early in life that they have responsibilities as well as rights, there would be fewer teenagers, & fewer adults, who are always demanding their rights but have no sense of their obligations.
8. Balance Independence & Control
Give kids independence or exercise control? The answer, of course, is that kids need both. A child isn't an adult. Neither are teenagers, even though they may stand taller than you. They're still at immature stages in their development.
On the other hand, kids are persons with rights & a point of view that we must respect. Because they learn to make choices by having choices. Because they don't become problem-solvers unless they have a chance to rely on their own resources & solve their own problems. Because the ultimate goal of all our parenting is not to control our children but to help them become mature adults who can make their own decisions & lead their own lives.
9. Love Kids & Help Them Develop a Positive Self-Concept
Listen to a young woman's bittersweet memory of her childhood:
"My parents were opposing forces in my moral development. My mother had nothing but leisure time, yet she was always late for anything that involved me. The thing that is indelible in my mind is that school let out exactly the same time every day. Everyone else's mother was always there early. My mother was always at least 15 minutes late. I remember standing there in the doorway, alone. This gave me a really rotten feeling about myself in terms of how my mother felt about me.
"My father, on the other hand, never had any time for himself. He is a doctor & was just getting his practice together when I was young. But he always set aside one afternoon a week to spend with me. We went bowling or played golf, went to a museum, went shopping, & so on. I knew that this was my time that he put aside for me. Nothing else was more important (& there were always other things that demanded his time). He always showed up on time, or called to let me know if he was going to be late.
"I revered my father. He made me feel that I was important to him. And that made me feel that I was worth spending time with."
We have to have a sense of our own value as persons. That was the gift the father gave his daughter when he gave her time & love.
People who don't feel loved, who don't have their own needs met, have trouble being open to the needs of others, no matter how high their capacity for moral reasoning. Their cup runneth short. So give your children your attention, your support, your time. Help them feel loved.
10. Foster Moral Development & a Happier Family at the Same Time
The same approaches that help kids grow morally also help families manage their conflicts constructively & enjoy a greater measure of happiness.
Just as fostering moral development makes for a good family life, a good family life fosters moral development. A close family gives kids people to identify with, examples to learn from, values & traditions to uphold, & a support system to turn to in times of need.
In studying characteristics common to "strong families," among those that stood out were:
1. Time together. In all areas of their lives--meals, work, recreation--strong families structured their schedules to spend time together.
2. Mutual commitment. Strong families promoted each member's happiness & welfare & made the family their top priority.
The breakdown of morality among young people, many analysts believe, can be laid at the doorstep of a destructive combination: Rising peer influence & weakening family ties.
Separated Parents
A special word to divorced or separated parents. Immediately after you & your spouse break up, your kids have three basic needs: 1) To know that it wasn't their fault, 2) to know that you aren't divorcing them & 3) to have a reasonable amount of continuity & consistency in their lives. As time goes on, the toll divorce takes on kids depends on how much positive parenting they're getting. Frequent contact with the out-of-home parent can actually hurt a child if the divorced parents are embroiled in continuing conflict.
"Am I a Good Enough Parent?"
A father of three teenage boys said to me recently: "There's so much guilt that goes with being a parent. You're always second-guessing yourself. Was I too tough? Should I have given them another chance? Was I tough enough? You can never be sure you made the right decision."
I think we need to be comfortable doing our best, under often difficult cir
cumstances & operating on the basis of what we know at any point of time. When we know more, we can do a little better. But we shouldn't put ourselves down for past mistakes. Kids aren't the only ones who need to feel good about themselves; parents need to just as much.
As parents, I think we also need to be very careful not to want our children to be perfect, not to be furious or feel like failures when they turn out to be human, with faults & foibles like the rest of us. Our children do not belong to us. Rather, they are a temporary trust. We need to remember that no matter what we do, our children remain their own persons, free to choose, for good or ill.
With that in mind, let's look at the very beginning of your child's long journey toward moral maturity--& at what you can do to help.
LAYING THE FOUNDATION OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT FROM BIRTH THROUGH THREE
BABIES: THE BEGINNINGS OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT
In order for human beings to develop socially & morally, they have to first get attached to people. The feeling of love springs, at least in part, from loving behaviour. Physical contact is an important source of the feelings of love. If we want to feel a close, loving relationship with our child (& this goes for fathers as well as mothers), we should be in touch, literally.
A mother who, because she feels a loving relationship with her child, asks her youngster more questions (thereby encouraging more thinking) & uses reasoning & not just commands to get cooperation, is a mother who is fostering her child's moral growth.
Babies Who Are Noncuddlers
What if your baby won't put up with all that contact? A study by researchers found that about 25 percent of the babies in their study did in fact resist close contact, except during feeding. They called these babies "noncuddlers."
On closer examination, however, the researchers discovered that it was restraint that these babies didn't like. Noncuddlers did enjoy contact just so long as they weren't restrained.
So babies may differ in how they like their contact. To make contact emotionally, to form their first human relationships, they need to make contact physically. With babies, a love that's "only skin deep" can be very deep indeed.
How Responsive Love Can Teach a Baby to Obey
Forming a positive attachment to a parent helps a baby learn to perform one of its first cooperative acts: Obeying a parent's simple commands (such as "No, no!"; "Don't touch!"; "Come here"; "Give it to me").
Why do some babies obey more readily than others? Parents report that some children are just "easy" by nature, others stubborn from the start.
There's evidence that parenting also plays a part. Researchers investigated infant obedience & found that the most cooperative babies, as a rule, had the most sensitive, accepting & cooperative mothers.
These sensitive mothers took pains to be responsive to their babies' signals--for food, attention, comfort, time for rest & play, & so on. In short, they tried to keep their babies happy. On the whole, a happy baby tended to be an obedient baby.
Put another way: When a mother was willing to comply with her baby's signals, her baby was willing to comply with hers.
By complying with their mother's signals, obedient babies were practicing "respect" on their level. And they seemed to be doing it because they loved a mother who loved & respected them.
Feeding, Love & Moral Development
Responsive parents are really "tuned in" to their baby's needs. By loving babies in this responsive way, you help them get attached to you. All the ways you interact with your baby contribute to the kind of attachment you have & therefore, eventually, to your child's moral development.
Take feeding as a case in point. Suppose you're about to give your baby some solid foods. What will your approach be?
One parent may bring the spoon up slowly, carefully waiting for the baby's mouth to open. Another parent may stuff another spoonful into the baby's mouth even before the last one has been swallowed.
When introducing a new food, some parents take their cues from their baby's reactions. If the baby makes a face or spits out the food, they may switch to a different food & come back to the new one a little later. If that doesn't work, they may decide to save the rejected fare for another occasion. But other parents will make a battle of it, because they think their babies are being defiant & they don't want them to "get away with anything."
Securely Attached Babies Become Self-Confident 3-Year-Olds
There's a direct relationship between security & independence. Babies who are secure in their attachment to their parents have the confidence to explore their world. They've got a home base. As they grow up, their self-confidence will enable them to be independent. It's no different for us as adults. It's easier to face the World, to stand on our own feet in moral or other kinds of situations, if we know somebody loves us.
Securely attached children are not the kids who hang on the mother's apron strings. Those are overdependent children. Parents can try to avoid overdependence (which can be quite a challenge with youngsters who are naturally shy) by providing their child with lots of different kinds of experience, giving them increasing freedom to explore, allowing them to make choices & encouraging them to do things for themselves.
Love Leads to Learning
The study that followed babies into nursery school found that securely attached children were not only better developed socially & morally but that they were also better learners. That suggests that a parent's love helps kids become smart as well as good. One of the simplest ways that responsive mothers show their love for the babies is that they're picked up & put on a shoulder, & they very often stop crying & become "visually alert" & "scan the environment." So when you pick up your baby, you're helping your baby explore its world.
Of course, you don't have to pick them up every time they fuss or cry. It wouldn't be good for them if you did. Babies should learn, gradually, to amuse themselves so they're not entirely dependent on other people for stimulation.
If babies are fussing or crying, & you can't pick them up at the moment, you can try various forms of distraction. Change the position or view. Give them something interesting to listen to or to look at, like a mobile. Give them safe things they can touch & explore on their own.
Variety is a key factor. Parents should not only give their babies toys but they should also actively play with their babies & express pleasure at their pleasure.
Summary
1. Your baby's infancy is the time you form your attachment to your child. The more you touch & handle & play with your baby, the stronger that attachment will be.
2. When you handle your baby, you meet a basic need for contact. That's one of the first ways your baby gets attached to you.
3. If babies don't get love & don't form an attachment in the first year of life, they may never develop the ability to love other people. Psychopaths are people who never learned to love. (Editor: It's never too late for love!)
4. In the first year of life, by tuning into & accommodating your baby's needs, you create the kind of relationship that helps babies learn to obey. Babies get their first experience in mutual accommodation & respect.
5. By being a responsive parent, you help your baby develop a secure attachment to you. That in turn helps your child develop self-confidence, independence & the ability to interact with others & respond to the needs.
6. By providing babies with an interesting environment, you stimulate their exploration & learning. That in turn develops their general intelligence, which helps them later to develop through the stages of moral reasoning.
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ONES: THE FIRST STEP TOWARD INDEPENDENCE
Attachment is the "main event" of the first year of life. Learning to walk has two dramatic consequences. The first is that exploration really takes off. The second consequence of your 1-year-old's new ability to tool around & explore the World is a spirit of independence. They're more in charge of their own behaviour.
Do not stifle your baby's exploration & independence, but set some limits on your toddler's exploration & independence.
Kids should begin to learn limits or rules at this age because it goes right along with all the other kinds of learning they're doing. If you want limits to be effective, be consistent. If you're not consistent, you'll just confuse kids.
To be specific, don't just say "No." State the rule & the reason for it. For example, if your child pulls the cat's tail, say, "No! We don't pull the kitty's tail! (the rule) It hurts the kitty!" (the reason for the rule)
By reasoning with them, you'll help them develop their ability to reason about right & wrong. Of course, there's a time to reason & a time not to reason, & you have to be the judge.
If the child scribbles on the wall, you can say, "No. You may not write on the wall (the rule). It makes a mess (reason for the rule)." But don't stop there. Give your 1-year-old some paper & say, "Here, you may write on paper." Demonstrate the behaviour you want your child to substitute for an undesirable action.
After you say no to one thing, you can quickly offer another that will capture your child's attention. "No, you can't have that knife, but look at these great pots & pans!"
We all know the old saying that you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar. But sometimes we forget to apply that principle with kids. We scold them when they're bad & ignore them when they're good. They quickly learn that they get more attention for misbehaving than they do for behaving. Make it a point to try to catch your 1-year-old being good.
There should, whenever possible, be a clear connection between a child's offense & the consequence it brings. There are three kinds of consequences. Scolding says to kids, "If you don't treat people nicely, they get mad at you." Don't do it too often. If you do, it'll lose its effect. But when you do scold, be stern. Let your child know you mean it.
A second kind of logical consequence is deprivation. If children hit with a toy, for example, they lose that toy for a period of time.
A third kind of consequence is a time-out. You march the disobedient child off to a chair for 5 or 10 minutes by himself the next time he's misbehaving. A time-out period can be a logical & fair consequence for hitting because hitting hurts. If you're going to hurt people, you can't be with them. If you want to be with them, you have to treat them with respect.
Six Methods For Disciplining 1-Year-Old's
1. Maximise opportunities for safe exploration. That respects the child's need to investigate his World.
Babyproofing your child's environment is one way to maximise the opportunities for safe exploration. The more babyproofing you do, the fewer limits you'll need to impose, & the more happy exploring your 1-year-old can do.
2. Teach limits. That gives kids their introduction to rules & the reasons for them.
3. Teach alternatives. That shows 1-year-olds what they may do as well as what they may not.
4. Use distraction. That avoids a needless contest of wills.
5. Reinforce desirable behaviour. That improves kids' behaviour & your relationship with them by "catching them being good."
6. If necessary, impose a logical consequence for misbehaviour. That teaches kids that people react negatively when they're treated badly.
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TWOS: THE FIRST DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
Two-&-a-half-year-old Heidi refused to hold her mother's or father's hand whenever it came time to cross a street. She'd protest: "You don't have to hold my hand!"
"Heidi," her parents would explain, "it's dangerous for you to cross the street without holding our hand. You could get hit by a car & hurt very badly, or even killed."
"I'll be careful!" Heidi would say.
Then her parents would insist: "Heidi, we have to hold your hand!" When one of them took it, Heidi would always pull away before giving in. Sometimes she'd continue to put up a fight, & the tug of war would end in tears.
Heidi is a typical two-year-old. Sometime around the age of two (sometimes as early as 18 or 19 months!), the budding individuality of your toddler turns into a full-blown Declaration of Independence.
Besides wanting to do almost everything for themselves, twos are notoriously negative. "No!" becomes practically a reflex response to a wide range of parental requests, however reasonable they may be. Independence is one of the major forces that carry our children toward greater maturity. At the same time that we're respecting our child's independence, however, we also want to stimulate the cooperative tendencies that are the other side of moral development.
How to Avoid & Handle Conflicts by Offering Choices
Let's see how the conflict with Heidi got solved.
One winter day, Heidi's mother went to take her mittened hand as they came to an intersection. As usual Heidi resisted. Only this time, as she wiggled loose from her mother's grip on one hand, she offered the other one instead. "Here," she said, "take this one." After that, Heidi's parents always remembered to let her choose: "Heidi, I have to hold your hand now. Which one would you like me to hold--this one or that one?" The battle over hand-holding was no more.
What to Keep in Mind About Twos
1. Their fiercely independent spirit & ornery negativism are a part of growing up. They're pulling away from you & becoming their own person. That's essential for the personality development & their moral development. The principled moral courage that you admire in an adult has its first roots in the feisty independence of age two.
2. You should respect the independence of twos, just as you did with toddlers. But once again, you have a crucial task of moral training: To help your child learn to respect your authority & to accommodate to reasonable requests & rules. You can achieve both of these--respect for your child's independence & accommodation to you--by:
* Offering choices
* Asking questions that get your child to think
* Using developmentally appropriate distraction, like storytelling
* Using stories to teach appropriate behaviour
* Time-outs
* Rhyming rules
* Spanking only as a last resort
3. Even more than toddlers, twos need you to give them wide berth. Don't overdo the limit-setting; don't feel you always have to assert your authority.
4. Don't expect twos to be more mature than they are. In many ways, they're still babies. You should certainly encourage more mature behaviour when you think that's appropriate; the spur of rising expectations is one of the things that keeps kids developing. But don't expect twos to be good at sharing, to play "nicely" with peers, to accept younger brothers or sisters without jealousy, to have polite table manners, or to show gratitude for all the nice things you do for them.
5. Don't expect to be a saint yourself. Twos are tough. Expect to lose your temper now & then, & don't feel guilty about it. If you feel you were in the wrong, say you're sorry, then let it pass.
6. Twos thrive on things to do. They love to be read to, to roughhouse, to explore, to "mess about" with sand, dirt, water, clay, Play-Dough & paint. They love songs, surprises & simple games. They need lots of room, lots of things to play with & lots of attention from you. Give them all you can.
In some situations, it's most effective to offer kids a choice between cooperating & an alternative they'll want to avoid. For example: Todd, not quite two, took to crying when he was put in his high chair for dinner. No amount of coaxing helped. Finally, his father said, "Todd, would you like to eat dinner with us or go to your crib? You decide." Todd stopped crying to think about his father's question. He decided to stay & eat dinner.
When you threaten ("If you don't stop crying & eat, you're going straight to your crib!"), you exercise all the control. When you offer your child a choice ("Do you wish to eat dinner or go to your crib?"), you still exercise control, but so does your child. Though Todd's father set the choices, Todd was still able to feel in control of his fate.
Don't offer a choice when it causes more problems than it solves. Says a mother of a two-year-old: "I say to my daughter, `Do you want a peanut butter sandwich for lunch or a baloney?' She says, `Peanut butter.' When I give her peanut butter, she screams for baloney. Now I simply serve her a sandwich with no discussion of choices. It works a lot better."
Save choices for situations where kids are resisting what you want them to do & where a choice is a way out of the conflict. And once kids do make a choice, teach them that they have to stick to it. ("I'm sorry, but you chose peanut butter. It's peanut butter or nothing.")
Other Ways to Steer Clear of Conflicts
Try to avoid making a statement that is likely to arouse resistance. If saying "No!" when he's called to dinner is a pattern with your child, you could try to avoid the conflict in the first place, by not making the "trigger statement": "It's time for dinner." You could simply pick up your child in a casual way, carry him out to his chair (chatting along the way), sit him down & begin serving his food.
Another approach is to turn a potential conflict into a challenge. Counting often works like a charm at this age, even with older children. "Let's see if you can get in your chair (the car, the tub, the bed) by the time I count to ten. One, two, three, four...."
Give kids plenty of chances to get the independence "out of their system." Two-year-olds who've been able to run around a playground for an hour are usually easier to deal with, once they've had a moment to settle down, than ones who have been pent up all day.
Personal space is also important to young children. Try giving two- & three-year-olds an "office"--a space of their very own behind a sofa or a big chair (corners are great). Here they have a private retreat where they can still be close to the action. They can draw there, listen to records, look at books, play with blocks or other toys, or just lie around. They'll feel like a very important person.
Use Distraction
Two-year-olds are less distractible because they know their minds better than younger children. But if twos are complaining or crying because they couldn't get what they wanted, you can still bring them out of it by involving them in something else.
You can ask them about something you think they'd like to talk about, or you can simply sit down next to them with one of their favourite books & start reading. Chances are they'll stop fussing & start listening.
Time-Outs for Two-Year-Olds
(Editor: At this age, time out can be effective, not only as a form of punishment, but it gives a break to both the child & the parent. This in itself can bring about a change of spirit, end the conflict & return peace to your home. You don't always have to punish children for each little misstep. It may be enough to just break up the bad behaviour. They may be bored & simply need distraction. If they sit down with a book at times, it will immediately settle them down & interest them. A short time of sitting & doing nothing would be even more of a punishment if the behaviour warranted it. So time out can be very effective if applied appropriately.)
Daniel: Bobby won't let me play with the blocks!
Mom: Okay, it looks like you guys need a break from each other right now. So I'm going to call a time-out for five minutes. Go to your chairs & look at your books. I'll let you know when the five minutes are up.
Or you can try a "come back when you can behave" time-out:
Roxanne: (screaming at her sister) Gimmee that!
Dad: Okay, time out. Roxanne, go to your chair, settle down & come back when you can ask for something without screaming.
The sooner they decide to shape up, the sooner they can get back into the action. Sometimes, though, kids will come back before they're ready, & in a minute they're at it again. When that happens, you can call for a "fixed" time-out--5 minutes or whatever seems necessary.
Time-outs help parents by giving them a needed break from the sometimes exhausting task of managing kids' behaviour. They help kids by giving them the break they sometimes need from each other, & by giving them a chance to calm down & get control of their behaviour.
Time-outs also reinforce the idea that if you want to be with other people, you have to play by the rules. And time-outs do all of this without violating the dignity of a child.
Rhyming Rules
If you hit
You must sit.
Put your dinner in your tummy
And you'll get a snack that's yummy.
Toys left out make parents sad.
Toys picked up make parents glad!
Post your rhyming rules where your child can easily see them. With time, a two-year-old may even get to recognise some of the words in the rhymes. In the meantime, you can read the rule out loud for your child at the appropriate time.
Spanking
Spanking is physical punishment. Relying solely on physical punishment is a poor way to foster moral development. Physical punishment doesn't engage or develop a child's mind, it doesn't teach kids why what they did was wrong or what they should do instead. It doesn't get them to take the viewpoint of the person they've offended. It can leave them feeling sorry for themselves instead of sorry for the offense.
Reasons for occasional spanking:
1. Spanking is an assertion of a parent's authority, which is better than no assertion at all. If a child defies a parent or wallops a playmate, I'd rather see the parent apply a swat to the rear than stand there & do nothing at all. Doing nothing teaches a child that there may be rules, but nothing happens if you break them.
2. A spank can supply the "jolt" that sometimes brings a child out of a pattern of surly or defiant behaviour. Sometimes a spank has the effect of a bucket of cold water. Once in awhile with a two-year-old, that shock effect may be needed to interrupt an undesirable behaviour pattern that has gathered momentum & is not responding to other methods.
3. Spanking may help you. One study found that parents who occasionally spank the children do not nag or yell at them as much as parents who never spank. So in that indirect way, spanking does help children.
4. Spanking may succeed in controlling a particular behaviour. If it's not used too often, it can give a child dramatic feedback. That feedback can act like "avoidance conditioning" to prevent kids from repeating the behaviour. You're letting them know that what they've done cannot be tolerated, ever again.
Many parents, for example, spank their children for running out into the road. The danger with spanking is not that an occasional whack on the bottom will harm a child, destroy mutual respect, or impede a child's moral development. The danger is that spanking can easily get to be a habit, a first response. Then it has diminishing returns & potentially negative effects on your child's development.
How to Keep Spanking Under Control
1. Except in rare cases like the running-in-the-road situation, try something else first. You can ask a question, appeal to a rule, impose an isolation, or offer a choice. If you offer a choice, a spank can be one of the alternatives. For example, "Do you need a spank to get into bed, or can you get in without one?"
2. If you spanked because you blew your stack & you know you should have tried something else first, apologise to your child. You'll feel better, & so will your child.
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THREES: FROM BREAKING AWAY TO GOING ALONG
The good news about the threes is that they're easier than the twos. There's a new spirit of wanting to please at three that begins to show up in all sorts of ways:
* Threes are more obedient, more responsive to the spoken word;
* Threes are easier to reason with;
* Threes will sometimes ask permission before they do something;
* Threes may ask, "Did I do it right?" because they want to conform to your expectations;
* Threes are generally willing to help out when asked.
Two Great Human Longings
One longing is the need to be independent. Part of that need is wanting to be recognised as a distinct, individual person. We don't want to be swallowed up, taken for granted, or treated as an extension of somebody else.
Another part of independence is wanting to feel in control of our lives. We don't want to feel bossed around or helplessly dependent on somebody else.
There another human yearning deep down in our souls. It's the need to be included. All of us want to be accepted, liked & loved. We want to belong. We want to have relationships. We want to be part of something larger than ourselves. We want to be part of the human community. We want to be able to say to the World & to ourselves, "Other people appreciate me, care about me, need me. I matter to somebody else."
So those are two rock-bottom, terribly important needs that you'll find in little kids & in grown-ups wherever you look: The need to be independent & the need to be included.
People who are investing a lot in asserting their individuality, tend to be harder to get along with. They're not in a "going along with" frame of mind. They're busy "breaking away."
That's exactly what happens with two-year-olds. Through all their assertions of independence, twos are breaking away from the old relationships of an earlier period. It's as if they're saying, "I'm not your baby any more!" Once that task of differentiation is accomplished, however, twos can take a deep breath & say to themselves, "Whew, I made it! I'm a new person, & Mommy & Daddy still love me. Guess I'll relax a little." Threes, by & large, exchange the role of rebels for the role of joiners.
Teach Manners
You can start to teach "please" & "thank you" to very young children, but three-year-olds' desire to please makes them more receptive to learning simple courtesies (though for many years they'll need reminders to carry them out). Manners will gradually become important to children only if they are important to their parents.
Manners are morals. They're ways of respecting other people. Start manner training early. Explain to kids that good manners make other people feel good. Show them good manners, & give them plenty of praise when they remember the manners (don't just point out when they forget).
The Habit of Helping
There are lots of little jobs that threes can manage or at least help out with: Picking up toys, emptying wastebaskets, setting & clearing the table, making the orange juice, adding or stirring ingredients for something you're cooking, or caring for a younger brother or sister (with supervision).
Rules & Labels at Three
Here are a couple more rhyming rules:
Help keep our house neat as a pin;
Hang up your coat when you come in.
When you get up from the table,
Please take out what you are able.
Threes also take satisfaction in learning to apply moral labels--"good," "bad," "naughty," "nice." Because kids are fascinated with moral labels during this period, they're more responsive to them when they're applied to their own behaviour. It means a lot to three-year-olds to hear that they "did something nice for Mommy" or were "a big help to Daddy." You may be able to encourage sharing or generosity in your three-year-old by saying, "Here's a chance to be a generous person" (explaining what "generous" means). Or you can encourage taking turns by saying, "Here's a chance to show you know how to be a fair person."
Don't abuse this power of labelling, however. If you tell kids, for example, that they're a "bad boy" or a "bad girl," they may begin to live down to the bad-person role that you've assigned them. When your child misbehaves, stick to labelling actions: "Hitting is naughty! It hurts!" "It's not fair to grab someone's toy!"
Threes & Peer Interaction
Threes still often have trouble incorporating what somebody else wants to do into their plans of action. By playing with other kids, they learn that they can't always have their own way. They learn that if they don't share with others, others won't share with them. They learn that if they hit people, people hit back. They learn that if they don't "play nice" with other kids, other kids won't want to play with them.
Don't Overestimate Threes
Threes are still very limited in their ability to put themselves in somebody else's shoes. You know this if you've ever played hide-&-seek with three-year-olds. They usually "hide" by covering their eyes & leaving much or all of themselves in clear view!
I once came upon a three-year-old in nursery school who was looking at slides in a Viewmaster. "You want to see this one?" he said to me. When I said I did, he inserted the slide disc into the viewer, held it up to his eyes, & said, "Look at that!"
STAGE 0: "WHATEVER I WANT IS WHAT'S FAIR!"--HOW TO HELP YOUR CHILD THROUGH THE STAGES OF MORAL REASONING
A Profile of Stage 0 (Preschool Years--Around Age 4)
At Stage 0 of moral reasoning, kids:
1. Begin to express their independence in moral terms ("It's not fair!", but think "fair" means getting their way.) You can expect Stage 0 to emerge sometime between three-&-a half & four. In many ways, it looks like a regression. Parents may wonder, "What happened to my cooperative three-year-old? Is this a rerun of the terrible twos?"
Stage 0 is a lot like the twos. Once again, the sense of "I" is much stronger than the sense of "we." Once more, the pendulum is swinging toward independence. Only now kids experience & express their independence in moral terms. Twos say, "I want it." Stage 0 kids reason, "I want it, therefore it's not fair if I don't get it."
Children at Stage 0 are now seeing & talking about their desires from a moral viewpoint. It's a very primitive, self-centered viewpoint, to be sure. But it's part of the long developmental process of learning to think morally, learning to reason about questions of fairness & unfairness, right & wrong.
Children younger than three-&-a-half can begin to use the categories of good & bad to organise their social world. They begin to label things right & wrong, naughty & nice. And, at least some of the time, they act accordingly.
But once kids start to be moral philosophers, once they begin to do their own reasoning about what's fair, they focus exclusively on what they know best: Their own desires. And from the standpoint of moral reasoning, that's Stage 0.
2. Are highly egocentric, especially in conflict situations, seeing things only from their point of view. Kids at this level recognise one point of view: Their own. Other points of view just don't penetrate their awareness.
Sometimes Stage 0 kids are so openly egocentric that you have to laugh. When our younger son, Matthew, was four, I used to take him & one of his pals swimming at the local YMCA when my back hurt from too much time at the typewriter. It was a good way to have fun with them & loosen up my back muscles at the same time. Once when we got home, Matthew said cheerfully, "It's a good thing you hurt your back, Dad, so we can go swimming at the Y!" It helps to remember that Stage 0 kids aren't being egocentric out of meanness.
3. Take an "I want it, it's mine" approach to property. At this stage, possession is 100 percent of the law. Once you get your hands on something you want, it's yours. As an example:
Dad: How'd school go today?
Billy: Jason & I got into an argument.
Dad: What about?
Billy: On the way to school I found this little wooden thing--a stick, sort of--with carvings on it. When Jason saw it, he said it was his.
Dad: Hmmm, I see. Well, how did you solve that problem?
Billy: (shrugging shoulders) I wanted the stick, so I kept it.
The father should insist, of course, that if the stick is Jason's, Billy should return it. (Finding out if the stick really is Jason's may require a call to his parents.) But the father shouldn't think he's got a confirmed thief & a potential juvenile delinquent on his hands. Billy's casual, "I want it, it's mine" logic is par for the course at Stage 0.
All children, even those who are not lagging in their social-moral development, benefit from having consistent rules, having the reasons for those rules clearly explained & having the motives of others made known.
4. Do everything they can to try to make the World conform to their wishes, including manipulating parents, telling "lies" & "cheating" at games, without understanding why these behaviours are wrong. A single-parent mother of an aggressive, hard-to-manage 6-year-old said to me: "I try to reason with Alex. I get out maybe a sentence or less, & he's going like this (looking off in a spaced-out sort of way). So I stop. It's hard to go on when you don't have an audience. He just doesn't seem to have much of an attention span."
Observation of Alex in other situations indicated that his attention span was fine. He could attend when he wanted to. Looking away from his mother when she tried to reason with him was his way of getting her to stop saying something he didn't want to hear. Alex did the same sort of thing, only more blatantly, with other children. When a playmate said to him, for example, "You're not being fair! You're supposed to take turns!" Alex would put his hands over his ears.
Part of his problem was his insecurity. Emotional insecurity often has the effect of slowing down moral development, because development requires openness to change, letting go of an old & comfortable way of confronting your world & taking on a new one. Alex's mother could help Alex both by giving him lots of love & by applying gentle but steady pressure for him to open his mind to the views & needs of others. When she sat him down to talk, for example, she could say: "Look, Alex, this can be a short discussion if you listen to me & show me you understand what I'm saying. Or it can be a long discussion. You decide."
Lying is a common & developmentally normal behaviour among preschoolers. Preschoolers typically tell two kinds of lies. The first are tall tales. When children concoct a story or exaggerate the truth, they're often telling what they wish were true. We should respond accordingly, acknowledging the wish behind their statement. So if a young child says, "I jumped ten feet high at nursery school today!" we can say, "You wish you could jump ten feet high, don't you? You wish you would jump right over the school!"
The other kind of untruth that young kids tell is an instrumental lie. Kids tell instrumental lies for the same reason adults do--to gain a good result or avoid a bad one. But since Stage 0 reasoners equate fairness with getting what they want, they don't see anything wrong with telling a lie to achieve that end! A mother told me how she promised her three-&-a-half-year-old daughter, Sara, an apple if she was dry at the end of her nap. Sara was in fact wet when she got up, but when Sara saw her mother she ran up to her & said sweetly, "I was dry, Mommy! Can I have my apple?"
We can & should tell our preschoolers that it's important to tell the truth & that it makes us happy when they do. We should register our disapproval of lies told to evade responsibility or to place the blame on someone else. But we shouldn't overreact.
5. Often break rules, show off, use bad language, or engage in other provocative, out-of-bounds behaviour, all as part of a pattern of experimentation & self-assertion. Unmanageable behaviour can be caused by many factors, not just developmental change. Lots of times kids misbehave because we unwittingly reward them for doing so--by giving in to whining or temper, for example. Some children's misbehaviour reflects distress over a change in their lives, or a bid for love & attention. Some children are constitutionally hyperactive. Other children's hard-to-control conduct seems to be linked to diet. So be sensitive to the many causes of children's difficult-to-manage behaviour, but expect a certain amount of trouble at this stage as a natural by-product of development.
6. Can, like children at other moral stages, understand moral reasoning that is at a higher level than the reasoning they can produce on their own.
7. May show spontaneous helping or compassion in situations where their desires don't conflict with someone else's.
How to Relate to Your Child's Moral Stage
There are two basic ways you can relate to your child's stage of moral reasoning: (1) You can go with the flow of your child's stage, or (2) You can challenge it.
When you go with the flow of kids' present stage of reasoning, you meet them where they are. You come down to their level. You try to get their cooperation by talking the language of their stage, by fitting into the way they think about the World.
When you challenge the kids' present stage of reasoning, you try to get them to look at the World in a new way. You make their minds reach & stretch. Of course, if we were always challenging our kids to develop, we'd wear them out & ourselves, too.
How to Relate to Kids at Stage 0
You can go with the flow of your child's Stage 0 moral reasoning by:
1. Taking a developmental perspective ("It won't last forever!"). This is always the first rule for coping with a difficult stage: Remember that it is a stage, & it won't last forever!
2. Offering choices that allow your child to make a decision. Stage 0 kids, like two-year-olds, tend to be very strong-willed because they're so centered on what they want to do. Try to avoid an unnecessary clash of wills by offering appropriate choices. For example: "Tonight is bath night. Would you like to take your bath before dinner or after dinner?" "Would you guys like to play nicely or go to separate rooms?" When you give choices within limits, you're letting your child make a decision. And that's a way of accommodating to the spirit of independence at Stage 0.
3. Offering appropriate positive incentives for obedience. Self-interest never runs stronger than it does at Stage 0. So kids at this level are more likely to follow rules & requests if there's something in it for them. You can meet them at their level by giving them a positive incentive for obeying. For example: "When you're done picking up, you can go outside." "When you've finished your dinner, you can have some fruit." "If you get your pajamas on & your teeth brushed in 15 minutes, I'll read you a bedtime story." (If you have a timer, you can have your child set it for the allotted time.)
Use "natural rewards" for good behaviour--things you'd be likely to do for or give to your child in the natural course of events. This is a better reward than "extras" like toys, money, or candy. Natural rewards are less like "bribery," more like a matter-of-fact statement, "If you help us by doing what you're asked, life will be more pleasant for you."
4. Taking time to have fun with your child. Whenever kids' independence is running strong, it's important not to let your whole relationship turn into a struggle to control their behaviour. One of the best ways to go with the flow of kids during the Stage 0 period is to take time to enjoy them. Do things that are fun for both of you--whether that means a romp on the playground, playing tag or hide-&-go-seek in the yard, or curling up together with a book.
You can challenge your child's Stage 0 reasoning by:
1. Reaffirming old limits & teaching new ones as needed, taking pains to spell out rules & enforce them consistently. Stage 0 kids need to find out that the World is a place where they can't have everything they want, where there are rules they have to obey & consequences if they don't. I'd recommend the following four steps, which illustrate a procedure that can help any parents who are having behaviour problems with their young child:
a. Sit down together for a parent conference. Make a list of the behaviours your child engages in that you definitely don't want to encourage & ideally would like to eliminate.
b. For each undesirable behaviour, establish a rule or rules. The rules should be reasonable & should spell out clearly what's expected of your child & what happens if he doesn't meet the expectation. Next to each rule, write the reason for the rule.
c. Sit down with your child (both parents) & go over the list. This way your changed behaviour won't come as any surprise to him. He'll get the message (even if he doesn't fully believe it yet) that you expect things to be different, that you intend to take charge. Ask him to repeat each rule & the reason for it.
d. Enforce the rules. Keep in mind that you're helping your child & yourself by following through on what you say.
2. Requiring kids to give better reasons than "I want to!" Require them to go beyond their natural logic of "I want it, so I should have it!" Whenever your Stage 0 reasoner says, "It's not fair! I want (whatever)", you can respond, "Well, that's not a good enough reason! You can't have something just because you want it."
Gradually, Stage 0 thinkers will get the idea that they have to come up with "objective" reasons for what they want. Their first attempts to do this are humorously lacking in what we would consider logic & are transparently self-serving. "I should get four cookies because I'm four!" "I should go first because I'm bigger!" "I should get the red lollipop because I have a red shirt!"
3. Assigning chores that give your child a responsible role in the family. A responsible social role in the family is a good antidote to their egocentrism. Let kids know how much you appreciate it when they help the family.
4. Using the fairness approach to begin to stretch your child's understanding of what's fair. At any stage in development, kids can understand moral reasoning that is more advanced than what they can produce on their own. This difference between children's "receptive" moral understanding & what they can produce by themselves is very important for parents to recognise. It's similar to what happens in a child's language development. Think of babies. They can understand many things you say to them long before they can say the words themselves. It would be a terrible mistake never to say anything to babies that they couldn't already say themselves. They'd never learn how to talk! It's the same with moral reasoning.
So begin to talk fairness with young kids. Suppose, for example, your child won't pick his things up. You can say, "I don't think it's fair for you to leave your toys all over the floor. I can't walk through the house without tripping over them!"
Suppose your youngster protests, "But I don't wanna pick them up! It'll take too long!"
You can continue the fairness approach by saying, "What if I said, `I don't want to cook your dinner any more, or fix your lunch, or wash your clothes! It takes too long!' Would that be fair?"
Reasoning is always more effective when kids know you mean business. Especially at this developmental level, you'll need to use plenty of authoritative control to manage behaviour.
5. Making sure your child has opportunities to interact with the viewpoints of peers.
6. Playing simple games that help kids learn to follow rules. Any kind of simple board game is good for young children. Here are three things they can learn from such a game:
a. You have to take turns.
b. All players, even grown-ups, have to play by the same rules.
c. You can't have a game if people don't follow the rules.
Don't expect Stage 0 kids to follow the rules right away, however. And even after they learn to follow them, expect them to blithely ignore the rules at times in order to do what they want! This kind of "cheating" is like lying at this stage; kids don't think of it as wrong.
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STAGE 1: "YOU SHOULD DO WHAT YOU'RE TOLD"--HOW TO HELP YOUR CHILD THROUGH THE STAGES OF MORAL REASONING
You can reasonably look for kids to develop this stage sometime between four-&-a-half & five-&-a-half years of age.
A Profile of Stage 1 (Around 5-6)
At Stage 1 of moral reasoning, kids:
1. Swing away from self-assertion toward greater obedience & cooperation. Stage 1 reasoners believe that:
* What's right is doing what grown-ups tell you;
* The reason to do what you're told is you could get in trouble if you don't.
Stage 1 is a morality of unquestioning obedience. As an example of the moral philosophy of Stage 1, I'll share with you a conversation I had with Matthew, just about the time he turned five. I asked him one night as we were all in the kitchen, "Why should children obey their parents?"
"Because," he said, "children are parents' slaves."
Trying to keep a straight face, I asked, "Why do you say children are parents' slaves?"
"Because," he said with an air of resignation, "we have to obey your orders."
"Why do you have to obey our orders?" I said.
"I don't know," he said, "we just do."
2. Can take the viewpoint of another person but think that only one viewpoint is right--that of adults.
3. Respect your authority & believe that:
* What's right is to do what grown-ups say.
* The reason to obey is to avoid getting punished. (Editor: Of course it's far preferable if your 5-6 year olds are more mature in spirit, & have been taught to obey not just to avoid getting punished, but because they sincerely want to please Jesus & their parents as well.)
4. Think that adults are all-knowing & always manage to catch kids when they're naughty. Two characteristics of Stage 1 thinkers are:
a. Staying out of trouble is usually the only reason they can come up with for following a command or rule. That's as far as their moral reasoning goes.
b. They think grown-ups are all-knowing supersleuths who always manage to catch naughty children in their misdeeds!
5. Think that if something bad happens to them, they must have done something bad to deserve it.
6. Tend to tattle a lot, because they see adults as the sole source of morality. Because Stage 1 kids see adults as being in charge of making & enforcing all rules, they have a natural tendency to tattle. I think it's a good idea to teach kids of any age the difference between "unnecessary tattling" & "necessary reporting." Here's how I define that difference:
a. Unnecessary tattling. This is telling on someone when:
* You see them doing something relatively minor that they shouldn't be doing, like goofing off when they should be doing chores etc.
* They do something minor to you--like calling you a name or giving you a poke--that you should be able to handle yourself.
b. Necessary reporting. This is telling an adult when:
* You see somebody doing something seriously wrong, like stealing, lying, or being cruel to another kid; or
* Somebody does something bad to you--your older brother bullies you, for example--& you try to deal with it yourself but can't.
I can tell you something we tried in our family that helped us. Tattling had gotten to be a headache to us & a source of angry feelings between Mark & Matthew. So we got everybody together & agreed to try the following procedure. If, for example, Mark was doing something Matthew didn't like, Matthew would say, "Mark, can we settle this ourselves, or should we file a joint report with Mom or Dad?" The purpose of the "joint report" was so that neither would get tattled on. If the offending party wouldn't cooperate either by settling the conflict or filing the joint report, then, & only then, the other person could come to us alone to report the trouble. When Mark & Matthew remembered this agreement, they more often settled problems themselves. When they forgot it (which they often did), we reminded them. This system didn't end fighting between our kids, needless to say, but it did give us a way to deal with tattling, & we were glad for that.
7. Have trouble holding two things--two viewpoints for example--in mind at the same time. Stage 1 "centers" on only one viewpoint--that of adult authority--& so decides that being good means doing what grown-ups say in order to steer clear of punishment. You can test for "centering" in your own child's logical thinking by doing the following simple experiment.
Show your child two identical glasses, each containing the same amount of water. Make sure that your child agrees that the two glasses have the "same amount to drink." Then, as your child watches, pour the contents of one glass into a taller, thinner glass & ask, "Do both of these glasses have the same amount to drink, or does one have more?" Most kids under six will say that the taller glass has more to drink "because the water is higher." They think this because they're centering all their attention on the tallness of the new glass & ignoring its thinness. With development, kids will come to say that the new glass is both taller & thinner, & so has the same amount to drink as before.
We can understand young kids better, & have more patience with them, if we remember how hard it is for them to think of two things at once.
8. Even though they think they should follow rules, often don't when grown-ups & the threat of punishment aren't present because they don't yet understand why rules are needed. Stage 1 kids are more obedient than Stage 0 kids--at least when you're standing over them. But when you're not there, it's often a case of "out of sight, out of mind!"
What's missing at Stage 1? For one thing, an understanding of the practical purpose of rules. Even when Stage 1 kids follow the do's & don'ts we hand down, rules remain external to them, something stuck onto their minds like bubblegum. Rules aren't yet on the inside, not yet inner convictions.
How to Relate to Kids at Stage 1
You can go with the flow of your child's Stage 1 reasoning by:
1. Providing the firm external control your child needs at this level, when dependence on authority is strong & inner controls are weak.
A teacher of first-graders overheard the following conversation between Wayne, one of her real behaviour problems, & a teacher's aide:
Wayne: I don't like Miss Baker.
Aide: Why not?
Wayne: I don't like what she does when I do something wrong, like hitting.
Aide: What does she do?
Wayne: She asks me why I did it, what I could have done instead, & what I'm going to do the next time. I have to make a plan. It's too hard for me to make a plan! I want her to control my temper!
This gave the teacher an idea. She decided to try a different approach. "The next time Wayne was wild--it was the end of the day--I sat him down in his seat. Boom! That was it. The temper ended. That week I started taking more control of the class. Things settled down, went smoother. We got more done; the children were more cooperative."
2. Appealing to kids' belief that they should obey you. Let me tell you another personal story to illustrate this point. We'd been having a tough time getting our son, Matthew, to obey in situations where he was involved in doing something & didn't want to stop. He'd respond to our directive--"Matthew, it's time to pick up now"--by either protesting or trying to "sneak in" a little more of the desired activity. That would try our patience, & a "scene" would often develop.
Then one day we said, "Matthew, this is a chance to obey." He did. Saying "chance to obey" seemed to help him categorise the situation as one requiring obedience. It was as if he said to himself, "Hmmm, Mom & Dad are asking me to obey, & I'm supposed to obey my parents!"
Another thing you can do at this stage is to turn obedience into a challenge. "I want you at the dinner table by the time I count to ten..."
The underlying idea is to try to bring out the natural tendency to accept your authority, which is part of Stage 1 reasoning.
3. Reinforcing manners & other good behaviour. The goal at this age is not to have kids remember manners without reminding (they generally won't), but for you to keep sending the message, "Manners are important."
Kids will ask, "Am I a good girl?" "Am I a good boy?" You can answer the questions in a meaningful & truthful way by referring to specific actions you appreciate: "Yes, you were a good girl when you played nicely, & when you helped me fold the wash." If kids ask, "Was I good?" on a day when they weren't, put the question to them: "What do you think? Do you think you were good today?"
Don't praise kids so much for being good that they feel they have to be perfect. It's wisely been said that every child should have the confidence to misbehave occasionally & know that you still love them.
You can challenge your child's Stage 1 reasoning by:
1. Using reasoning. Some parents rely very heavily on "power assertion." Power assertion means just that: Asserting your power ("Do it because I said so!", "You'll do what I say if you know what's good for you!") without reasoning with a child so as to foster better understanding. Parents who are high on use of power assertion & low on reasoning tend to have children whose understanding of morality doesn't go beyond fear of punishment.
With a first offense, reasoning may be enough. If your 5-year-old son bops his little sister or excludes a neighbourhood child from a group game, you could help him think about the effects of his behaviour. "How would you feel if other kids wouldn't let you play?"
If the behaviour occurs again, a mild punishment may be necessary to get your child to take the rule & your exhortations seriously. Even when you do impose consequences, however, it's important to repeat the reasoning process, & to avoid making statements like, "Don't ever let me catch you doing that again!" (Which makes it seems as if the main thing is not to get caught!)
When you reason with kids, try also to stimulate their imagination by dramatising your point. Kids need help in really imagining what it would be like to be in the victim's shoes. To dramatise stealing, for example, you could play-act with your child a theft of one of his or her favourite toys. After "stealing" the toy, ask your youngster: "How would you feel if somebody really stole that toy from you? Would it be fair? Why not?"
2. Teaching kids values which tell them that certain things are wrong while you're working on the slower process of helping them understand why those things are wrong.
3. Teaching kids two-way fairness by solving family conflicts in a way that considers everybody's feelings.
The spirit of a family meeting is to value everyone's viewpoint, kids' as well as parents', & to solve a family problem in a way that all think is fair.
Family meetings don't mean "majority rules." The idea is to get agreement, not to vote. And the limits of what constitutes an acceptable agreement are set by you, the parent. So you don't lose control through this kind of shared decision-making, but you gain input from all family members.
The unquestioning, don't-argue respect of Stage 1, remember, is based on fear, not understanding. When Dad isn't around, the fear disappears &, very often, so does the obedience. You want them to think, "I better do what Dad asked, it's only fair."
4. Teaching kids mutual respect by treating them like persons.
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STAGE 2: "WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME?"--HOW TO HELP YOUR CHILD THROUGH THE STAGES OF MORAL REASONING
Stage 2 is a rigid, scorekeeping, tit-for-tat sense of fairness. Stage 2 kids are relentless negotiators, confronting the World with the question, "What's in it for me?"
Asked what he had learned in first grade, a seven-year-old answered, "I learned that grown-ups aren't always the smartest people in the World!"
A Profile of Stage 2 (7-8, Early Elementary Grades)
Kids go through alternating cycles of independence & accommodation, breaking away & going along. By ages seven & eight, most kids are well into Stage 2.
At Stage 2 of moral reasoning, kids:
1. Swing back toward independence & individuality.
2. Believe that everybody has his own point of view & that what's right is to:
* Follow your own point of view ("Do your own thing") & look out for yourself ("What's in it for me?"). Stage 2 kids are often absolutely transparent about their what's-in-it-for-me motivation. When seven-year-old Bruce hit his brother, his mother said she wasn't going to make the cake that Bruce had requested earlier. A few minutes later a very distressed Bruce emerged from his room & said, "Mom, I'm really sorry I hit Dickie, because I really want you to make that cake!"
* Do unto others exactly what they do unto you (both good & bad).
3. Think of themselves as the moral equals of adults ("Kids have rights!"). At Stage 2 kids think, "Wait a minute, just because grown-ups are bigger than we are doesn't give them the right to boss us around all the time!" They reason, "When parents make rules, that's just their point of view about how things should be. Kids have their own ideas, & who says they're not as good as parents' ideas?"
4. No longer think adults should "boss kids around."
5. Have a rigid, tit-for-tat sense of fairness. Feeling like moral equals, Stage 2 kids now see all their social interactions, with parents as well as friends, as a process of making fair agreements, negotiating for what they want, wheeling & dealing. Self-interest is up front.
The whole parent-child relationship becomes a kind of deal in the mind of the Stage 2 thinker. Why should kids obey their parents? Because then parents will do nice things for them. Why should parents do nice things for kids? Because then kids will obey them.
6. Understand the two-sidedness of relationships, & think of their relationship with you as a kind of a deal ("Kids should obey parents so parents will do nice things for them.")
7. Tend to sneak if they can't negotiate for what they think is fair.
8. Make constant comparisons ("He's got more than me!") & demand equal treatment. What's the flip side of Stage 2's tit-for-tat sense of fairness? It's a belief in exact revenge. If somebody punches you in the arm three times, you should punch them back three times--no more, no less. If somebody takes one of your pencils, you should take one of theirs, not two.
"Get even. Give 'em a dose of their own medicine. Do unto others as they do unto you." This kind of thinking has a big impact on kids' relationships with their siblings & peers. One of the reasons why kids get into so many fights at this stage is that they can never let anything go. Everything has to be paid back--every push, every name called, even every dirty look. "Just ignore it," weary parents say. But that's mighty hard to do at Stage 2.
Stage 2 believes in getting even with those who do you dirty, but it also believes in paying back those who do you good. At Stage 2 kids really believe in taking turns.
Tit-for-tat means equal exchange. "Bobby's got more than I do!" "How come I have to wash all these pots, & Jackie gets off so easy?"
You can point out to a Stage 2 reasoner that things even out in the long run. "Jackie will wash the pots another night." But Stage 2 kids center on the "right now."
Sit down with kids & tell them how comparisons cause tension in you & conflict in the family & how you'd like to minimise them for everybody's sake. Help them see the ways that you do try to be fair to everyone.
9. Have a new potential for meanness that stems from their greater assertiveness, reduced fear of adult authority & insensitivity to the feelings of others.
10. May fail to see an action as wrong unless they can see the harmful results (& so often see nothing wrong with lying or cheating). (Editor: This may be true of many children, but if they are more mature in spirit & have read & been taught what God's Word says about honesty & truthfulness, they should be much more aware of the harmful results of such misdeeds.)
11. Get into more fights & exchanges of name-calling because they believe they have to pay everything back.
How to Relate to Kids at Stage 2
You can go with the flow of your child's Stage 2 moral reasoning by:
1. Being understanding of the "back-talk" that comes from Stage 2's fierce sense of fairness (while still insisting on respect). Expect them to talk back. Realise that their fierce sense of fairness is going to make kids sound "fresher" at this stage. They keep banging up against the stubborn fact that grown-ups do call the shots & kids can't always do what they want to!
Six-year-old Shawn's transition to Stage 2 was loud & clear. He decided that people either "get their way" or "don't get their way." He began to challenge his parents: "How come parents always get their way?"
One night Shawn was sent to his room after a fit of temper. A few minutes later, he came stomping out & said to his father with clenched fists & tears in his eyes, "Dad, if you send me in my room again, I'm not going to go."
Shawn's father stayed calm. He said, "Shawn, I know you don't like to have to go to your room. And I know you're very upset. But we agreed on a rule about temper. What was it?" "But it's not fair!" Shawn protested.
His father continued: "Remember the discussion about temper we had the other night? You agreed that if you throw a fit of temper, you have to go to your room for a time-out? Didn't you say that was a fair consequence?" "Oh, all right!" Shawn said & stomped back into his room.
Shawn's father was firm, but he was tolerant. He didn't get angry at Shawn's defiance. By letting Shawn make his protest, he helped Shawn defuse his angry feelings, while still getting him to honour his agreed-upon rule.
You can deal better with Stage 2 kids if you try to see things from their point of view & understand what they're going through.
2. Appealing to tit-for-tat reciprocity ("I did that for you, so you should do this for me").
Five-year-old Michael asked his father to read him a story. He did. When his father finished, he said, "Did you like that story?" Michael said yes.
Later Michael's father asked him to help with the dishes. Michael said he didn't want to. "Hey," his father said, "remember how I read you a story when you asked me to? Now I'm asking you to do something for me. Fair enough?" Michael agreed, & complied with his father's request.
As kids get a handle on the principle of reciprocity, it starts to show up in their explanations of why they shouldn't do certain things. "It's not nice to lie," said six-year-old Charlie, "because people might lie back to you."
I wouldn't advise you, however, to make a habit of "dealing" to get kids to help or obey. You'll weaken your authority as a parent if you're always "bribing" kids to be good, & they'll get to thinking, "Why should I do this if there's nothing special in it for me?"
Stage 2 kids have a supersensitive Unfairness Detector when it comes to finding all the ways that people are "unfair" to them. But they have a big blind spot when it comes to seeing all the ways they aren't fair to others & all the ways parents & others do things for them! Appealing to reciprocity helps them open their eyes & practice in their behaviour what they now know in their heads to be true: That fairness works both ways.
3. Being willing to do back-&-forth negotiation in order to work out solutions that are fair to both you & your child. Let me offer two reasons why I think a certain amount of this kind of give-&-take discussion is necessary & important to do.
Stage 2 kids really feel they have a right to argue their point of view & to try to organise life the way they'd like it.
Second, if you refuse to talk things over with kids & work them out, you run this risk: They'll do what they want to anyway, only they'll do it behind your back & lie about it if they have to. If kids can't negotiate with adults for what they feel is a fair shake, they'll start to see adults (& later, perhaps all authority) as something to get around.
Being open to kids' appeals & arguments definitely puts a demand on a parent. And at Stage 2, kids will need regular reminders that you'll listen to their point of view but won't tolerate disrespectful talk. But the long-term gains are well worth the short-term strains. You'll be helping them become honest, up-front people, & you'll be laying the foundation for honest communications.
You can challenge your child's Stage 2 reasoning by:
1. Appealing to love instead of fairness as a reason to do what you ask.
For example: Suppose you ask your ten-year-old daughter, Emily, to read a story to her four-year-old sister, Kristen, before dinner. Emily protests, "Why should I have to read a story to Kristen? I was just going to play. It's not fair!" You can say: "It's a matter of love, not fairness. Sometimes we do a thing because it's only fair, but sometimes we do it because it's the generous, loving thing to do. This is a time when we're asking you to do something out of love."
With time, Emily will come to understand that love is a different matter: It doesn't keep score, & it means putting aside for the moment what you want in order to do something for somebody else.
2. Teaching religious values that stress the importance of love.
3. Helping kids become more sensitive to the feelings of others.
4. Helping kids focus on living up to your expectations rather than on getting concrete rewards or avoiding punishment.
A young woman remembers: "I once stole some candy from a foodstore & was caught by the manager. He demanded to know my name, &, terrified, I told him. He phoned my parents, told them what I had done & sent me home. As I rode my bicycle home in the dark, I thought about the reception & probable spanking I would receive. Looking scared, I entered the house & was met by a rather calm father & mother. They stressed that they were very disappointed in me that I hadn't lived up to their expectations. They said they hoped I would never do it again, because it was wrong to take what didn't belong to me. My initial feeling when I was back in my room was that I had escaped with my life. But as I thought about it, I, too, was disappointed in myself. I resolved never to do it again, & didn't."
Had she been punished for her theft, the daughter would most likely have focused on the fact that she got caught. She might have resolved to be more careful next time, not more honest. But because of her parents' talk of their disappointed expectations she focused instead on their feelings & her feelings about herself.
We should also teach kids to feel good about themselves when they do live up to our expectations. With time, they'll come to value our approval as reward enough for good behaviour. A father remembers a time as a child when he came home & told his mother that other kids were getting money for their good report cards; what was she going to give him for his good grades? "Not money," she said, "but pride. I'm very proud of you for using the brains God gave you to do your best in school."
5. Nurturing a loving relationship that causes your child to care about your expectations.
6. Helping your child feel like a member of a family.
Try to establish a traditional "family work time" when you all pitch in on whatever jobs need doing.
Write out & post a list of responsibilities for your child. Responsibilities listed helps to make clear exactly what you expect, orders jobs in a logical sequence & gives you & your child a common reference point.
7. Extending love beyond your family, showing love & helping those in need.
8. Offering examples, including your own behaviour, of kind & caring actions.
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STAGE 3: "WHAT WILL PEOPLE THINK OF ME?"--HOW TO HELP YOUR CHILD THROUGH THE STAGES OF MORAL REASONING
Stage 3 reasoning emerges more slowly & lasts longer. In some kids, it starts to poke through during middle elementary-school years, & it's still their dominant stage during the early & mid-teens. It makes kids easier to deal with during childhood, but presents problems for both parents & kids in the teens.
A Profile of Stage 3 (About 10-14)
At Stage 3 of moral reasoning, kids:
1. Believe that:
* Being a good person means living up to your internalised image of what a "nice person" does;
* You should be a nice person so others will think well of you (social approval) & you can think well of yourself (self-esteem);
* You should treat others the way you would like them to treat you (the Golden Rule).
2. Can think of what others need, not just what's in it for them. When they put themselves in the other guy's shoes, they're capable of good deeds.
At Stage 1, kids believed that only one viewpoint was important, that of adult authority ("I should do what Mom & Dad say"). At Stage 2, kids brought together two perspectives, their own & that of another person ("Let's make a deal"). At Stage 3, kids can take the perspective of a whole group & think of themselves in relationship to it. "How does my behaviour affect the family?"
Younger children will sometimes do a "good deed," but usually they're secretly hoping you'll give them a little something for their efforts. At Stage 3, kids really believe that you should do favours for other people & not be concerned about getting a reward.
Ten-year-old Craig came home wearing a smile of satisfaction. "You look pretty happy," Craig's mother said.
"Yes!" Craig said, "I did a good deed on the way home from the store. I saw the meter maid walking down the street, then I noticed a car with an expired meter. I put a nickel in the meter so the person wouldn't get a ticket."
"That was real nice," his mother said.
"Well," Craig continued, "I thought of how the person would feel if he got a ticket. He'd come out of the store, see the ticket, & say, `Oh no, just what I need--a ticket!'"
"You feel pretty good that you helped somebody," his mother said.
"Yes," Craig sighed, "I do."
3. Are more forgiving & flexible in their moral judgments. They can consider extenuating circumstances; mercy tempers justice.
Here's an example. The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget asked kids what should be done if three children were each given a cookie & the littlest one accidentally dropped hers over the bridge & into the river. At Stage 2, kids said, "That's just too bad. They each got an equal share--the two who were careful shouldn't have to give any of theirs to the one who wasn't." At Stage 3, kids said it would be fair for the older ones to give a piece of their cookie to their little girl because "sometimes little kids don't know enough to be careful."
4. Have a concept of character. During the childhood years, unless adults & TV have made them cynics, they generally accept the idea that grown-ups are wise & good & that following their advice will help a kid grow up to be a good person.
Kids have a new faith that parents & teachers are wise & good & have their best interests at heart. Children at this stage do have a natural tendency to look at adults through rose-coloured glasses.
Kids have a need to trust. They need adults to look up to, & they need to believe that adults are usually good people. If we overwhelm kids with all the evil & chaos in the World (which television shows are capable of doing), we risk making them both cynical & insecure.
5. Think of a good relationship as one where people help & trust each other. They're capable of being more responsible family members because they can see things from a group perspective.
6. Are relatively easy to get along with as children, but during the early teens may seem to "regress." Feeling insecure about themselves, they become highly critical of others & seem to need peer approval to feel good about themselves.
7. Have a true conscience, but one with a terrible flaw: It's inner-directed & outer-directed at the same time. It's inner-directed because it has internal standards, but outer-directed because it depends on others to define what those standards should be.
In childhood, if parents make the effort, they can largely determine a child's moral standards. But in adolescence, the peer group moves in as a major competitor for a child's conscience. And because of their intense emotional needs, fragile self-concept, & immature moral reasoning, Stage 3 teens may have a tough time bucking peer pressure. "If everybody's doing it," they reason, "can it be so bad?" But they can, with help, learn to resist the pressure.
"If You Tell Lies, Nobody Will Believe You"
Fear of a parent's anger is no doubt the single biggest cause of kids' lies. So if you want your child to be truthful with you, try to minimise fear of your anger as an obstacle. You might try the following approach: "When you've done something you shouldn't, & you're afraid to tell me because you think I'll get mad, come to me & say, `I'm afraid you're going to be angry about this...' That will remind me not to get angry. Depending on what it is, you may have to do something to make up for what you've done. But I promise not to get angry, & I'll be very proud of you for telling the truth."
It's a good idea to repeat this assurance periodically; otherwise kids' old apprehensions are likely to return. And remember that you don't have to let kids off scot-free when they confess. The more important thing is to deal calmly with whatever your child owns up to, & to congratulate them for having the courage to tell the truth.
Not "Acting Their Age"
Kids like the rest of us, are usually a mix of stages. They usually have a dominant stage that they use most of the time, a new stage they're growing into & an old stage that they're gradually leaving behind. Different situations bring out different stages. When kids are tired, frustrated, or caught up completely in what they want, their lower-stage reasoning comes to the fore. That's why it's hard to have a good discussion when kids are upset. High emotion (& the same goes for adults) usually means low moral reasoning.
Appeal to them at their highest available stage. It also helps to know the lowest stage of reasoning that they still carry around in their heads. That way you won't be surprised when they "don't act their age."
Stage 3 in the Teens: A New Ballgame
Life gets easier for parents once kids are able to see the World from a Stage 3 perspective--until they hit the teens. Then they become moody, argumentative & sullen; their self-concept does a nose dive; manners you thought were well established hopelessly deteriorate; they acquire bad habits you never dreamed they'd have; they become obsessed with what other kids think of their every action & with every aspect of their appearance; they no longer seem to have a mind of their own; or they act without the slightest thought of the consequences.
The Intellectual Revolution that Teens Undergo
Intellectual changes occur as kids graduate from childhood to adolescence. Here's what happens:
1. At the formal level of thinking (as opposed to the "concrete" level of childhood thinking), kids can think about their own thoughts. They can go beyond the boundaries of their own concrete experiences. They can dream up possible values, possible life-styles, possible worlds they'd rather live in. They can stand back from life & take stock of it.
2. Kids become acutely aware of themselves as persons. They study themselves in the mirror. They can now put themselves in somebody else's shoes & look at themselves from that perspective. Said one 13-year-old boy, "Sometimes I imagine I'm on a video screen & other people are looking at me, & that influences how I act." Teenagers also imagine how their friends would react to your way of doing things. When Mark was 13 & we'd be having a family meeting, he'd shake his head, roll his eyes, & say, "I just keep thinking of what Matt McCarthy would think if he could hear this discussion!"
3. When teens become conscious of themselves, they're usually not happy with what they find. If your 13-year-old is typical, he or she will come down with a huge inferiority complex. "I hate the way I look!" is a nearly universal teen complex. Kids may even wish with all their heart that they could trade themselves in on a whole new model. Says 13-year-old Greg: "I don't like myself at all. I wish I were Jack Casey. He has everything--looks, charisma, sports ability, & he's popular with girls. I don't have any of those things!" Kids struggle with questions of identity: What kind of person am I? What kind of person do I want to be?
4. Acutely conscious of everything around them & feeling bad about themselves, teenagers become supercritics. They're critical of other kids at school. They're suddenly critical of the "childish" behaviour of their six-year-old brother. They're critical of the way you go about being parents. They're even critical of the way you dress or the way you keep or decorate your house. A friend says his 14-year-old daughter announced one day, "This living room looks like a clown's dressing room!" Other parents, compared to you, are nicer, more fair, more "with it." And at the same time that teens are raking you over the coals, they're supersensitive to any criticism themselves!
5. Because kids are feeling so vulnerable at this stage, they desperately need peer acceptance & approval. You can offer approval & should. But as one 13-year-old responded to his mother's reassurances, "No offence, Mom, but you just say that because you're my mother--you have to love me!" To feel good about themselves, many teenagers think they need to make it in the outside World. For them, that World is the peer group; it's their stamp of approval they fervently seek. They'll go to great lengths to get it. Once they're got it, they'll go to great lengths to avoid losing it.
"Being popular" is their big dream. They're sure that popularity is the way to true happiness.
"My greatest fear," says one teenager, "is being made a fool of."
These are some of the pressures that teens are under. Pressures that come from changes going on in their minds. Add to that all the changes going on in their bodies, plus the horrendous task of figuring out how to relate to the opposite sex. It's not hard to understand why teenagers are sometimes tough to live with. If we were under as much pressure, we'd be tough to live with, too.
(Editor: Knowing the power of the influence of peer groups & "coolness" on this age group certainly underscores the need for constant training & support to help our teens through this difficult stage.)
"Everybody's Doing It"
Stage 3 is a combination of inner direction & outer direction. It's inner-directed in the sense that Stage 3 kids believe they should live up to their inner ideal of a "good person." They don't need external threats or bribes as a reason to be good.
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If it had not been for a crooked groceryman, J.C. Penney might have become the owner of a grocery store rather than the owner of a dry goods chain & the U.S.' leading merchandiser.
When he was a teenager, Jim worked for a groceryman in Hamilton, Missouri. He liked the work & had plans to make a career of it. One night he came home & proudly told his family about his "foxy" employer. The grocer had a practice of mixing low quality coffee with the expensive brand & thus increasing his profit. Jim laughed as he told the story at the supper table.
His father didn't see anything funny about the practice. "Tell me," he said, "if the grocer found someone palming off an inferior article on him for the price of the best, do you think he would think they were just being foxy, & laugh about it?"
Jim could see his father was disappointed in him. "I guess not," he replied. "I guess I just didn't think about it that way."
Jim's father instructed him to go to the grocer the next day & collect whatever money was due him & tell the grocer he wouldn't be working for him any more. Jobs were not plentiful in Hamilton, but Mr. Penney would rather his son be unemployed than be associated with a crooked businessman.
J.C. Penney came that close to becoming a grocer.
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But in another, very important sense, Stage 3 is outer-directed. Stage 3 thinkers want to live up to their image of a good person, but where do they get that image? They get it from people outside themselves. They rely on others to help them decide what's right & wrong. (Editor: --Which is why our example to them & emphasis on God's Word for direction & strength is so important!)
In the childhood years, parents can readily supply a child's image of what a good person does & doesn't do. These moral standards become the "voice inside," the conscience of the Stage 3 child.
At 11, 12 or 13--it depends on the child, the family & the social environment just when it happens--the ballgame changes. Peers gain a new power. Parents have to fight for equal time.
Kids are caught in the middle. They get confused about what they think. Parents & the childhood conscience may say, "Nice people don't steal, good people obey the law & don't cheat." On the other hand, kids who are like them in a lot of ways, are stealing left & right & cheating on tests all the time. Can these things be so wrong if so many other people are doing them? (Editor: Rom.12:2; 2Cor.6:14,17!)
Sometimes teenagers deal with their confusion by sticking with the values they learned as a child. Sometimes they deal with it by rebelling against their parents & identifying totally with the peer group. Sometimes they swing back & forth between the two, or come down in between.
It's easy to understand how Stage 3 thinkers get started down the slippery slope of drugs & drinking. Intense emotional needs & immature moral reasoning conspire to make them highly susceptible to the pressure to conform.
How to Relate to Kids at Stage 3
You can both go with the flow & challenge Stage 3's moral reasoning if you:
1. Maintain a positive personal relationship with your child & a strong family life.
* Talk the language of Stage 3 to get cooperation. Here are some communications that appeal to Stage 3 kids at their development level:
a. "Wouldn't you like to be known for being a responsible (caring, sincere, honest) person?"
b. "Try to stand outside yourself for a minute & look at this from my point of view. What would you do if you were the parent?"
c. "I'm tired & grouchy right now, & I really need your full cooperation. Thank you."
d. "We need you to think of the whole family, not just yourself."
e. "Try to remember what it's like to be six. It's only natural for Helen to say things that sound silly to you at your age."
f. "We're trusting you to do what we've asked while we're gone. Can we depend on you to do that?"
g. "We expect you to be a responsible person, even when those around you aren't. We probably do expect more of you than some other parents expect of their kids. But we expect a lot of you because we think a lot of you."
* If there's a problem, try to solve it. Try to resist the temptation, which I think many of us experience, to let things slide in order to "keep the peace" with teenagers. Teenagers, of course, are quick to say, "You don't trust me!" when parents confront them about certain issues, such as where they've been, what they've been doing etc. If your child says that to you, you can reply: "Trust isn't blind; it's based on knowledge. I need to know where you are & what you're doing. You're on your way to being an adult, but you're not there yet & you can make some mistakes along the way that can hurt you very much. It's my job to help see that that doesn't happen."
* Spend time together & stay in touch physically as well as verbally. A little touching--a hug, a tousle of the hair, an arm around the shoulder--can go a long way toward easing tensions & keeping up a flow of good feelings.
2. Help your child develop a positive self-concept.
Says one young woman: "My mother was extremely critical of my sister & me when we were teenagers. It seemed as if we never did anything that met with her approval. All through our teens my sister & I lacked confidence in ourselves."
Another mother has a very different memory of her childhood: "The climate of our home was always that you could be anything you wanted to be. `Keep your eyes on stars & your feet on the ground' was a family slogan. No adversity could keep us from our goals. We were urged to think of our options. My mother taught us that it's not important what one has, only how one feels. Though we lived in a tenement, we never felt poor. We were rich in spirit, ability, caring & laughter."
Why is it so important to build a child's self-esteem during Stage 3? One mother said it well: "Kids who feel okay about themselves, who are at peace with themselves, are more likely to follow their own beliefs." They don't have to steal or pop pills just because others are doing it.
* Treat your child with love, firmness & respect.
* Don't compare your child with others. For example: "Your brother always got good grades, why can't you?" "Your sister never gave me any trouble--why do you have to?" When we make remarks like these, we may think we're telling kids, "You can do better." The message they usually hear, however, is, "You're inferior."
If you think your kids should be doing better in some ways than they are, say so directly--"I don't think your grades reflect your ability."
* Treat sons & daughters equally.
* Support kids' efforts to find friends who help them feel good about themselves.
* Help kids develop their interests & abilities.
* Help them break the put-down habit. Even though putting down peers & siblings is "normal" teenage behaviour, I don't think parents should just ignore it. I think it's very important to repeatedly make clear our disapproval of put-downs & to help kids understand all the reasons why such remarks are uncharitable, unappealing & self-defeating behaviour:
a. They reveal insecurity, people put others down because they don't feel confident themselves.
b. Even if other people laugh off a put-down, inside they don't like it, won't forget it, & will probably find a way to get even (often by paying you back when you're not expecting it).
c. Put-downs cause others to think less, not more, of you; kids who are well liked are ones who make others feel comfortable & good about themselves.
d. At the very time when they are most vulnerable & need most to feel good about themselves, teenagers are destroying each other's self-esteem through put-downs.
3. Teach your child moral values, especially the value of following their convictions.
Lots of parents unintentionally set the wrong kind of example when they cave in to kids' badgering that "other parents let their kids do such-&-such!" To set a good example, parents must show that they can resist pressure to conform to their peers.
Says a father of three teenagers: Whenever my kids say, `But Dad, everybody's doing it!' I simply say, `I don't believe in statistical morality. I don't decide what's right by what most people do.'"
You can say things like, "It's the kids who follow their convictions whom other kids admire. They definitely won't respect you if they think you're bending over backwards to please them."
Help your kids put popularity in perspective. Kids need to know that values change. Good looks, sports ability, or a bouncy personality may be highly valued by 14- & 15-year-olds, but they won't count for as much later on. Character, sensitivity to others, the ability to apply yourself & accomplish your goals--those are the qualities that become more & more important the older you get.
4. Balance independence & control. You may wonder, "How can you control a teenager who doesn't want to be controlled?" You can't. The challenge is to get kids to accept control willingly. That's why it's essential to think of independence & control at the same time. Give kids enough of the independence they desire so they'll accept the control they need.
* Base your authority on love.
* Say "yes" when you can but "no" when you have to, & acknowledge teenagers' desire to be more independent.
* Allow your children safe ways to exercise their independence: Give them the opportunity to make choices.
* Match control to your child's needs.
* Use indirect control. A busy, involved child or teenager is one whose life needs relatively little external control.
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STAGE 4: "WHAT IF EVERYBODY DID IT?"--HOW TO HELP YOUR CHILD THROUGH THE STAGES OF MORAL REASONING
Profile of a Stage 4 (About 15-19)
At Stage 4 of moral reasoning, kids:
1. Believe that being a good person includes carrying out their responsibilities to the social systems they feel part of.
At Stage 4, for the first time, kids understand human interdependence. They understand that we're all in the same boat, the same social system, & that "no man is an island." They realise that people, even people who are total strangers, have to cooperate with each other for the sake of the common good.
2. Believe that the reason to fulfil their social responsibilities is to help keep things going & to maintain self-respect as "somebody who meets my obligations."
At Stage 3, social approval was the tail that wagged the dog of conscience. "If other people thought well of me, then I could think well of myself."
At Stage 4, it's the other way around. Self-respect comes first. Now a person thinks, "If I do what's necessary to respect myself, other people will respect me, too. If I carry out my obligations, people will respect & admire that. If they don't, that's their problem."
Barbara, 19, expressed the priority Stage 4 places on self-respect. Asked why a promise should be kept, she answered, "If you don't keep a promise, you lose respect for yourself because you don't have integrity to keep your word. Other people will likewise lose their respect for you."
To be a "person of honour," someone whose word can be trusted, becomes a moral ideal of Stage 4.
3. Are more independent of peer pressure than they were at Stage 3, because being a responsible person is now a higher priority than pleasing people around them.
4. Can see the ripple effects of an action like stealing, cheating, or lying by thinking, "What if everybody did it?"
5. Care about people that they don't know personally as well as those they do know.
6. Believe that cooperation is essential for the survival of society.
Here are some ways to help kids see the big picture:
a. Encourage kids to learn about the wider World around them. Anything that raises kids' consciousness about what's happening outside their own circle of friends & family helps prepare the ground for Stage 4 thinking. Watching the news or, better yet, any of the shows that do in-depth reporting & analysis of important current events, or good videos can do that.
b. Talk with kids about social & moral issues that have a Stage 4 dimension. Otherwise, kids can learn information about society without necessarily developing higher-stage moral reasoning.
Help them understand how society is a web of individuals, interest groups & social institutions connected by countless crisscrossing strands; touch any part of the web & the whole thing quivers. Banks raise interest rates; fewer people take mortgages to buy homes; builders have less work; construction workers get laid off; the public bill for unemployment compensation goes up & so do taxes.
The idea isn't to give kids the "right answer" to tough moral dilemmas, but to get them to look at all sides of an issue, & to examine the logical implications & social consequences of taking this or that position.
Says a mother who had had a series of conversations with her 15-year-old son about difficult moral dilemmas:
"Through these dilemma discussions, I find I have a new respect for Marty's thinking. I have always felt close to this boy--I've shared a great deal with him--but around these dilemmas I've talked with him as one adult to another on issues which have no easy answer. It has strengthened our communications at a time when I appreciate that, & when he may need it, too. And I find that I trust his judgment."
7. Have a need for a creed that gives them answers to questions about life, society & their role in it.
Teenagers, says psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, have a deep need to "redefine their identity" as they approach the challenge of being an adult. They wonder, "What should my role in society be? Where do I fit in? And what kind of society do I want to fit into?"
They have a hunger for ideology, a need for a creed. They seek a system of ideals & beliefs that will guide their search for identity, dispel their confusion & enable them to sort out what's good & bad in their lives & society. (Editor: God's Word!)
This explains the fiery moral idealism, the religious fervor & the political zeal that frequently burst forth in the mid to late teens. Kids at this stage of development can imagine a better World, one that's much more appealing to them than the mess they think we've made of this one. Sometimes their idealism takes the form of a "we've got all the answers" attitude & simple solutions to complex problems.
If people don't develop to Stage 4, we end up with politicians who put special interests above the common good, businessmen who put profits ahead of people & citizens whose moral vision & sense of responsibility stop at their doorstep. They lack the perspective to see the whole, to see that all of our lives our linked, & to see that each of us has a duty to care about the welfare of others.
8. Understand what it means to be a good citizen.
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STAGE 5: "RESPECT THE RIGHTS OF EVERY PERSON"--HOW TO HELP YOUR CHILD THROUGH THE STAGES OF MORAL REASONING
When you hear a person described as "a man (or woman) of principle," you're probably hearing about somebody who's at Stage 5 of moral reasoning.
Where Stage 4 Falls Short
As long as the social system that Stage 4 believes in is working to benefit people & protect their rights, Stage 4 is a perfectly good way of moral reasoning. But what happens if the system isn't working for everybody's benefit?
What if you consider yourself a patriotic citizen, but your country is waging a war you think is wrong, & the system says, "Stand up for the flag"?
One way is to define the problem out of existence. A Stage 4 reasoner could decide, "I'll trust in the authorities. The system must be right." You figure if the system is good, its decisions must be good. The voice of the system becomes the voice of your conscience.
Or you might think the system is wrong in this case but you should go along anyway. "My country, right or wrong." Or you might, at Stage 4, decide to drop out of your present system & get a new one. You denounce "American imperialism" & join a radical leftist group. But if you swore the same kind of allegiance to your new system that you did to your old, you'd still be reasoning at Stage 4.
At Stage 4, the rights of individuals & the voice of personal conscience are less important than the smooth functioning of the system as a whole.
At Stage 5 it doesn't say, "My country, right or wrong." It says instead, "When my country's wrong, I must stand up for the right."
It's important to expose kids to other examples of people who have tried to live their moral principles. Once in awhile a movie comes along, such as "Chariots of Fire," "A Man for All Seasons," "Lady Jane" or "Brother Sun," that presents an inspiring portrait of moral integrity. In "A Man for All Seasons," Sir Thomas More stands virtually alone, despite imprisonment & threat of death, in his refusal to swear to the oath declaring Henry VIII the head of the Church of England.
A book entitled, "When Dreams & Heros Died," by Carnegie Foundation Fellow Arthur Levine, takes the measure of the moral climate in which young people today are preparing for their adult lives. Levine studied college graduates of the 1970s. He concluded that they have a "Titanic mentality." They think the ship of society is headed for disaster, but they want to go first class. Their goal in life is not to better the World as they find it, but to make a lot of money, have status & live well.
Our children should understand that morality is the subordination of selfishness. They should know that it can be tough to be good in a World that says looking out for number one is the smart way to go. And they should know that living out their moral principles may be the toughest challenge they'll face in their lives.
Ten Ways to Start a Conversation with Your Child--CONCERNS THAT CUT ACROSS AGES & STAGES
1. How was today on a scale of 1 to 10 (where 1 is terrible & 10 is terrific)? What made it that way?
2. What was the high point (low point) of your day?
3. Tell me the good news & the bad news about school today (work today, practice this week, camp this Summer).
4. What's a thought or feeling you had today?
5. What happened today that you didn't expect?
6. (If your child seems preoccupied) I'm wondering what you're thinking about. Would you be willing to talk to me about it?
The following conversation starters may be especially helpful if you haven't seen your child for a period of time:
7. Tell me about something good that's happened since the last time we talked.
8. What's something you've done recently that you're proud of?
9. What's on your mind these days?
10. What are you looking forward to these days?
Do Things With Kids
You have your best conversations with kids when you're doing something together that you both enjoy. Said a mother who has raised three children: "I think it's very important to spend time with children individually. I always tried to do that. We used to take a walk. And we'd have long conversations when we were doing the dishes. That's a good time for talking; your hands are busy. It's a lot easier to talk in a situation like that than if somebody sits you down & says, `Now let's have a talk.'"
Meaningful conversation with kids depends less on using the "right techniques" than it does on having a good relationship.
Food can be a good facilitator of communication. One father says he & his teenage son have some of their best conversations over a sandwich or a pizza after they've seen a movie or play together. A mother says she connects with her teenage daughter when they go out to lunch together.
Ask Kids What They Want to Talk About--CONCERNS THAT CUT ACROSS AGES & STAGES
An educational psychologist, Torey Hayden, reported the results of her study of what several hundred children & teenagers really wish their parents would talk with them about. Eight topics emerged as kids' major concerns:
1. Family matters: When there's a problem in the family, kids don't want to be in the dark, wondering what the problem is. They want their parents to tell them. And when there are decisions to be made that affect them, they'd like a chance to talk it over.
2. Controversial issues. What is sex like? Why do drugs make you high? Is it ever right to tell a lie? Kids have a lot of questions like these that they wish that parents would talk to them about. They don't like it when parents say, "You're too young," or "It's too hard to explain."
3. Emotional issues. Kids simply wanted their parents to talk about their feelings in an open & sincere way--especially that they loved them.
4. The big whys. A six-year-old said, "I wish they'd talk to me about God. I want to know why people are made. And how come they fight."
5. The future. Many kids approaching adolescence want to talk about what it's like to be a teenager.
6. Current events.
7. Personal interests. Kids said they wished their parents would show interest in what they do & like (their hobbies, sports, friends).
8. Parents themselves. Kids wonder how we behaved & felt as children. They especially like to hear stories--about a time we were scared or a time we got in trouble, for example--that reveal our emotional side or human failings.
Said one ten-year-old boy who was interviewed: "All I really care about is that we talk about something. That's all that matters."
Talk at Bedtime--CONCERNS THAT CUT ACROSS AGES & STAGES
If you're having trouble with your teenager, try a bedside conversation. When the lights are out, barriers tend to fall away. It's easier to speak the language of the heart.
The Family Dinner Hour--CONCERNS THAT CUT ACROSS AGES & STAGES
Here are some things you can try to make dinner a time of communication:
1. Establish "manners for talking" as well as manners for eating, & review them at the beginning of the meal. The quality of dinner conversation can be significantly better if you call to mind three manners for talking:
* Don't interrupt.
* Listen to & look at the person who's talking.
* No put-downs.
2. Open the meal with a prayer that helps to set a tone.
3. Instead of free-for-all conversation, have a topic, for example:
* What did you do today (this week) that you feel good about?
* What was the best thing that happened today (this week)? Or: What stood out for you?
* What was something you learned today?
* What's a way you've helped someone recently?
* What's a way someone has helped you recently?
* What's a new experience you had this week?
* What's something you did today that you never did before?
* What's something you're thinking about but haven't told anybody about yet?
4. Try one-word topics. Possibilities: Television, movies, friends, school, careers, teachers, parents, sports, heroes, clothes, dating, love, marriage & God.
Open-ended subjects are a good way to find out what kids are thinking.
5. Vary the format. It's often good to go around the table, so that nobody dominates the discussion & everybody, even a quiet child, has a say.
6. Play "Circle Questions." Go around the table, each family member asking a question of the person on the left (any question, with the provision that the person may pass on the first one & request another). Circle questions help parents & kids get better at asking good questions in conversation & bring out a lot of information in a short time.
7. Build feelings of positive regard. Discuss with kids why put-downs don't help family communication. The best way to get kids to stop saying negative things is to create a positive atmosphere. One way to do that is to start dinner conversation with "appreciation time." Ask, "What's something that somebody in the family did for you recently that you appreciated?"
8. Discuss moral dilemmas. We've found the advice columns like "Dear Abby" to be a good source of real-life moral dilemmas that are both challenging to the mind & easy on the stomach.
One of us reads the letter aloud but not the advice. Only after we all say what advice we'd give & why, do we read Abby's. (Editor: Or you could discuss questions people ask & how you could best answer. For a project, some could look up the answers in the Bible.)
9. Discuss a personal problem. The purpose of the discussion is for you to put your heads together & brainstorm possible ways of dealing with the problem.
Many times a brother or sister, who may have recently gone through a similar problem, can come up with ideas that parents might not think of.
The Direct Approach--CONCERNS THAT CUT ACROSS AGES & STAGES
You may have a naturally quiet youngster who's hard to draw out. Or your once-talkative son or daughter may suddenly retreat into a cocoon of privacy while they work through the growing pains of the teens.
If your most imaginative efforts to get your child to talk to you aren't bringing satisfying results, try the direct approach. Tell your child that it's very important to you to be in touch. You can say, for example:
"Look, I don't want to be always pressuring you to talk to us when you don't want to. I want to respect your privacy. But it helps me a lot if I know what's going on in your life. I really need to feel in touch. Parents are like that--they worry if they don't know what's going on with kids. Can you understand that feeling?...So I'd really appreciate it if you'd talk to me or your father when you're in the mood. Okay?"
Sometimes you can strike up a conversation by saying with a smile, "Ask me a question."
Taking turns asking questions can also be a way of catching up on each other's lives if you've been out of touch with your child for awhile. Mutual questioning balances the interaction & promotes real sharing. Just as there can be too little communication in a family, there can also be too much. People need psychological rests from each other, alternating cycles of privacy & contact. Remember that kids, just like grown-ups, will have times when they just don't feel like talking & have secrets they want to keep.
Create a Climate for Communication--CONCERNS THAT CUT ACROSS AGES & STAGES
Here are four destructive patterns to try to avoid:
1. The Boot Camp Approach. Parents routinely order kids around in a way they would never dream of treating another adult.
* Shut your mouth!
* Get over here!
* Do what I say!
* Because I said so!
2. Threats. A close ally of the Boot Camp Approach:
* You'll do it if you know what's good for you.
* Hit your brother one more time, & I'll smack you good!
* Don't make me lose my temper, young lady...
* Your father will hear about this when he gets home.
3. Put-Down. Imagine your response if another adult said any of the following to you:
* The trouble with you is you're just plain lazy!
* Your manners are atrocious!
* You're acting like a baby!
* How many times do I have to tell you not to do that?
* I've had all I can take of you for one day!
4. Sarcasm. Sarcasm is saying things you don't mean. Common examples of the kind of sarcasm that is used with children (the real message is in parentheses):
* Nice going (you jerk)!
* Thanks a lot (for nothing).
* That's great, just great (awful, just awful).
* You're a big help (headache)!
One way to try to keep negative interactions in check is to keep score. Divide a sheet of paper in half & head each column plus & minus. Every time you & your child have a positive interaction, make a mark on the plus side. Every time you have a negative interaction, make a mark on the minus side. You'll find that just keeping track helps you increase the positives & decrease the negatives.
Most negative interchanges come when we're in the role of trying to control our kids--trying to get them to do something or stop doing something. It's absolutely essential to have times when you're not in that role.
Educator John Holt wrote: "Too often family members take out on each other all the pain & frustration of their lives that they don't dare take out on anyone else."
A family counselor, 20 years in the business, began his workshops on parent-child communications by saying, "I've sometimes treated my own son worse than any enemies & often not as nice as my friends." No matter how much we know & how much we try, all of us fail many times. (Editor: Thank God for Jesus! He never fails!)
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Fairness With Teenagers--THE FAIRNESS APPROACH TO CONFLICT
Fairness is crucial in the teens. As one mother said, "Everything becomes an issue!"
STEPS IN A SIT-DOWN FAIRNESS DISCUSSION
Part 1: Achieving Mutual Understanding
1. (Editor: Pray!) State the purpose of the discussion (to solve the problem fairly).
2. State your intent to get both points of view out on the table.
3. Describe the problem as you see it.
4. Ask for your child's feelings about the problem.
5. Paraphrase your child's feelings to show understanding.
6. Ask your child to paraphrase your feelings.
Part 2: Solving the Problem
7. Make a list of possible solutions to the problem.
8. Write an agreement stating the solutions you both think are fair.
9. Plan a follow-up discussion to see how your agreement is working.
Part 3: Following Through
10. Have a follow-up discussion to evaluate your plan.
If a Habit Is Hard to Break
Here's a simple way to make even a small improvement in behaviour concretely visible to you & your child. Present the idea of a chart to your child. Explain that it will be a secret between the two of you, unless or until your child wants to reveal it. At the end of each day, you'll record on the chart the number of times the problem behaviour occurred. The goal: To show a decrease in the behaviour by the end of the week.
Questions Parents Ask About the Fairness Approach--THE FAIRNESS APPROACH TO CONFLICT
Q: What should you do if you make an agreement, but your child doesn't keep it?
A: Let kids know that you expect them to keep their fairness agreement. There are several ways to do that:
1. Remind them of their agreement. It's the fate of the parents of adolescents to have to issue endless reminders; we might as well accept it & issue them calmly.
2. Ask them to make a self-reminder. Suggest: "How about making a little sign or note to remind yourself & putting it where you'll see it?"
3. Have a follow-up discussion to evaluate how your agreement is working. Sit down with the kids & get them to think about the commitment they made & whether they're keeping it. Don't start out by reading them the law. Just ask, "What was our agreement?"
4. Enforce the agreement. If kids refuse outright to honour their agreement, you'll have to enforce it. This is more likely to happen with younger children.
For example: Anthony, five, came inside from playing. Knowing he didn't like to take a bath, his mother offered him a choice (which had worked before): "Would you like to take a bath right now or after playing for an hour?" "After playing," Anthony said. But when the hour was up, Anthony said he didn't want to take his bath.
Mother: Anthony, what agreement did we make?
Anthony: I want to change my mind. I want two hours to play.
Mother: Is that fair?
Anthony: Yes.
Mother: Is it fair to break a promise?
Anthony: Yes.
Mother: Would you want me to break a promise I made to you?
Anthony: I didn't really say the word "promise."
Mother: Okay, mister, it's time for your bath (calmly picking him up & carrying him crying to the tub).
5. Revise the agreement to include "fair consequences" for not keeping it. "A punishment" is something a parent does to you. "A consequence" is something you do to yourself.
Try to keep the consequence logically related to the offense. By getting kids to agree in advance upon fair consequences as part of the "contract," you'll have an easier time enforcing it if that becomes necessary ("What did we agree was a fair consequence for not keeping the agreement?"). You won't have to feel like a "meanie," as many parents do when they impose a unilateral punishment. When kids break a rule for which there's an agreed-upon consequence, they are choosing, by their behaviour, to accept that consequence.
Q: What if you're having a problem that immediately erupts into an argument when you try to talk about it?
A: Sometimes a subject may be such a sore point, rubbed raw by so many past arguments, that it's very hard to discuss it rationally. In that case, you might try writing a letter to your child & leaving it on his or her pillow.
A thoughtful, heartfelt letter can be a great door-opener when a tough-to-talk-about problem comes between parents & kids (or, for that matter, between husbands & wives).
Q: What if you don't feel you can compromise?
A: Remember, a fairness approach is a spirit of fairness in how you handle conflicts with kids. It's not a rigid formula for 50-50 compromise. Point out to kids that you're trying your best to be fair, trying to grant them as much independence as you can while still being a responsible parent.
Q: Can't you ever just lay down the law?
A: Parents & kids would both go crazy if they had to negotiate everything. There are lots of times when you can & should use your parental authority to simply invoke a rule ("To bed by 8:30 p.m."), state a request ("We need everybody's help with the dishes"), or give a command ("Pick up your toys"). Kids will generally accept your assertions of authority as being fair as long as you give a reason when one is needed, grant them a fair hearing when they want one, & try to work out fair solutions when real conflicts arise.
Be clear when you need simple obedience or cooperation: "This isn't a time for negotiating; this is a time to do what you're asked."
Q: What if your child does something you think deserves a consequence even though you haven't agreed ahead of time on a consequence for that behaviour?
A: First, make sure your child understands how you feel & why. Then ask, "What do you think would be a fair consequence for what you did?" Kids should learn that when they do something wrong, they should try to set things right--& there are three ways to do that:
1. Apologise, & say why they're sorry ("I'm sorry, Mom, for upsetting you by acting the way I did");
2. Promise to try to do better ("The next time you pick me up at Sammy's, I'll come without getting mad");
3. Show they're sorry by offering to do something positive to make amends.
I think it's a good idea to teach kids to ask, "How can I make up for it?" when they've done something to hurt or upset another person. (Remind them to say that, if they forget.)
Asking kids to choose fair consequences for their misbehaviour requires them to think about what they've done & so develops their moral reasoning. It also avoids the problems of parent-imposed punishment, such as kids feeling mad at you (instead of sorry for their offense) or free to do it again after they've "paid the price." Work toward getting kids to accept more of the responsibility for thinking about what's fair when they've done something wrong. They're more likely to improve their behaviour if they have to "punish themselves" when they misbehave.
How to Use the Fairness Approach in Family Meetings
A family meeting is a round table discussion involving all members of the family who are concerned about or affected by a particular issue. A family meeting doesn't have to deal just with "problems"; you can use it to plan time together (a Sunday, a work project, a vacation trip) & to try to prevent problems from occurring ("How can we make this be a good week?"). But when family problems do arise, a sit-down discussion in a spirit of fairness is often the sanest way to handle them--& one that helps kids grow morally at the same time.
A Safe Way to Begin Family Meetings
Laying the Groundwork
1. Choose a practical problem that you think your family can handle in a first meeting. (Possibilities: Morning hassles, chores, bedtime, TV policy, making meals more pleasant, kids getting along, kids wanting to be with their friends instead of going on family outings.)
2. Decide who's involved in the problem, tell them you'd like to discuss it to try to find a solution that's fair to everyone & set a time to meet that's agreeable to all.
3. Take individual soundings before the family meeting. How do your kids feel about the problem? How does your spouse feel? Don't try to solve the problem in these conversations--just try to listen & understand.
4. Do something before the meeting that generates good family feelings. If you're going to talk right after dinner, for example, you might do "appreciation time" during dinner.
5. If, for any reason, the scheduled meeting time arrives & the family atmosphere isn't good, postpone the meeting. Find another time when you'll have a better chance of a successful meeting.
Conducting a Family Meeting
1. Begin the meeting by stating the purpose. For example: "School mornings have been a real hassle lately. By the time I get you kids out the door, I'm in a bad mood. I'd like to talk about this problem & see if we can find some solutions that are fair to everybody. Okay?"
2. Set ground rules for discussion. Very important. "I'd like this to be a positive discussion where we listen to each other & respect each other's opinions. The purpose is not to blame anybody; it's to solve the problem. First, we'll go around & each tell how we feel about the problem. Then we'll each suggest ways to solve the problem & try to come to an agreement. No interruptions & no put-downs. Agreed?"
3. After the ground rules are understood, go around the table, giving each person a chance to state his or her viewpoint about the problem without interruption. (You don't always have to follow this round-the-horn format, but in the beginning it's a good way to draw everybody into the meeting & keep the parents from doing all the talking.)
4. When all have stated their viewpoint, summarise what each has said, so everyone feels heard & understood (don't make any judgments).
5. Go around the table, asking each person for suggestions for solving the problem. Write them down. Again, no interruptions.
6. Read back the proposed solutions.
7. Discuss proposals until all agree on solutions that are fair. (Avoid voting, which produces winners & losers.) Make a list of who will do what & when. For example:
a. Jamie & Laura will lay out their clothes the night before a school day, starting tonight.
b. They will get dressed right away when they get up.
c. Dad will help with breakfast (cook the eggs).
d. Mom won't yell, but will remind everybody of the agreement if they forget.
8. To show everybody's commitment, sign the agreement &, if you like, post it for easy reference.
9. Set a time for a follow-up meeting to see how your plan is working.
10. Have a follow-up discussion. Start positively by recognising progress on the problem even if there's still room for improvement.
Try to keep the pace of the meeting brisk & the length under a half hour; long, drawn-out meetings put everybody off. After you've led a few meetings, rotate responsibility for leading the meeting (you'll have to coach kids through the steps the first time they do it).
You don't always have to go through such a structured process. Family meetings can be as short as five to ten minutes. Once your family gets the hang of them, you can even use them as a quick way to restore calm & reason when things start to get out of control. If a day is getting off to a bad start, for example, a short family meeting can get it back on the track ("How can we each help this be a good day?").
How Do Family Meetings Aid Moral Development?
First of all, they challenge kids to take the perspective of the group--to think of what's good for the family as a whole, not just for themselves.
Second, such discussions bolster kids' self-respect by giving them a say in family life, a forum where their ideas are heard & respected.
Finally, by sharing responsibility for solving family problems, kids are sharing responsibility for the making of a good family life.
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THE ASK-DON'T-TELL METHOD OF REASONING WITH KIDS
Get your child to do the reasoning by asking questions instead of making statements. When we ask kids questions--"What will happen if you keep that up?" "How would you feel if somebody did that to you?" "What am I thinking?"--we capture their attention & get the wheels turning. A question, by its very nature, requires a child to think.
But there's a time to tell & a time to question. Let's look at the times when it makes sense to ask instead of tell.
Ask Questions that Make Kids Aware of Their Behaviour
A simple "What are you doing?" is often enough to get kids to stop what they shouldn't be doing or start what they should be doing.
1. Parent: What are you doing?
Child: Interrupting.
2. Parent: What are you doing?
Child: Jumping on the furniture.
If "What are you doing?" doesn't get results, you can add, "What should you be doing?"
Parent: What are you doing?
Child: Reading a book.
Parent: What should you be doing?
Child: Getting ready for bed.
Ask Questions That Help Kids Remember the Rule
Suppose your four-year-old son comes into the kitchen, right before dinner, & says, "I want a cookie." How should you respond? You could simply say, "No, it's too near dinner." But what if your child persisted & said again, "I want a cookie!"? You could stick to your guns & repeat: "No cookie before dinner."
At that point your child might escalate the power struggle by crying or throwing a tantrum. Depending on your stamina, you might hold the line or give in. If you held the line, you'd probably face more crying. If you gave in, you'd face many more requests in the future for cookies before dinner.
What else could you do besides fighting a war of wills or folding under pressure? Instead of telling your child the rule, you could ask questions:
Parent: What's the rule about cookies before dinner?
Child: No cookies before dinner. But I want a cookie!
Parent: When may you have a cookie?
Child: After dinner. But I want one now.
Parent: But what's the rule about cookie before dinner?
Child: Oh, all right!
By questioning, you don't have to impose the rule; kids come up with the rule themselves. And that helps to "depersonalise" the issue. It's not you they're banging up against. It's the rule that says, "No cookie before dinner."
Some more examples:
1. Parent: What's the rule about picking up when friends are visiting?
Child: Do it together before they leave.
2. Parent: What's the rule about playing ball?
Child: Outside, not in the house.
3. Parent: What's the consequence for hitting?
Child: Sit in the chair for 15 minutes. (Editor: Reviewing Scriptures or reading something appropriate, not daydreaming.)
Sometimes questioning reveals that kids aren't very clear about what the rule is. In that case, our job is obviously to teach the rule. To do that effectively, I recommend these three steps:
1. State the rule.
2. Ask your child to repeat the rule.
3. Ask your child to apply the rule--either to the present situation or a hypothetical situation--to see if he really understands it.
For example:
Norman: Mom, I wanna watch "Take a Look" but Billy keeps changing it to some other show!
Mom: What's the rule about conflicts over TV?
Norman: I don't know...talk it over?
Mom: Remember the last time this happened? You said you'd turn the set off until you agree about what to watch. Okay, what's the rule?
Norman: I know, I know.
Mom: Well, you forgot it once. I want you to tell me, what's the rule?
Norman: (big sigh) If you're having a fight, turn it off till you agree what to watch.
Mom: Okay, so what should you do right now?
Norman: Turn it off till we agree what to watch. (Editor: Of course, it's best to never let your children watch un-previewed TV alone.)
How to Question So Kids Will Listen
We respond differently to the same question, depending on how it's asked. To maximise your chance of a positive response to your questions, I recommend that you:
* Keep your voice at normal or lower-than-normal volume.
* Speak in a respectful tone of voice rather than a demanding or threatening one.
* Ask only one question at a time (adults often ask a child several questions at once, which can be confusing).
What Should You Do If Questioning Doesn't Work?
Repeat the question. If you still don't get an answer, say firmly, "You're not responding to my question. Answer my question, please."
If you still didn't get a response, you could say, "The next time you ask me a question, do you want me to respond?"
Use Questions to Get Cooperation when There's No Established Rule
Not every problem situation that comes up is covered by a rule. Use questions to help kids see that it's in their own interest to cooperate. Let's assume you've taken your five-year-old to the playground, & now it's time to go home. Your child says, "I don't wanna go!" You point out that it's late & you've been there a long time. Your child says, "We have not been here a long time! I hardly got to do anything!" You feel your blood pressure rising, grab your child by the hand & announce with a tug, "We're going home!" Your child starts crying. You wonder why you bothered to come to the playground in the first place.
Here's how questioning could help your child see that he's hurting himself by not obeying:
Parent: (bending down & speaking in a low, firm voice) Look, if you cry & make a big fuss when it's time to leave, will I want to come to the playground when you ask the next time?
Child: No.
Parent: So what should you do now?
Child: Leave.
Parent: Right. Then I'll have a good feeling about bringing you again.
Questions that Go Beyond Self-Interest
Here are some other situations where a simple question can orient kids toward others' needs:
Situation: Eight-year-old Lester is dawdling instead of getting ready for school.
Question: "How can you help this be a good morning instead of a grumpy morning?"
Situation: As dinner is being served, the kids start calling each other names.
Question: "How can you guys make this a pleasant meal instead of a tense one?"
Use Questions to Help Kids Think of Consequences
One day the bus driver reported to John's parents that John (age seven) & two other boys had been throwing stones into the road as cars were driving by.
John admitted throwing stones. His father said, "John, what do you think could happen if you throw stones while cars are driving by?"
"The driver could stop & yell at us." John then asked in a small voice, "Are you going to spank me, Daddy?"
"No," his father said, "but I think we should talk about this some more. What would happen if you threw a stone & frightened a driver & caused him to go off the road?"
"He'd get hurt."
"How would you feel if you were the driver, John?" his mother asked.
"I might hurt all over with a broken leg if I hit a tree."
"And how could you prevent that from happening to a driver?" his mother said.
John looked down. "By not throwing stones," he answered.
There was a short silence. Then John's father said, "You know, John, your mother & I feel very bad that you were throwing stones. We want to hear from you what you intend to do about this situation."
"I won't throw stones in the road again," John said. He kept his promise.
John's parents relied on questioning, plus a direct statement of their concern, to help him understand why throwing stones at cars was wrong & resolve not to do it again. Consider some less effective ways they might have handled the same situation & the moral lesson John might have learned in each case:
Parent's response: (Shaming) "Don't you know any better than that? Throwing stones at cars is something we'd expect from a three-year-old!"
John's Moral Learning: "Mom & Dad don't think very much of me. I guess I am pretty dumb."
Parent's Response: (Embarrassment) "What kind of home will people think you come from?"
John's Moral Reasoning: "I should be worried about what the neighbours think--not about what could happen to a driver."
Parent's Response: (Intimidation) "Do you realise what could happen if a policeman saw you doing that?"
John's Moral Reasoning: "If I'm gonna throw stones at cars, I'd better be sure nobody's looking."
Parent's Response: (Punishment) "You lose all TV for a week. I hope this will be a lesson to you."
John's Moral Reasoning: "I'd better not throw stones again if I know what's good for me."
John's parents used none of these approaches. Rather than tell John why his actions were wrong, they asked a series of questions that got him to do the thinking about the possible consequences of his behaviour. Rather than forbid him ever to do it again, they got him to make his own statement of the right course of action in the future.
You can also stretch kids' ability to imagine the consequences of their actions by asking, "What if everybody did it?"
Does Questioning Work with Teenagers?
The teens, as we've seen, are a time of heightened consciousness--of oneself & others. Part of a teenager's sharpened awareness is an awareness of how you go about being a parent. And once they realise how you try to influence or relate to them, they may resist what they see as your "strategies"!
Parents who do a lot of bouncing back what their kids say to them sometimes find their teenager saying things like, "Don't use that `listening' stuff on me!"
Suppose you try the questioning approach with your teenage son or daughter & they say: "Just tell me what you think. That's what you want me to know anyway, right?" Level with them, "Look, I'm not playing games. I do have feelings about this, & I'll tell you what they are if you want to know. But I'm asking you questions because I want you to think about this--because I want you to really think about what might happen. I'm trying to get you to use your best judgement." Teenagers appreciate straight talk. So give it to them.
Ask Questions That Help Kids Take Another Point of View
Nothing is more important in moral development than being able to put yourself in the other guy's shoes. People steal from others, cheat them, demean them, ignore their cries for help, & do violence to them at least partly because they don't put themselves in the place of the victim. The purpose of questioning is not to leave a child feeling guilty but to sensitise him to the feelings of others in a way that will motivate appropriate moral behaviour.
How to Get Kids to Take Your Point of View
Situation: You call your kids to dinner & they don't come.
Question: "How do you think I feel when I work hard to fix a nice dinner, & you don't come when you're called?"
Situation: You ask your 16-year-old daughter to help with the Saturday housework, & you get complaints & protests.
Question: "If you were giving advice to parents on how to get their kids to help around the house, what would you tell them?"
Situation: You've asked your eight-year-old son to pick up his room, & a half hour later it's still a mess.
Question: "What am I thinking?"
Ask Kids to Take the Viewpoint of People They Don't Know
Some examples:
"If you were the janitor, how would you feel about having to remove all the wads of gum that kids stick under the desks?"
"If you were the bus driver, how would you feel about kids cutting up when you were trying to drive?"
"If you were a store owner, how would you feel about shoplifters?"
How to Get Better at Asking Kids Questions
Convert your would-be statement into a question. You can practice this "instant conversion" technique by doing the following exercise.
Here is a list of assorted statements that parents commonly make to kids in various situations.
1. Instead of saying...It's time to go--get your shoes & jacket on.
Ask...It's time to go--what should you do to get ready?
2. Instead of saying...That kind of language around the house is totally unacceptable!
Ask...How do I feel about that kind of language around the house?
3. Instead of saying...No, you can't stay out after dark--you know that.
Ask...What's the rule about staying out after dark?
4. Instead of saying...If you keep fighting about the TV, it's going to go off!
Ask...What will happen if you keep fighting about the TV?
5. Instead of saying...Don't throw the ball in the house--you could break something or hit somebody.
Ask...What are two reasons why you shouldn't throw the ball in the house?
6. Instead of saying...I asked you to turn down the record player!
Ask...What did I ask you to do?
7. Instead of saying...Put the wet towel on the rack.
Ask...What if everybody left their wet towels lying around on the bathroom floor?
8. Instead of saying...You're not cooperating the least bit!
Ask...Are you cooperating?
9. Instead of saying...I don't think you guys are going to be ready when it's time to leave.
Ask...What am I thinking?
10. Instead of saying...If you don't get your pajamas on now, you're going to miss your bedtime snack.
Ask...Would you like to get your pajamas on now or miss your bedtime snack?
11. Instead of saying...You're causing a lot of tension by your whining & complaining!
Ask...What are the effects of your whining & complaining on the rest of the family?
12. Instead of saying...You've been on the phone for more than an hour--it's time to get off!
Ask...What's the rule about using the phone?
13. Instead of saying...Remember your manners?
Ask...What are you forgetting?
14. Instead of saying...It's 6:30--you said you'd be home from the movies by 5:30!
Ask...Why am I upset?
15. Instead of saying...Tell your sister you're sorry you hit her & promise you won't go it again.
Ask...What should you do after you've hurt someone?
16. Instead of saying...I get so aggravated when you get out of bed after I've put you in!
Ask...How do I feel when you get out of bed after I've put you in?
17. Instead of saying...Share some of your popcorn with your little brother.
Ask...How would you feel if your brother was eating popcorn & wouldn't share any with you?
18. Instead of saying...Stop fighting & take turns!
Ask...How can you solve this problem?
19. Instead of saying...You didn't do what you were asked.
Ask...Did you do what you were asked?
20. Instead of saying...Sarcasm won't get you anywhere.
Ask...How can you take a more positive approach to this situation?
21. Instead of saying...You're making this a miserable morning!
Ask...How can you help make this a happy morning instead of a miserable one?
22. Instead of saying...Any more bickering about the car & nobody gets to use it.
Ask...What will happen if you continue bickering about the car?
23. Instead of saying...When you make demands instead of asking nicely, I don't feel like doing anything for you.
Ask...When you make demands instead of asking nicely, how do I feel?
24. Instead of saying...Cover your mouth when you sneeze.
Ask...What should you do when you sneeze?
25. Instead of saying...You can help by bringing in some of the groceries.
Ask...How can you be helpful in this situation?
26. Instead of saying...That should teach you not to hit when you don't get your way.
Ask...What lesson can you learn from this experience?
27. Instead of saying...I'm at my wit's end--I don't know what to do with you!
Ask...What would you do if you were the parent?
28. Instead of saying...I get terribly worried when I think you're going to parties where there are going to be a lot of drugs.
Ask...What do you understand to be my feelings?
29. Instead of saying...I've tried reasoning with you about this, but we don't seem to get anywhere.
Ask...If your friend & her mother were having this problem, what advice would you give them?
Questioning, of course, doesn't always produce wonderful results. It's a tool in a parent's repertoire, like any other. And when it doesn't work, we need to be ready to try something else (such as a straightforward explanation, a fairness discussion, or a simple command).
Just as with other methods, questioning also has diminishing returns if you overuse it.
The Long-Range Goal of Questioning
That's really what a conscience is: The habit of asking yourself questions about right & wrong.
The most serious moral problem in society today may not be that people ask moral questions & reach the wrong conclusions. It may be that they don't ask moral questions at all.
If we start questioning early & do it as a matter of routine as our kids are growing up, it'll be easier for our kids to ask questions themselves when they hit their teens. Questions like:
"What's the rule (or law) in this situation?"
"What will be the consequences if I do this?"
"Do I have to go along with the group?"
"What other choices do I have?"
TEACH BY TELLING
In recent times many parents have lost sight of how important it is to do this kind of deliberate moral teaching. They became lax with regard to their children's moral upbringing. That created a values vacuum in the home. Television, the movies, advertising & the peer group rushed in to fill it. We began to see children who had been raised by the culture instead of their parents, kids who were ill-tempered, ill-mannered & generally unsocialised in their behaviour toward both peers & adults.
TELEVISION AS A TEACHER
When parents hear the statistics on how much time kids spend in front of the TV set, most are shocked.
* Preschoolers watch an average of four hours a day. Before kindergarten they will spend more time watching TV than a student spends in four years of college classes.
* The average elementary-school child watches 30 hours of television a week.
* Junior high school kids watch even more.
* By the time they graduate from high school, kids will have spent some 15,000 hours watching television, compared to 11,000 hours in the classroom.
In case you haven't seen the soap operas lately, here's what the kids are watching on a typical week of "Guiding Light":
Amanda tells Derek to start divorce proceedings for her & Ben. If Alan continues to avoid Hope, she will dissolve her marriage & deny the baby she's carrying is Alan's. Ed & Rita agree on legal separation. Rita prepares for a romantic interlude with Alan. Mike suspects Alan has a mistress...In an attempt to win Ross back, Vanessa takes an overdose of pills & liquor & calls Ross to save her, but he is not home...Nola succeeds in getting Floyd to spread rumours to Tim about Kelly...Breaking into Andy's apartment, Joe steals Andy's bank statements.
And that was tame compared to some. Here's a slice of life from "Days of Our Lives" (same week):
After signing divorce papers & being institutionalised at Bayview sanitarium, Lee says she just wanted to be loved. In a crazed state, Kellum loads a gun intending to kill Alex, Joshua & Max...Alex wants Sister Marie to leave the church for him...Marlena is raped by Kellum.
Neil Postman, professor of communications at New York University & author of the book "The Disappearance of Childhood," reminds us that one of the main differences between adults & children used to be that we knew things that they didn't. But TV, with incredible swiftness, has changed all that. Drug addiction, incest, promiscuity, corruption, adultery, violence & sadism are all becoming as familiar to kids as they are to adults. All of this flies smack in the face of what was until recently part of our civilisation's wisdom: That childhood is a period to be protected & nurtured, a time of innocence & curiosity & trust, very necessary for children's healthy development.
Other Value Lessons Kids Learn from TV
1. If you're having trouble getting what you want, try violence or crime. By age 12, the average American child will have viewed approximately 100,000 violent episodes on TV & seen 13,000 persons violently destroyed.
Cartoons--the mainstay of children's programming--contain, per hour, an average of 26 incidents of physical force intended to hurt or kill.
At the University of North Carolina Child Development Center, researchers paired ten preschoolers who were alike in their television & play habits. For the next 11 days, one child in each pair was shown a violent Saturday morning TV show, while his partner was shown a nonviolent show. No change occurred in kids who watched nonviolent fare. But the preschoolers who watched violent programming showed a sharp increase in aggression, some even tripling their violent behaviour (kicking, hitting, choking etc.)
A study of juvenile offenders commissioned by ABC television found that 22 percent confessed to having learned their criminal techniques from TV shows.
Some of the people in the TV industry are beginning to admit that TV does in fact breed violence in children & teenagers. Said Brandon Tartikoff, president of NBC, quoted by the New York Times (5/82): "Television did have an effect on me right from the beginning. In the first grade, I was a member of a four-kid gang that went around imitating TV westerns. We'd disrupt class to play out scenes, picking up chairs & hitting people over the head with them--except unlike on TV, the chairs didn't break, the kids did. Finally, the teacher called my parents in & said, `Obviously, he's being influenced by these TV shows, & if he's to continue in this class, you've got to agree not to let him watch television any more.' So, from first to second grade there was a dark period during which I didn't watch TV at all! And I calmed down, & the gang broke up."
2. Violence isn't anything to get upset about. Says one 11-year-old boy: "You see so much violence that it's meaningless. If I saw someone really get killed, it wouldn't be a big deal. I guess I'm turning into a hard rock."
3. Put-downs are funny. TV comedies often teach kids that these insulting remarks are funny & "cool."
4. Adults are dolts. The next time you watch "family" comedy shows, ask yourself: Who's smarter here, the grown-ups or the kids? As Newsweek quips, TV has gone from "Father Knows Best" to "Father Knows Least." When they're not depicted as dumb, parents are often represented as narrow-minded, racist, or self-centered persons. We could hardly be surprised if kids brought up on such stereotypes failed to look upon adults as a source of wisdom & advice.
5. Things make you happy. In TV commercials (the average child sees 20,000 a year) & in programs, kids are constantly shown all the material things there are to have & led to believe that these things, once possessed, will make them happy.
Obviously, we can't blame everything on TV. But we're fooling ourselves if we don't think that television is part of the problem.
What's Lost as a Result of TV
The problem isn't just what kids watch; it's that they watch. Why is this so? Because whenever kids are watching TV, they're not doing something else--not reading, not studying, not exercising, not using their imaginations, not learning new skills, not spending time with their families.
Even educational TV runs a poor second. Studies show that viewers typically learn & retain very little from even the best educational shows. (Editor: This may be because they weren't discussed afterwards.)
It's estimated that in the average American home, the set is on for six hours & 48 minutes a day.
Urie Bronfenbrenner, Cornell University's expert on the family, helps us stand back & see the grip that TV has come to have on our family life:
Like the sorcerer of old, the television set casts its magic spell, freezing speech & action & turning the living into silent statues so long as the enchantment lasts. The primary danger of the television screen lies not so much in the behaviour it produces as the behaviour it prevents--the talks, the games, the family festivities & arguments through which much of the child's learning takes place & his character is formed.