We enable this

Warning: post is about child harm.

There was an awful tragedy in our town last year.  A mother of twin toddlers went to work, and since her usual babysitting fell through, she left the twins in the care of her boyfriend, who lived with her.  While she was gone, the boyfriend beat both twins severely, killing one of them.

The murderer, of course, went to prison.  What surprised me was that the mother was also charged, on the argument that this couldn't have been the first time he abused them, and she had to have known.  No one else had had any reason to suspect abuse--the babysitter never saw any sign, nor the pediatrician--but the opinion of the town seems to be adamant that she did know.  I was horrified by the bile expressed toward her online, saying that if the judge didn't give her the death penalty, somebody else would.  Someone slipped her a razor blade while she was in prison and urged her to kill herself.

What gets me, what really gets me, is that all those same people who are utterly without mercy toward this mother because she should have known, are also the people who think parents who don't spank are neglectful, how in their day they got the belt and were better for it.  I even heard a man commenting at the library the other day that he moved here because my town is a lot friendlier to corporal punishment and in the liberal town he'd moved from, "you can't raise your kids right."  Certainly this town is big into spanking.  Everyone does it, everyone is proud of doing it, and they do it in public sometimes.  Any and all problems a child has are put down to weak parents who don't know when to smack.

And it just boggles my mind that nobody connects these dots.  How is anyone supposed to recognize abusive behavior when hitting children is okay?  Exactly at what moment is the mother supposed to know to call the cops?

I have known friends in similar situations and they don't know when to call the cops.  Because yeah, he blew up and he spanked the kids when we're not a spanking family, but spanking's not a crime.  Or he jerks them around, shakes them, screams at them, but well, he didn't leave a mark.

I listened to a comedy routine the other day where a dad talked about having choked his son for using a bad word.  Hopefully he didn't really do that, but how would you know?  Because hurting kids is something we joke about.  Because hurting kids is normal.  As long as you didn't cause any sort of permanent harm, it's considered discipline.  Even if you were angry and out of control, because nobody's perfect.

I just hear and see all these things and it hurts me to think about.  It makes me so angry.  Children die of being hit by parents and caregivers and we still can't wean ourselves off of it.  We think it's funny.  And I just don't know how we are going to stop these abusers before they kill a child if the line between legal and illegal is drawn as far out as it is.

This has been a rant.  Sorry to be such a downer but, man, we gotta talk about this and stop doing this, like, yesterday.

Rewards and punishments

I've alluded before, in my autism posts, to my discomfort with the way a lot of autism advice and therapy is based on rewards and punishments.  Specifically, ABA therapy, which everyone tells me is the gold standard (except, of course, for the people who tell me it is abusive) is pretty much entirely based on rewards and punishments.

That level of focus is odd to me, because it takes the question of "how shall we motivate the child" and makes it the only question.  My experience, in parenting all of my kids, is that how to motivate them is only a small part of teaching them anything.  Even if the child really wants to know the thing, you still have to figure out the right way to teach them.  So I've been rather turned off by ABA because I already know how to motivate my kid, what I want to know is what teaching methods I should be using for best effect, and which things I should be teaching anyway.  I'm sure ABA does have some kind of method for those things as well, but I can't seem to find out about that.  Any research I attempt to do meets only answers like "we use sticker charts to motivate the child!"  Okay, great ... what do you do with that?

Now, I'm not purely opposed to rewards (or, occasionally, punishments).  On the one hand, I can see how for a non-verbal, non-communicative autistic child, an M&M is probably the clearest message you can send them saying "yes, we would like you to do more of what you just did."  And on the other, even a child who can communicate and understand sometimes does not want to do what you really need them to do.  Sometimes that's because they don't have a long-term perspective that allows them to realize the benefit of doing the thing you're asking (for instance, potty training -- all kids will benefit from being potty-trained once they've mastered it, but it's not all that fun at the time).  And sometimes it's because the thing you want them to do actually has no benefit for them at all, but only a benefit for you -- for instance, playing quietly when they'd like to play loudly, or helping out with household chores.  I would like Marko to help clean up his toys because he wants to, but I think that's kind of an unreasonable goal seeing as I don't want to clean them up either.  A reward is basically just paying him for his time spent doing something he doesn't want to do.  The other alternative is to threaten him with a punishment, but that too is an external motivation.

Sometimes we give kids a reward because they are somewhat motivated to do the thing, but not enough.  Marko is often half-excited, half-scared about something he could do, but his anxiety is very strong and often overrules his desire to do the thing.  I'd like him to be able to take a long-term view and realize that when you push past your fear, things turn out all right -- but he can't very well do that if he doesn't have a large enough bank of experiences where he pushed past fear and things turned out all right.  So sometimes we bribe him to do something, knowing that once he's pushed past the fear and done the thing -- say, his first time going to speech therapy -- he's not really going to care that much about the prize because he's happy that it ended up being fun after all.

Given the choice, I favor rewards over punishments.  After all, rewards are just adding more pleasantness to a child's life instead of more unhappiness, so it's a more positive sort of thing.  And children learn from what we do.  Which would you rather hear a child say?  "If you read me a story, I'll give you a toy!" or "If you won't read me a story, I'll take away your book"?  I feel like we've made this mistake a few times too often, because Marko has been known to scream, "If you put me in my room, I'll never be nice to you ever again!"  That said, to a child, a reward he hoped for that he isn't getting after all is not really any different from a punishment.  It's experienced, not as the status quo, but as the deprivation of something he thought was his.  This is especially true when it's something the child receives often, because they usually earn it, and then lose it one time because of bad behavior.  The child's distress at losing the reward can lead to a tantrum or a spiral of increasingly bad behavior.  So it's not like there is a clear-cut difference between what actually counts as a reward and what is a punishment.

Often, parents prefer a more emotional sort of reward: "If you do xyz, I'll be very happy with you!"  That works great for Michael.  But with Marko, it's hit-or-miss ... I'm not entirely sure he gets the concept of "you do something for me ... that makes me happy ... at other times, I do things for you."  It's a bit more complicated than you might think -- it's an implicit, rather than an explicit sort of bargain.  I used to understand this problem as "Marko just doesn't care about me," but he definitely does.  He sometimes specifically asks for things he can do to make me happy.  But for whatever reason, it just isn't as obvious to him.  And while "do it to make me happy" feels nicer than "do it for a treat," both involve pressuring a child into doing something he wouldn't otherwise want to do.  Either could be manipulative, but neither has to be, exactly -- except insofar as "manipulating" your kids is sort of necessary to keep them alive and teach them skills.  We do, occasionally, have to make kids do things, yet they don't appear to be scarred for life by this.  I tend to think it's best to use both emotional and physical rewards, because life contains a lot of each -- for instance, sometimes we work for a paycheck, other times we help a friend move because it will make them happy (and perhaps help us move down the road).  I wouldn't want my kids, when they're grown up, to quit a job that they needed to survive because they weren't emotionally fulfilled by it -- but neither would I want them to tell their spouses, "Well, if you want me to do the dishes, I'm going to expect to be paid!"

So, rewards and punishments have their place.  However, all that being said, there are some dangers with external motivation.  The first one is that you take the focus off the internal rewards the child was already getting when you add in an external reward.  I felt very strongly, back when I was teaching school, that you shouldn't reward a child for learning because learning is the reward.  When a kid has been trained excessively with rewards and punishments, they seem to lose the ability to do anything without them.  You start hearing, "What do I get if I read this book?  Will I be in trouble if I don't go to this playdate?  Why should I play outside?"  The child's focus is completely taken off the intrinsic joys of the things they're doing -- things that naturally are rewarding in themselves -- and onto some other thing, which you're encouraging them to value beyond everything else.  So rewards should be for things that are difficult or unrewarding, not for everything you ever want a child to do.  I often try to make the thing itself more rewarding -- like framing a school lesson out of one of Marko's hobbies, or making a game out of a chore.

I had an interesting experience with this just recently.  I downloaded a math app that the boys really enjoy.  Each of them was having fun trying the different games within the app and pushing the limits of their ability.  Then they discovered that the coins they won at the end of each level could be redeemed for more gadgets on their "rocket ship."  Suddenly the fun was sucked out of the game itself, and they started choosing only the easy levels, so that they could earn more coins faster and unlock more doodads.  It's a computer game -- it's inherently so rewarding that they were already getting to play the game as a reward for finishing other work!  But suddenly it was seen only as a means to an end, becauase the game taught them to see it that way.

The other thing is that sometimes external rewards and punishments can push a child way too far out of their comfort zone.  It's one thing to say, "Hey, if you pick up these toys, I'll let you play Minecraft for ten minutes."  The child can weigh the possibilities and decide if it's worth it.  But some things are so valued or feared that it isn't really a choice.  Marko, for instance, feels he needs to be read to every night to go to sleep.  We originally started it as a reward for finishing dinner, but he's so attached to it that really, not being read to is a punishment for not finishing dinner.  And it's a punishment too dreadful to bear, so that on the rare occasion that he really can't finish his dinner, for one reason or another, he goes completely bananas.  There will be an hour of frantic screaming as we attempt to put him to bed without the story, and then he sobs for "one more chance" and comes and eats the food.  He'll do this even if he is sick.  So because he is so strongly motivated, externally, we can't actually trust him to protect his own body.  Kids who fear punishment or who are extremely attached to rewards will do all kinds of things to avoid losing privileges: lie, hide evidence, threaten or hurt siblings who might tell, try to handle everything without calling on an adult for help.  Marko's occasional poop accidents, I believe, are not my fault, but the fact that he refuses to tell anyone when he's had one?  That's probably on me, and the times I've blown up at him or taken away a privilege when I found out he had had an accident.  For this reason, it's best to keep consequences small -- not things so deeply valued that the child will go crazy over them.  And I always prefer a reward that can be given out piecemeal -- not "you lose your entire Minecraft turn for one tantrum" but "for every day you go without a tantrum, you'll earn five minutes of Minecraft on Saturday."  That way the child doesn't completely give up on good behavior once he's misbehaved once.

Of course you get into really toxic territory when it becomes a "rewards auction" -- the parent offers more and bigger rewards in the hopes of attaining compliance, and when the kid catches on, he learns to hold out for better prizes by behaving badly till they offer the good stuff.  If you're going to use rewards, that means you are going to have to give the child the experience of not getting the reward if they didn't earn it.  Which, yes, means sometimes accepting noncompliance.  If noncompliance isn't really an option, then you shouldn't offer a reward.  Our general habit in such situations is, "You get a reward if you are good at the store, but you don't have a choice about going to the store."  We physically bring our children where they need to be if we need to.  It rarely happens, because they know when we say "there is no choice" that there's no point in resisting, but Marko in particular will sometimes just lie on the floor and refuse to budge when there's something up ahead that he's afraid of.

So, in short, external motivation may sometimes be necessary in getting a child to do what he needs to.  But I think it should be kept to a minimum, and only used when necessary, because it does have downsides.  Other ways to motivate a child include ethics ("do this, because it is the right thing to do/will help others"), explaining the reasoning behind the request ("eat your dinner, it will help your body grow"), building good habits ("brush your teeth before bed like we always do!"), and making the desired behavior fun.  It's also important to look through the reasons the child doesn't want to do the behavior, because often it isn't what you'd expect, and once you take away the fear or confusion the child happily does the task you want.

And yes, this is true of autistic kids too.  Marko responds extremely well to explanations -- he cooperated great with his shots, for instance, because he knows how the immune system works and does not want to be sick.  He also does well with reducing the fear or upset that is keeping him from complying, because there are often very odd reasons why he objects so strongly to basic things.  For instance, sometimes one of us will say "get your shoes and socks on, it's time to go!" and Marko, instead of answering, will immediately start jumping up and down and screaming.  When we get him calmed down and talk through it, turns out he just objected to the socks, because for whatever reason he hates those, and he'll happily get ready if we just compromise on the sock thing.

And yes, sometimes we just bribe him.  But it's not the end of the world.  It's rewarding him for doing things that, for whatever reason, are extra difficult.  The adult world is full of trades, this payment for that task, and it's not bad for childhood to contain some of the same things.

Repost: Libertarian parenting

Creepy thing happened today.  I followed a link to one of my favorite posts on this blog, the one on libertarian parenting from February 2012.  Only the post was not there.  I looked every which way; it's just been deleted without a trace.

At first I thought the NSA did it because they don't like my dislike for authority.  On second thought, it's probably because it had a picture of Marko with no pants.  But I'd hate for the post to be lost for good, so I rustled it up on the Wayback Machine, and here it is.

* * *

John and I are both fervent libertarians. We are willing to forgo most government "help" in order to get something we want more -- freedom. The prime directive of libertarianism, as I express it, is that we possess all rights that don't interfere with anyone else's rights. So I believe in your right to smoke, for instance, but not in your right to share your second-hand smoke with me.

So it's no wonder that we tend toward a more hands-off parenting style. Of course, children don't have exactly the same rights adults do. They have more right to be taken care of, and they do not have the right to harm themselves. In this way, I see us as keeping our son's body in trust for him for when he's older -- I'd like to deliver him a healthy body at 18. I can't do that if, in the name of "freedom," I let him get himself killed by a passing car. Obviously.
However, I would consider our family to be fairly libertarian in its governing style. Not anarchist, mind you! Anarchists don't believe in government at all. Libertarians believe in government, but believe that it should restrict its actions to defending individual rights and organizing things that could not be done individually, like the building of roads. In the same way, like I said the other day, John and I are the boss of our family. There is no question of that, and I think it's impossible to avoid being the boss of your kids at least in some ways. It's just that, as the leaders of our tiny "state," we decide not to legislate most stuff.

We have a bunch of hard-and-fast rules. No hitting. No destroying property. No really unsafe stuff, like standing on our bed. All of these are rules we had to make for the common good. But rules like "say please" or "wear clothes in the house" or "play with the toys this way, not that way" just don't make much sense to me. I'm just not interested in micromanaging my kid. And I'm not convinced that two years old is the time to "civilize" him into a miniature adult. As he grows older, he will pick this stuff up, but for now, he's kind of like a little chimp (I mean that in the nicest possible way) and I don't really mind him running a little bit wild.

I keep reading sciencey studies lately about parenting. They tend to say, "Attachment parents are stunting their children because they 'helicopter' around them and micromanage their lives." Every time I see that nonsense, I want to ask: what "attachment parents" are they talking to? Most of us are pretty laissez-faire, in my experience. We provide snuggles and food upon request, but we don't stop our kids from playing the way they want to.

The one thing most studies seem to agree on is that we shouldn't micromanage our kids. And that makes sense to me. For all the complaining I hear about "lax parenting" being the reason kids are "so bad nowadays," the universal trend in parenting over the past 50 years has not been laxity. It's been control. We in the modern world pay an unprecedented amount of attention to our kids -- not affection, mind you, but attention. No mother before 1900 ever thought it worth her while to time her child's feedings by a clock or keep a diary of bowel movements. They all just fed their children when they were hungry, picked them up when they cried, and when they were happy, they plopped them on the floor or in a sling and ignored them. At night, there was no way they were going to lie awake all night listening to their child "cry it out" in a one-room cabin or yurt. That kid went right in bed with them, and nobody kept track of how many times it woke up.

Once a child was older, they'd give it a few simple toys and let it go. By four or five, kids didn't really need much, and would play in the yard all day. A few years later, and they'd roam far and wide, just messin' around, being kids. Think of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Tom Sawyer. They weren't constantly getting schlepped from one structured extra-curricular to another. They just took off. When they were with their parents, they had to learn to work. Once they'd done their work, they just played. Their parents didn't make up their games for them.

This is one of an excellent series of articles on child psychology. The author, Peter Gray, is my new hero lately. He gives a survey of child raising among hunter-gatherer cultures which I find just fascinating. In every one of these cultures, children spent most of their time in a big gang of other children, either unsupervised or at least without adult interference. The rest of the time, they spent watching adults and joining in adult work.

Today, parents spend a lot more time supervising and organizing their children's play, adjusting (whether through reasoning or punishments) social behavior, and doing "learning activities" than ever before. When I go to the library, I usually plant myself in a comfortable spot in the children's area and open a book. Some parents do the same. Others feel the need to sit down on the floor with their children, show them how the puzzles work, put letter chains together for them, and so on. Now I do keep an eye on my kid, and intervene if he starts smacking somebody or knocking over their block towers. But I see no reason to show him how to play with the puzzles. Either he'll figure it out ... or he'll make a new game from the same pieces. Either is fine with me. 
I admit that what they say about discipline is true: parents in the "old days" (say, 1850-1950 -- I can't speak for earlier, because I'm not an expert) did beat their children. But they weren't shadowing their toddlers around the house, smacking them a dozen times a day. No, the stories I hear are about older kids who are pretty independent and know the rules. Laura Ingalls' grandpa, for instance, gets whipped for going sledding on the Sabbath. Not for leaving the house, grabbing a sled, and sledding without telling anyone -- they did that all the time. Just for doing it on the Sabbath. Laura herself is free to wander wherever she wants around Plum Creek -- except by the creek itself, because she could drown. Her parents don't watch her, because they trust her. (I believe she is six or seven.) When she disobeys and goes in the creek, she gets the ultimate punishment: she has to stay in sight of home.

Gee, if that's punishment, most kids under 16 are getting punished every day!

And the idea of drilling your kids for future success was absolutely unheard of before the modern age. I can't really account for it, though I'm sure there are a lot of reasons -- fear of children not being able to get a job when they grow up if they aren't smarter than all the other kids, advertising, having fewer kids to focus on, guilt from various causes, etc. In any event, it's now not too unusual to have parents doing "Your Baby Can Read" or "Baby Einstein" with their children in the hopes of making them smarter. I once slogged through hundreds of comments about the former program, most of them from moms who used it. They swore up and down that not only could their babies read, they were smarter than any other baby ever -- read sooner, counted sooner, read bigger books, etc.

I wasn't raised like this, so I was shocked when I started my first job. I was a nanny, but I was supposed to do some tutoring too. The children were four-year-old twins. "I want you to do pre-literacy work with them," the mom said, "because they'll be starting kindergarten in a year and I don't want them to start out behind the other kids." Now I learned to read at four, because I happened to want to. But even so, my eyes kind of bugged out. Flash cards? At four? What the heck does your class rank matter in kindergarten?

Back to me, and my libertarian parenting style. I've always tried to meet Marko's needs, as he expresses them. When he was tiny, I mostly left him on a blanket on the floor as long as he was happy -- which he would be for an hour at a time, as long as I looked at him often. When he made a peep, I'd pick him up and feed him. (Yes, up to about three months old he was a ridiculously easy baby. The next baby, easy or not, is getting more sling time, because I'm on the go more now.) Now it's about the same, except he does more and wants more. He plays by himself, glances up at me or talks to me to check in with me, and periodically comes over for lap time, a drink, a snack, whatever. When he's not feeling so independent, he likes to be read to. I usually do say yes, but at the same time, I try to encourage him to play instead if he's willing.

He does require kind of a lot of attention on most days. He gets bored with his toys, or he makes a mess, or whatever. But if the weather is good, we go outside, and seriously, he wants for nothing. Today he played in the dirt for a solid hour without needing me for anything. I roamed around the yard, picking up sticks and raking, and he just stayed there, squatting in the dirt, running it through his fingers and pushing it into piles.

I got to thinking that a child is like a plant. I can't grow potted plants to save my life. They need so much attention indoors! They need to be watered all the time, they never get enough sun, and even if you do everything right they get sometimes get wilty. But the plants outside are no trouble at all. Marko's the same. Take him outdoors and let him go, with or without the dog, and he'll run around all day with no complaints.

My goal, I guess, is to give him as much of that as I can. Freedom to explore, room to play, and as little interference as possible. Yes, that does mean sometimes he's doing that exploration stark naked. (Outdoors, I do require him to wear a shirt, and pants and shoes too if it's under 60 or so. Please do not report me to CPS.) Sometimes he doesn't want to come in and eat, so I let him wander around with pieces of cheese or roast beef. Sometimes a bit of dirt ends up in his mouth. He's happy, and I'm happy.

The one thing he does enjoy doing with me is work. He will happily sit on the counter and work the faucet while I do dishes, or help me sponge down the cabinets, or clean up spills on the floor with a rag. He loves to fetch things for me, or put things where I ask him to put them. This is one area where what I believe is the "right thing" isn't the easy thing. It's usually easier to do the work myself. But his instincts demand to learn to do what the adults are doing, and I have to respond to this if I want him to learn to be an adult. So I try to do at least some chores with him every day. If ever he isn't interested, I don't push it, but he's almost always interested.

I hope school will be like this. School is the biggest enemy to libertarian parenting I know of. One day the child is playing in the dirt naked -- the next day he's shoved into "appropriate attire" and forced to sit still all day while information in which he is not interested gets shoveled into his head. It would be impossible to let everyone in a classroom have free choice about anything. (Though even as a teacher, I tried not to micromanage. Once a parent asked me, "My son always tries to do his homework while he's sprawling all over the floor instead of sitting up in a chair. What should I do?" I just couldn't fathom why this was a problem. Wasn't he doing his homework? So, despite the wishes of some of the parents, I did not try to stop their children from fidgeting in my class. It wouldn't have worked anyway.)

But if school is more like, "Hey, you were interested in that one plant, let's go find a book about it," or, "Here is your patch of dirt, what would you like to plant here?" or "I have paper and markers, do you want to write and illustrate a story?" ... well, that I could get behind. I am prepared to do what I'm doing now -- negotiate on all the negotiables. Can we have school outside? Yes! Can we have a day off when we're tired? Sure! Can we go to the fabric store and figure out prices per yard, and call that math? Why the heck not!

But then there's that one, undying, constant objection: how will the children learn they're not in charge unless you're always bossing them around? How will they learn self-discipline if they aren't doing any schoolwork that doesn't interest them? In short, am I setting them up for a lifetime of disappointment because the rest of the world isn't as accommodating as I am?

The short answer: I don't know for sure. I am pretty sure my son knows I'm the boss because I force him into his pajamas at night, force him out of them in the morning to get at his wet diaper, buckle him into his carseat ... and because there is no story-reading, no snacktime, no lap-sitting, no library trips, unless I say so, and I don't always say yes. He already deals with disappointment and frustrated desires at least a half-dozen times a day. Sometimes there are tears. He's learning that he does not control the world.
Meanwhile, I think he learns self-discipline better if I'm not always doing the job for him. I don't force him or threaten him very much; however, he has to sacrifice what he wants sometimes to reach a higher goal. Yesterday, he wanted to go outside. I told him, "Yes, but you will have to put clothes on." "No!" I collected the clothes and sat back down. Periodically, he would come up to me and say, "Outside?" "If you let me put your clothes on." "No!" He'd run away and go play with something else. About the fifth time, half an hour later, he walked up to me and said, "Ready for clothes." And he quietly let me put them on before charging outside. There were no tears. There was no force. He just realized that to get what he wanted, he had to put up with something he didn't want. I let him come to that decision on his own, because I had nowhere to be, and I had the time to let him work through it.

It's moments like that where I really feel this whole thing is going to be a success. Sometimes, the common good comes first, and he has to get wrestled into church clothes whether he wants to go or not. But when I am working on "training" him, when I have time to do what is actually best for him, giving him freedom seems to be working okay.

Am I totally off my nut here? I am beginning to feel like I sound a little ... out there. I'd love to hear if anyone agrees with me.

Parenting through play

I was going through my drafts today (I should do this more often!) and found this old post from almost a year ago.  I'm not sure what more I thought it needed before posting, so I'll just post it as-is.

Last month, the natural parenting carnival topic was "parenting through play." I was so excited about it, because I've been learning a ton about this topic lately! But I was tired, we went camping, and the time just got away from me. So I decided to go ahead and write the post anyway, because I have some interesting things to share.

Usually, when I hear about toddler discipline, the big complaint is, "He makes everything into a game!" And the advice is to be very serious so they know you're not playing. That hasn't been very successful for us, to understand things. This kid thinks getting a spanking is hilarious. He loves seeing that what he does has a predictable effect, and he'll keep on doing whatever thing it is, just to get that interesting reaction -- even if the reaction is something you'd think he wouldn't like.

So what I've been doing lately is working with, and not against, his desire to make everything a game. He loves to learn things with a game -- like "guess that letter" and "open and shut the cupboard a million times" and "wow, if I spin the toilet paper, it unrolls" ... you know, the classics. I figured it might be helpful to teach him things like, "When Mama says sit, you sit" and "When Mama says stop, you stop" through games.

I think I've mentioned before that we have a big problem with this kid climbing on chairs and standing on them. He loves to do it, but it puts him in range of all kinds of forbidden stuff, plus he might tip over. So I was trying to teach him to sit on chairs. I would say, "Sit!" and he would laugh hysterically and say, "Stand!"

I know that looks like defiance. But I thought about it, and thought that maybe what he was thinking was more along the lines of, "Silly Mama. I'm not sitting. I'm standing!" He just didn't know what to make of a command. So I started to come over and sit him down, saying, "Sit," every time he stood up on a chair. He now understands that he's supposed to sit! However, he enjoys that game so much that he stands right back up again so that I'll make him sit again. He's learned the skill, but I don't actually want to play sit-and-stand on a teetering chair all day. So part II of the game is that if he stands up again, he has to get down. And then I chase him away from the chair, and he runs around laughing. I move the game away from the chair and to something that isn't dangerous. I don't want standing on chairs to be a game. Luckily, it does seem to have worked -- he knows he has to sit if he wants to stay on the chair (which he loves to do) but if he wants to play, he can get down from the chair and I will play with him.

Another big one is the "stop-go" game. We need to play it again, I think, because he may have forgotten all about it. It's just a very simple way to teach the meaning of the word "stop." He loves to walk on the street, and I mean loves. And he also loves to push the stroller. But with my hands on the stroller handles, he has to stop and go when I say. So that was an easy way to teach him. We would be going along, saying "go-go-go," and then I would say "stop!" and stop short. After a few seconds, it's back to "go-go-go." Later he learned "run" and "walk" as options, too, and he mostly does the one I ask for.

The big trick in making these games work, and not turning them into other games (i.e. "let's do the opposite of what Mama says, that's hilarious!") is to laugh hysterically every time he does the right thing, and to have no reaction at all to the wrong thing. If the wrong thing happens too much, we stop the game and I go do something else. And if he keeps doing something I won't allow him to do, even when I'm not playing with him, I take him into another room and distract him with a different game.

This post was really neat to come across because I've been feeling frustrated.  Why doesn't Marko listen when I tell him to do things?  Why is he so badly behaved?  But when I look backwards, I realize I've taught him loads of things.  He knows not to climb on specific things (some things are allowed now that he is a good climber).  He knows to hold my hand in the parking lot and the street.  He knows not to open the gate and wander out of the yard, even though he can now do so.  He knows what things are unsafe (knives, hot ovens, etc.) and avoids them.  If he finds a knife that's left in his reach, he handles it carefully and brings it straight to me.  If he does something dangerous, all I have to do is yell for him in a scared voice and hold out my arms, and he freezes and comes running to me.

He hasn't learned any of these things by being punished.  Not that there are never any consequences for things, because there are.  If he's driving me totally nuts, sometimes I put him in his room by himself for awhile.  However, I am realizing that he never seems to learn anything from this.  Those things that have gotten him sent to his room over and over, he still does.  Those things that I explained to him, or practiced with him, or made into a game, he knows.

I can't believe I was once afraid I would never be able to keep my child safe without spanking him.  Now I wonder why I ever thought that would help.  And I feel very, very proud of him just now.  Yesterday, we went to the store as usual, and I had Michael in the sling as usual.  I've worried in the past what I would do when Michael got too big to carry (as he's rapidly approaching that point -- he's over 20 pounds!) and had to ride in the cart.  How would I trust Marko to behave himself if he isn't buckled into the cart?  Well, today he didn't feel like getting in the cart right away, so I decided to let him walk beside me.  Not only did he not get into things, knock down displays, or run wild through the store -- he actually was really helpful finding things and loading them into the cart!

I've been feeling like I must be an awful mother, but now I'm realizing I may just be too close to things to see clearly.  I've made a ton of progress.  And I have two happy, relatively well-behaved kids.  I must not be a total failure after all!

What is coercion?

A prisoner is being tortured to give up vital wartime secrets or sign a false confession. Eventually, he realizes he has to give in -- but when he sits in the chair indicated by his captors, he moves it an inch to the right. It's his way of preserving his own sense of freedom and his belief in his free will.

Meanwhile, a six-year-old is being kept in time-out until he will say sorry. It's been an hour and he finally gives in. But he will only say it in the world's quietest voice. His parents send him back until he can say it "like he means it."

The two situations are very different. One is truly "cruel and unusual" while the other one is just a time-out. But the goal is the same: to force someone to do something they strongly do not want to do. One person uses some form of punishment to override another person's will in the hopes of making it choose what they want it to choose.

I don't believe in doing this to kids. It just rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it helps that I have a very good memory. I remember exactly how it felt to be put in situations like this. It was like being between a rock and a hard place. My own sense of morals and self-respect demanded that I follow through with what I had said I would do. If I'd refused to say sorry, I had to stick with it or I was being dishonest and inconsistent. I knew I would hate myself for saying it, if I gave in, and I felt kind of like a hero for not doing it. But at the same time, I also knew I was supposed to obey my parents. I wished so hard they had asked for something different, or asked in a way that would let me save face. Instead I would eventually give in, but with my own twist: I could say sorry quietly, I could write it instead of saying it, I could say it in a tone of voice that would make it clear I didn't mean it. That way I could live up to my own convictions and get out of time-out sometime before I turned eighteen.

What seems odd to me is that parenting books that go on and on about how coercion is bad still tend to recommend tactics like this. Parenting With Grace, which I otherwise enjoyed, recommends a time-out procedure that includes never getting out until the child re-does to the parent's satisfaction whatever they did wrong. I'm sure there are lots of compliant children who would wait out their time and then do what their parent asked, because they asked it. But the "strong-willed" kids, like me or my siblings or my son? We would stay in that time-out for ever, and if we ever capitulated, we'd hate ourselves and our parents for it. That anger would end up coming out in other incidents later in the day or the week, and our parents wouldn't know why we had so much bitterness stored up.

(As far as I remember, this didn't happen all that often. My parents didn't often try to go toe-to-toe with me, and anyway I did try to please them in general. And my vaunted willpower that I was so proud of usually caved after ten minutes of time-out. Time-out was the worst punishment for me. I hated it so much. Spankings weren't so bad, because once they were over, they were over, even if you didn't say sorry.)

Now I'm not saying coercion is equivalent to torture, or that it's immoral, or that it makes you a bad parent. I just think it's counterproductive. Don't we want to raise children who would withstand torture rather than give up their faith or tell where the Jews are hidden? Don't we want our kids to listen to their inner voice over any outer voice that tries to pressure them into something that they know is wrong? Besides, coercion inspires so much anger and bitterness. Kids of all ages consider it a virtue to stand up to someone who tries to coerce them. If they can't manage that, they'll try to get back in other ways. There's no winning once you get into that kind of battle. Either you lose it, or you find yourself in a full-fledged war.

So what sorts of things count as coercion?

*Spanking a child until they confess to something. Yes, even if you know they did it. (Much worse if you later turn out to be wrong!)
*Making a child repeat, word for word, a phrase we think they should use until they do it in the tone we want.
*Repeating a punishment over and over until some magic word is said or action done. Of course, with spanking or withholding food or shutting out in the cold, this could be terribly dangerous, as well, and we've seen that in some recent child-abuse deaths. The punishment was to continue until the child "gave in" -- and the child's will was, in a few cases, stronger than their life. It doesn't matter how minor the original issue was. For the child, it's a question of their personal integrity, and they completely lose sight (as the parents seem to have) of how minor an issue it is.

Pretty much any time you say, "I will keep doing X to you until you do Y," you are coercing a child. On the other hand, logical or natural consequences don't seem coercive to me. I'm thinking of things like this:

*I will not pick you up if you are hitting me.
*Until those chores are done, we won't be going to the store.
*As long as you have no pants on, we are not going outside.

It's still an "until" kind of thing. I spent an hour with Marko once trying to get him to put his pants on. Sure, I could have just grabbed him and stuck his pants on. But I thought I'd give him a chance to learn about choices, so I said, "We will go outside when you are wearing pants. If you are not wearing pants, we will stay inside." It took him about an hour, during which he cried occasionally, but mostly just played with his inside toys, until he came up to me and asked for his pants.

It just doesn't seem like coercion to me because he had a choice, and both choices were okay. Playing inside naked was okay, and playing outside with pants was okay. I didn't insist he say or do a certain thing a certain way ... I just wanted to let him play outside without flashing the entire neighborhood. (Not that it would shock them, at this point.) I was trying to make a framework in which he could exercise his will freely, but only in ways that were acceptable to me. So I was limiting his will, but not forcing it one way or the other.

The same goes for the hitting thing. Up with no hitting and down are both viable options. I'm not trying to control him, but trying to respect myself. I can't let myself be hurt, so I have come up with two ways for him not to hurt me: down, or up while being gentle.

Meanwhile, when trying to teach something -- and this is more with older kids, like my students -- I try to leave an "out." In other words, I leave a way for the child to cooperate with me while saving face. For instance, if they ask for something in a rude way, I say, "Gee, that sounds rude. Can you try another way?" I might suggest another way, but anything they come up with that isn't rude is fine. If they can't come up with a way that isn't rude, I just say, "Well, I just don't feel like doing that for you when you ask that way. Why don't you try again later?" Putting it off till later gives the child a chance to think of a better way to ask, get out of the rude mood they're in, or maybe even decide they don't want what they originally asked for. (And that's fine too.)

Sometimes, especially when I feel the child didn't know they were doing something wrong, I don't correct at all. I just say, "Sure, I will do that for you. Next time, though, you should try a more polite way, like 'Please would you sharpen my pencil?'" In other words, I don't bother trying to fix this time. They did their best for this time, but they get a suggestion for next time. That way, they have a chance to learn the right way without ever being "wrong." I mean, wouldn't it be awful if the only way to learn a math problem was to do it wrong first? Wouldn't we rather be shown how first, and then have the test? A wrong answer can really make you feel dumb, even after you learn what the right answer is.

It just seems to me that, even if you are giving a child a consequence for something, it's much better to just give the consequence and let it speak for itself than require a behavior change immediately after. Punishment makes you feel bad. Right after one isn't a good time for learning. You don't feel like cooperating, so you do it in the least cooperative way you can. I'd rather just punish a child for hitting and then let him get back to playing than try to force him to apologize. (Though my usual method is just to separate the child so he can't hit anymore.) That way a consequence is really a consequence -- a result of past action -- rather than a form of coercion, intended to derive some further action. Kids aren't dumb. They can still use the experience of the unpleasant consequence to shape their actions next time. But they can do it on their own time, in their own way, with their own will.

What do you think? I picked a harsh word, "coercion," because I don't see another word that quite fits what I'm trying to describe. Even so, is this something you do or would do? What do you do instead?

THIS is the terrible twos

Every month or two, I find myself saying, "That thing that was going on a few months ago? The thing I called "the terrible twos"? Well, that wasn't it. THIS is it." I am hoping it doesn't keep going on like this till the kid's third birthday!

There are a few things going on right now, not all of which are Marko's fault. He has a bad cold, which makes him not always sleep very well. He's also cutting molars. The other day, when he was screaming his head off, I caught a glimpse of two of them peeking out. Until those two are all out and two more join them, he's going to be a little crabby, I assume.

So for the past week or so he's been melting down at the slightest provocation, raging for up to an hour, saying "no" to every conceivable option (do you want your pants on? NO! do you want your pants off? NO!), and being generally difficult to please. I don't blame him, though, because he doesn't feel good. It's just wearing.

What really gets to me is his other new thing, which pops up when he's feeling a bit better and starts running around and playing again. He goes straight up to something he knows he's not supposed to do, and does it. Take the most common example, pulling up seedlings. I've explained to him many times not to touch them. For awhile, he seemed to get it. He would stare at them, mesmerized, whispering, "Just look at them. Don't touch them." Then his little hand would reach out and yank up half a dozen of them. What the heck?

I've tried different things. I stop his hand as it comes reaching out .... but he struggles with me, brings in his other hand, and is soon engaged in a full-fledged fight with me, trying to get those seedlings. I yell at him, but he thinks that's hilarious and keeps going. In fact, the bigger a deal I make of it, the more eager he is to do it.

Finally I landed on the method of very simply and quietly saying, "Don't touch the seedlings. You touched them, so we're going inside now." He doesn't care for this at all, and will scream and cry and grab at the doorframe to stop from having to go inside. But I have discovered that I do NOT want to kneel on the edge of the vegetable bed for half an hour trying to stop him from getting those seedlings. The second I take my eyes off him, he's back at them. A little break inside helps him forget about them, and we can get ten minutes or so of good playtime in before he is drawn inexorably back to the seedlings again. By then, hopefully I've finished whatever I was doing in the front yard and we can go play in the back, where there's nothing he can't have (at least, nothing that tempts him).

Still, it's puzzling. Like yesterday. We were having a grand old time playing on my bed when he reached for my hair and pulled it hard. I moved my hair away from him a bit and said, "No, that hurts Mama. No hurting Mama." He laughed hysterically and dove for it again, yelling "Yes hurting Mama!" I stopped him again and he dissolved into tears. "Marko WANT to hurt Mama." Why is not hurting Mama such a tragedy to him?!

I know he's more fragile about this kind of thing because of how he's feeling. But on the other hand, this level of willfulness is new. I can't help but worry that I've created a monster -- by taking the gentle approach that I do, I have made him into a little tyrant. Since he didn't use to be like this, I fear I've ruined him. And yet -- and yet. For one thing, several of my family members were just the same way at this age, despite having a different discipline system than what I use. For another, I hear it's normal toddler behavior. And for a third, the closer I get to a harsher disciplinary system, the worse it gets. If I get into the ring with this kid, he will fight me with everything he's got. So doing it more often, about more things, can't possibly be the answer.

I have never mentioned this on the blog before, but we did try a more punitive system almost a year ago now. When we would tell him not to do something and he did it anyway, we'd slap his hands back away from the forbidden object. I was sure this would have the Pavlovian effect of -- obviously -- making him not want to touch the forbidden thing. But it actually made it worse. He would laugh hysterically and keep doing it over and over. It was a game, and the pain was minor compared to his love for the game. It was only when we would refuse to play, walk away, ignore him, or move him away from the forbidden object that he would look down at his hand and start to cry, realizing for the first time that he was hurt.

That just broke my heart. On the one hand, I just HURT my kid. Which makes me miserable, because I gave birth to him and spent a year trying to keep him from getting hurt ... my instincts are against hurting him in any way. And on the other, it made things WORSE, not better. I believe that a parent has the right to do things that cause pain to their children -- like shots -- if it is truly necessary for their well-being. But if it's causing harm and not good, I could not believe we had the right to continue on that path. So we didn't.

But the result of this is that our child is not "obedience-trained" in any way. He knows what "no" means. Usually he listens -- especially if it's said in a panicky voice as I lunge for him. With the dangerous stuff, he instinctively knows to listen up. But sometimes he tries to turn a no into a yes. And if he can't get us to change our minds, he just does what he wants to do and waits to see what we'll do.

It's a terrifying thing. I've got a small, unformed person looking to me to find out what I will do if he disobeys me. And at least half the time, I have no idea what I will do either. Will I calmly show him how to do gentle touches? (No dice.) Will I yell at him? (Backfires horribly.) Will I just physically remove him from the situation? (Works, but I keep wondering, "What will I do when I can't do this? What will I do when I have two children? What will I do when he's too big to carry? What will I do when it's big stuff? Am I setting a terrible precedent for his entire future because he doesn't snap to it when I say something?")

I don't think I'm ruining him. I don't think so because I believe there are only two ways to go with a strong-willed child like this one: either dominate them so completely that they are incapable of resistance, or don't go head-to-head with them at all. And I also have gotten a lot of comfort from the parenting books I've read lately (specifically, Parenting With Love and Logic and How to Talk So That Kids Will Listen). Sure, they're not for a kid the age of mine. But they assume that I already have a school-aged child, and that school-aged child is not obeying me. And then they have solutions for that, based on reason, which the kid possesses by that age. When he is rational, there will be so much more I can do.

Even now, there are a few things he obeys me for perfectly because he knows why. He leaves the kitchen when I am going to open the oven because the oven is hot. He stays away from the broken cellar door in the back yard because it is dangerous. And today, when I thought I was going to rip out my last hair over his insistence on banging on my new wall mirror, I thought to say, "Don't bang on it that hard, or it will fall, and you will be hurt." What do you know, he immediately stopped and started banging it gently. If I can always get my child to avoid dangerous situations because he knows that they are dangerous, do I need to have him "obeying" me? Some would say we've failed at raising our children if they only obey when they know why, and don't obey when there's no discernible reason to obey. But ... it kind of seems reasonable to me, especially once he's built up the ability to understand more complicated explanations, and has learned to trust that I don't ask him to do things for no reason.

So, for now? I guess I'm just sticking it out. Every day is a learning experience for both of us, as I try to get through to him and he tries to understand what I want. It's hard, because he used to be so eager to please that if I could manage to explain what I wanted, he would do it, nine times out of ten. Lately he hasn't been. Maybe he feels pushed around and is pushing back (I happen to know at least one person to whom he is related who does the same thing). Maybe he's just feeling contrary because he doesn't feel good. Maybe he's trying to get even with me because I'm not fulfilling what he sees as his needs -- constant carrying, allowing myself to be climbed on, and complete access to my hair.

But I am finding ways to cope, in order to make sure he doesn't hurt me or destroy things while we're waiting for him to be more rational. If he pulls my hair, he has to get down. If he hits me, either I am going to have to go to another room, or he is. If he pulls seedlings, we go inside. These are, on the one hand, logical consequences that hopefully will (someday) make sense to him. And, on the other, they keep me sane because I'm not sitting around getting hit while trying to reason with a "knee-high Neanderthal." Yes, he screams and throws a fit every single time. He acts so surprised. I'm willing to comfort him, to give him another thing to do, and even let him try again at being outside or on my lap in a few minutes, but he isn't much consoled.

Last night he was furious because I had to make dinner instead of playing with him. He demanded so many things: go outside, read books, pick up, hit Mama. I nixed those and suggested others: have a piece of tortilla, play with Gilbert, play with your toys. He said no to all of those, and there was a lot of crying. But eventually he sniffled, "Mama sing a song?" Finally something I could do for him while cooking dinner! He was much comforted, and I realized he is successfully navigating his limits, trying to find something that is good for him and acceptable to me. In the midst of my frustration over his tantrum-filled evening, I felt hopeful. Maybe, despite my horrible, weak-kneed, hippie parenting, he is actually learning something.

I've been afraid to open up or ask for advice about our struggles for fear I will get one of two answers: either "You have to smack him/put him in the corner, or you WILL raise a monster and it will ALWAYS be just like this," or (and I saw this just today on Peaceful Parenting's facebook), "He must have some need unfulfilled. When you fulfill his unmet needs, the behavior will disappear." The first one, I don't believe, because I know people who have raised great kids without that, and because, well, it just doesn't feel right to me. And the second one, it wouldn't matter if I did believe it. What if his "unmet need" is to still be nursing? To be carried around more? To not be teething? I can't give him everything he wants and needs, much as I would like to. And I really think his "unmet need" in this case is "to find out what will happen if I do what Mama said not to." So I don't think I would win that way.

Still, I'm putting it all out there for you, so if there are any words of wisdom or advice that have helped you, I'd love to hear. What do you do with a strong-willed toddler, if the behavior is one you can't ignore but you don't want to smack him?

Toddler tales

I keep coming up with little tidbits of hilarious things Marko says and does, as my Facebook friends all know. (Every time I see someone I haven't seen or spoken with in ages, they always tell me, "Oh, I've been following Marko's adventures on Facebook!" Apparently he has lots of fans.)

Like this one. John likes to pretend to fall asleep on Marko. Marko always pushes at him to wake him up, and John protests, "Hey, you're waking me up!" So now Marko pushes at him and says, in his deepest voice, "Heeeeey, you're waking me uuuuuup!" John answers "I don't sound like that!" so now Marko says that, too. He also imitates my voice, though I don't notice so much because he does it almost all the time. For instance, he'll hand me something and then say in a really perky voice, "Thank you, Marko!"

John quotes stuff a lot. So now Marko does too -- a lot of shows that he would never be allowed to watch. Some of his favorites: "Be careful there, Ton-ay. Don't be dir-tay!" (Fry and Laurie), "We're on a bridge, Charlie! Candy Mountain, Charlie!" (Charlie the Unicorn), and "Honey Badger don't care." They come out at the oddest moments, like when he cried for me in the middle of the night the other night. I came in, picked him up, and quietly started rocking him ... and he announced, "We're on a bridge, Charlie!"

He also quotes his books, of course. Right now he's doing Hop on Pop. Marko talks pretty much all the time. Most of it is quotes from books, but he also repeats everything that he's overheard or that I've said to him.

His new favorite thing to do is to climb up behind me on my computer chair and put blocks in my hair. They always fall out, but he just climbs down, gets the blocks, and puts them back in my hair. I put up with it for as long as I can take it, but sooner or later he gets rough and starts pulling my hair, so I stand up and go somewhere else. This always provokes a tantrum. I tell him, "It's my hair, it belongs to me," but he yells, "No it's my hair! No it belongs to me!"

Our current way of diffusing tantrums is to sit on the couch and read. I usually have to wait for him to cry for awhile, and then quietly suggest that he sit and read with me. He agrees, but the screaming continues. Every time he pauses for breath, I read a little bit in my very quietest voice. After awhile he quiets down because he wants to hear the story! Usually by the end of the book he's completely calm and wants to get back to playing. It's like a miracle. (Since this happens a couple of times a day, as a rule, I am so glad we have a coping mechanism.)

Marko does not snuggle. He climbs. A certain percentage of every day, he has to be on me. He climbs, squirms, clambers, tugs, pulls, elbows ... urrrrrrgh. This is not my favorite. I do go along with it as long as he isn't actually hurting me -- at least until I have HAD ENOUGH and have to walk away -- because it makes him happy and he seems to need the physical contact even though he can't be still enough to snuggle. But it's frustrating. John and I both love cuddling, and we ended up with a kid who won't cuddle. Every time I try to suggest that Marko sit on my lap, he hurls himself sideways to suspend himself upside-down by one arm. (But despite appearances, he does not actually want to get down. He will cry when told that I can't actually hold him like that.) If I sit next to him on the couch, first he leans on my belly with his elbows, and then he starts to lie across my lap, and then he crawls back and forth over me. If I sit on the floor -- which he loves -- he likes to stand on my shins and ankles. It's a constant balance, trying to give him a bit of what he needs (touch, without sitting still) and me what I need (NOT being hurt, plus some limits on how long I have to put up with it).

As a result, bedtime takes longer than it used to. Not that he isn't cooperating -- he's been great at bedtime lately. I have learned to keep reading together till we hear a yawn. Once he yawns, I finish the book and take him into the bedroom, and by that point he is almost always willing to sit quietly in my lap while I sing to him. He's usually out within ten minutes. No, the reason it takes a long time is that once he's still and snuggly and quiet, there's no way I can put him down. A certain amount of Marko snuggles are necessary for me to be a good mother. If I only ever interact with him when he's climbing all over me and fiddling with my hair, I lose patience. (This is why cosleeping always worked so well for us, I think. I definitely notice having more patience after a nap with him -- which I don't have when I nap without him.) (I miss naps.)

Because of this, I've decided not to tinker with his bedtime routine any more. I originally planned to try to teach him to fall asleep in his own bed before the baby came, so I could hold the baby while singing to Marko and getting him to sleep. But now I'm thinking that bedtime can be Marko's special time with Mama. We both really treasure that time. So the baby can sit in the bouncer, or be held by Daddy, or lie in the Moses basket, but that can be my time to hold Marko. There may be some nights, especially when John is away, that this is a hassle, and maybe even results in bedtime being later than I would like, but I think it's worth it. Marko's already going to be displaced enough; I don't want to cut out bedtime snuggles too.

Now that I've said that, though, I must say that once in awhile Marko is really uncooperative at bedtime and does the climbing and hanging thing in the hopes that I will give up and let him go back to playing. Usually that's my fault because I didn't wait till he was nice and tired. But I had to put some limits there or else he was going to start thinking bedtime is optional, which it isn't. So I would ask him, "Do you want to lie on your bed instead? You don't have to be in my arms, you can lie on your bed by yourself." Once he said yes, since then he says no. But if he keeps wiggling, I say, "You're too wiggly for Mama's lap. You have to be still and quiet on Mama's lap." So I lay him down in his bed. I tried lying down with him once, but that generally just means getting kicked in the stomach, so now I leave the room and shut the door. Invariably it's only a minute or so before Marko starts screaming, so I come back in and pick him up again. I tell him, "To be in my arms, you have to be still and quiet so I can sing to you." And he does. I haven't had to leave the room in at least two weeks, because when I remind him, he always settles down. (Of course, this is after months of constructing a bedtime routine that leaves him really sleepy at the end ... so all I need is for him to lie quietly in my arms for two minutes before he starts being too sleepy to protest anyway.)

Is that a punishment, a logical consequence, or what? I'm not sure, but it feels right to me. I am not trying to hurt him or upset him because he did the wrong thing. I'm just trying to show him that to get what he wants (rocking and singing) he has to do what I want (be still and quiet). He also has the option to stay in his bed and go to sleep without me ... though that's not what happens generally. (There actually have been two or three times when he has, usually when there's been something unusual going on and he's not as tired as usual. Out of desperation, we've left him in his bed after rocking him for an hour, only to find that he actually did fall asleep after a lot of talking to himself.)

In the realm of "what the heck is going on in my kid's brain?" here's something that happened yesterday. I was washing the kitchen floor when he came barrelling in, dashed across the kitchen, and went sliding on the wet floor. He landed flat on his back and cried just a tad. I picked him up and told him, "The floor is slippery in here, you can't run or you will fall." So he carefully walked out of the kitchen. Two minutes later he came barrelling back. I put up my arm and stopped him from running, reminding him again that the floor was wet and slippery and he would fall. He walked very carefully across the floor, turned around ... and tried to run out. Of course he slipped and fell again, and this time he cried a lot. I reminded him again that the floor was slippery and he would fall on it if he tried to run. Once he'd calmed down, he spent some time experimenting. He would run right up to the kitchen and then switch to a careful walk. Then a less careful walk. He'd slip with his feet a bit to see how slippery it was. But he didn't fall again.

I think he had to test the theory a few times just to see if it was true what I had said, "If you run, you will fall." How much running? How badly will the falling hurt? The feeling of slipping is pretty thrilling, is it worth it? What if I walk quickly? What if I tiptoe? I mostly just let him figure it out. It's so neat to watch him learn.

Less of a parenting "win" is this one: He's not allowed to stand up or walk on the bed, because he could fall and hurt himself pretty badly. So I would tell him, "No standing on the bed." But he clearly didn't get it, probably because it's a negative statement and he's not good with those. So I changed to "You must sit on the bed." That worked better. When I said that, he would sit down. I'd give him a big smile. Then he would start crawling around and glance at me. I'd smile at that, too. Then he'd stand up and give me a big smile -- and I'd get him down because he is not allowed to stand. He would be completely shocked, every time, and cry. This went on for weeks, and I couldn't figure it out.

Have you? It seems so obvious now that I think of it. I never told him crawling was okay. So when I said sitting, he would sit. But then he would "break the rule" and start crawling, and I was okay with that. So clearly I didn't mean what I'd said, so he could stand, too. Now I tell him, "Sitting, crawling, or lying down on the bed only. If you stand, you have to get down." And that pretty much does it. He does still test this limit often, but finally he seems to get it and we're making some progress.

This is such a fascinating age. Hard to believe that he'll be two in a month and a half!

Shooting laptops doesn't equal good parenting

You've all seen the video, right? The dad whose daughter wrote a rude and untrue diatribe about him on Facebook, and in response he shot nine holes in her laptop? I keep seeing it reposted everywhere, with a lot of comments saying, "What a hero. Finally a dad standing up to his entitled teenager. We have so many bratty kids running around, and a bit more 'mean' parenting would do them good."

Yeah, I bet you could predict I would disagree with that, right?

For one thing, I think the whole "permissive parent" thing is something of a myth. I've never seen these permissive parents. Most parents aren't over-strict, but they do punish, and sometimes quite dramatically.

At the library, where we like to hang out, I see a lot of kids misbehaving. And I don't see a lot of parents who walk up to their kids, kneel down to their level, and say, "We don't bang on that table. Come over here and play with this other toy instead." I see parents who are playing with their iphones while their children misbehave. They stay right where they are and say in a bored, distracted tone, "Stop banging the table, Jeffrey. C'mon, stop banging the table." The kid keeps banging until the parent snaps, throws down the phone, gets up, grabs the kid, smacks him, and yells, "I told you to stop banging the table! Now you don't get dessert tonight!"

And (it seems to me) all the parents round about all nod sagely and think to themselves, "There you go. Put the smackdown on that kid. That's good parenting, right there, because you punished him."

It's not that consequences are bad. But simply the fact that you sometimes punish your kids doesn't make you a good parent. That's not by any means the defining factor.

What is? Gee, a lot of things. Do you actually bother to teach your kids right from wrong? Do you talk to them? Do you know what is important to them? Do you have consistent boundaries instead of just smacking them when you happen to feel annoyed? Do you give them a lot of loving attention when they're not misbehaving? (I'm thinking of Bill Cosby's line: "Parents do not care about justice, parents care about QUIET!")

I mean, in a country where we have lots of absent parents, a lot of latchkey kids, a lot of kids who sit in front of a screen all day, a lot of kids whose parents neither know nor care where they are when they're not home, kids who can't rely on a family dinner every night or a breakfast in the morning, kids who are abused, kids who are ignored .... why is it that everyone's latched onto this one thing, "lax parenting," that is supposed to cause all the problems we see in teenagers today? Especially when 85% of children are spanked at least sometimes. Clearly that has not been enough to guarantee good behavior in all of them.

The Wall Street Journal published an article recently suggesting that the problem with teenagers is that they are not given opportunities to practice responsibility and reasonable risk-taking at an early enough age -- early enough being before their brains are all fuddled with puberty. That kind of clashes with popular parenting culture. I'm always hearing that you're a negligent parent if you let your toddler climb on something when they might fall, because they might hurt themselves. But you're a lax parent unless you then spank them for trying to climb ... in order to hurt them, so that they learn. It is possible that the parent who lets a child climb and allows him to find out what it's like to fall (from a small height, obviously), will have less trouble with that child in adolescence. Who knows? I don't. (Though I really hope so, seeing as my kid fell off a chair and bonked his head today. It wasn't far, but I still feel bad about it.)

I admit I'm not an expert on teenagers. My dad used to say with pride that he never had any teenagers, he had young adults. I was loads of trouble when I was younger, but after going through all I did in boarding school, rebelling against my parents just seemed silly. Why would I rebel, when I had already tried all the independence I wanted, and when they weren't playing mind games with me or trying to break my will? So I can't exactly credit the tons of responsibility and trust my parents reposed in me with my lack of rebellion, though I'm sure it didn't hurt. My brother, though, never was a rebellious teenager either. Again, why would he rebel? He had tons of responsibility (through an afterschool job) and the trust of our parents. The teen years were a very stable time for both of us. I do know for sure, though, that they didn't keep track of what we said to our friends, in person or online, and wouldn't have punished us for saying what we thought. On the other hand, I would never have said anything that might come back around to hurt my mom's feelings, because ... well, duh. I liked and respected her and didn't want her feelings to be hurt.

[A tangent here: as a preteen, I was the world's most temperamental child. I am not exaggerating; I have never since seen an eleven-year-old act the way I did. I've seen Marko do it, though. Think toddler-force tantrums in a girl who really ought to know better. I was always punished for acting like that. My parents tried everything they could think of to get me to stop. And one day, probably without thinking much about it, my dad commented to me after one of my meltdowns, "You know, your mom's in her room crying because of how you just treated her." It was like a lightbulb that went off over my head. My mother had feelings too! I was hurting her! But I loved her and didn't want to hurt her! That was the one thing that made the difference to me and gave me the strength to really buckle down and control my temper. Relationship will always motivate me when consequences won't, and I think many kids are the same as I was.]

But one thing that does get me is this: the dad, in his later explanation, says that part of why he made the video was because so many of his acquaintances had seen his daughter's note, and he didn't want them to think .... that it was true and he was a tyrant? No, he didn't want them to think that he would let his daughter get away with saying that. So it wasn't just about setting appropriate limits for the child, after all. It was about looking like a good, that is a strict, parent.

I hear (I can't read the full text of his update, because of a browser issue) that the dad did admit that it wasn't the best way of dealing with the situation, that he would consider that his "worst eight minutes as a parent," and that he wouldn't do it again. So I'm not casting judgment on the dad. Probably he is a much better parent than suggested by the video.

He also says that his daughter learned her lesson. But about that I'm not too sure. Did she learn the lesson, "Don't throw a fit on the internet for everyone to see, because that is immature and hurts others"? Or did she learn the lesson, "Don't do that until you're eighteen, because it's okay when grown-ups do it"? Or worse, "Don't get caught next time."

I just think that if adults want good behavior from their kids, the number-one thing they should always do is model the behavior they would like to see. Other parenting tips and tricks will all fail if you don't start there. Kids, and especially teenagers, can detect hypocrisy in a heartbeat. So while the dad's internet rant may have been a powerful consequence, it was a terrible example.

What would I have done? Well, there are two separate offenses this girl did. First, she complained about her parents online, and second, some of what she said wasn't true. The first one I don't think is a crime. I guess it's the libertarian in me ... if my kid wants to whine about me, let them be my guest. They have a right to their thoughts, and they may soon discover that no one is really impressed with their angst anyway. The lying, though, is wrong and I would address that. I'd probably make her write a correction explaining everything in her original note that was a lie. That would certainly show her how bad lying makes you look, as well as let everyone who saw the original note know the truth of the matter. There might be another consequence as well, like extra chores for awhile or loss of internet privileges, but I'm not sure. It would kind of depend on what she said to me when I talked to her about it -- because obviously, that would be the first step.

We all have our not proud moments as parents. The time a kid is screaming at us and we just start screaming back. The time we give some enormous unreasonable consequence for a small infraction because we just can't take it anymore. The time we punish a kid and only later realize that he didn't even understand what he did wrong. But those aren't our proud moments. They shouldn't be praised or taken as an example. The comments I keep seeing that say, "Way to go, showing those entitled teens of nowadays who's boss," or, "Well, better to be too mean to a kid than too nice" (who made that rule up?!) just make me sad. It's just one more way of making parenting into a battle, and I think we could do better.

Here are a few other good responses to the video:

Connected Mom
Modern Alternative Mama
The Path Less Taken
Demand Euphoria
Freeplaylife

Have you seen the video? What did you think?

Conflict or cooperation?

"You can't let him win."

"Don't give an inch, or he'll take a mile."

"He knows what he's doing."

"Don't try to be his friend. He'll grow up to take advantage of you."

"You have to show him who's boss."

I keep hearing phrases like this. And they're well meant. If you're in a duel of wills with a two-year-old over whether or not it's okay to hit the dog with a spoon, it would be a bad idea to lose. First off, you're in the right -- hitting is bad. And second off, you don't want to teach the child that a certain amount of fighting with you is going to get him somewhere.

But at the same time, the language grates on my ears. My son is not an enemy combatant. It gives me no satisfaction to engage in battles with him and walk off the winner. I want us both to win. Me walking away in triumph with the spoon he was hitting the dog with, while he howls at the injustice of it all, doesn't strike me as a "win." It's a necessary evil that we put up with to get through the day, but it's not a "win."

I've been thinking lately of my three years of teaching. The first year, I was told by most of the other teachers, "The kids will try to take advantage of you. Don't give an inch." So I was as strict as I could possibly be, and they did try to take advantage of me. By the end of the year, several of my classes were near chaos. I wasn't strict enough, of course. But what really disillusioned me was how bad those kids wanted to take me down.

The next year, I had first graders. They're so transparent. They weren't rebellious, and I wasn't afraid to give them a few inches and see where they'd go with that. When they had problems, I assumed it was because they hadn't understood or felt unsure. My most rebellious student, whom I was advised to discipline harshly, I was the gentlest with. I tried to find out what was fueling his rebellion, and when I found it was his frustration and discouragement, I gave him extra help. I let him get away, by the old standards, with murder in order to work on the real problems. The rest of the kids, I occasionally disciplined, but I mostly just took them aside and asked them what the problem was. And they would tell me! They would be thankful for my help, and the original problem would disappear.

The year after that, I was back to ninth graders. The hard age. The rebellious age. I did get lucky. I had a nice bunch of kids. But there were a few that were definitely poised to challenge me. The kind of kid that gets a kick out of going head-to-head with the teacher, of finding what the limits are and staying just within them while still driving the teacher nuts. So I should have gone back to my strict ways. But it just wasn't in me. I was high off of teaching first-graders, and remembered tons of little tricks that had helped them. When a student acted up, I refused to make it into a battle, but would instead ask them what was fueling their behavior. I kept a light-hearted demeanor, warned them that I would punish them if I had to because I had to follow the rules, but that we'd both be happier if we could steer clear of the whole punishment scene. I told them I assumed they wanted to get A's in my class, and that I would do what I could to help them get those A's. I stopped "treating them like adults," and instead used grown-up language while treating them as the rather forgetful, irresponsible, uncertain kids they were.

And it worked. By refusing to fight with my kids, by laughing off things that were supposed to test me, by gently reminding them as many times as it took to get back on track, by motivating them with less homework if we got more done in class, by having a fun day every once in awhile ... I somehow ended up with a peaceful classroom, not a perfectly silent one like I might have wanted, but an involved one. And all of my kids learned a lot. The grades definitely showed I did a better job that year.

Of course, there are tougher bunches of kids than that one. Some will go head-to-head with you no matter what you do. But my assumption that I did not have a tough bunch, my assumption that they all wanted to do well and stay out of trouble (one which I would share with them from time to time: "I know you care about this class, I know you're a really great bunch of kids") ended up being, in many ways, self-fulfilling. And I wonder if my assumption with my first batch of kids was self-fulfilling too. Did they take one look at my lengthy "expectation sheet" and my tall stack of prominently-displayed demerits and say, "We're taking this one down"? I suspect some of them did think exactly that.

I think those three years affected my parenting even more than all the years of nannying and big-sistering that I did before. I find myself reacting in totally different ways to my son than I did to my charges and siblings.

When my little brother was a toddler, he didn't like to be kissed. But I would kiss him anyway. And then he would rub his face vigorously, saying, "I'm wiping it off!" I was hurt, of course, and told him, "No, you're not wiping it off. You're rubbing it in!" He got very upset about that at first, but eventually got used to it. What I ask myself now is, "Would it have killed me to have asked before kissing him? Or to let him rub off kisses he didn't want? Isn't it his face to have kissed or not? Isn't it okay for him to have control over that one thing?" I didn't mean it badly. It just never occurred to me that you could or should let the toddler win anything. It certainly never occurred to me to apologize. I would now, though. I think it's entirely appropriate to apologize to kids when you've accidentally upset them -- it shows them how to do it!

I used to think it was important, every time a toddler crossed you, to make it the hill you were going to die on, and walk off the winner. I can't imagine how exhausting that would be in real life -- when you're not the nanny or the big sister, but the mom. Every disagreement, every bit of sass, has to be a fight and has to end in victory. It would end, at the very least, in a heck of a lot of time-outs. Because no one is more stubborn than a toddler. The only way to win is with overwhelming force.

Now, I let a lot more slide. When I tell Marko that horses neigh, and he insists that they moo, I laugh and make a game of it. When he demands that I don't wear the funny hat that scares him, I leave it off. It hurts nothing to humor him. When he says that he most definitely will NOT sit on the potty, I let him go and try again in five minutes (if he hasn't had an accident by then).

There are some things I won't take. I won't be hit, or let the dog be hit. I won't let him climb things that may be dangerous. I won't let him tear books or break his toys. But I don't make a big deal over these things. I just take away the hitting implement, or walk away, or put the dog outside, or move Marko to another room. That makes him furious. I used to think the appropriate action after a "punishment" of this kind was to ignore the child until he'd stopped crying, because he's got to get the "full force" of how naughty he was. Now, when he's in tears because I wouldn't let him hit the dog, and he's sobbing "Hit the dog, hit the dog," I offer a hug or a new activity to do. I don't insist that he suffer. He is already suffering by not being able to do what he wanted.

But my general rule is to assume that he isn't trying to start a fight with me. He's just trying to do his toddler thing and experiment with stuff. I place the limits, I won't let him go past them, but I'm not offended that he test them either. It's what toddlers do. It isn't personal. And it isn't a fight.

The deepest part of this whole thing is that I try never to think of it in terms of battle or winning or losing. When I think of it that way, I treat it that way, and when I treat it that way, it becomes that way. When I think, "Marko is challenging me, I have to win this one," I am closed to his point of view. I don't think of what will make it better or easier for him. I think of how to win and how to make sure he knows it. And when I have won, I am left with an upset child who is looking for something else he can do that he can win. When I think, "Marko wants something, and he doesn't understand why he can't have it. Let me help him understand and help him not do it anymore," I feel patient. I feel like trying to understand the root of what he's doing. I easily see his motivations (is he tired? bored? hungry?) and can solve his original problem. It's amazing to see his temper tantrum over hitting the dog dissolve as soon as he realizes there are other options, like reading a story, or when he remembers there's something else he really wanted, like a snack. There's no resentment afterwards, out of either of us. We both feel better because we've solved the problem and we can both have something we want.

I know sometimes "battles" are inevitable, especially as a child gets older and more set about what they want. And I know it's important to be the mom and not the buddy or the doormat, and make clear what the limits are. But I still want to get rid of all the warlike language. It doesn't help me be a good mom. When my son challenges me, I want to say to myself not "I have to win!" but, "What does he really need? How can I help him do what I need him to do? How can I show mercy and kindness to him without blurring the limits that he needs me to set for him?"

It's how I would like to be treated, anyway. And my goal these days is to treat my son -- both children -- the way I would like to be treated. I remember being a kid. I remember what it felt like to be powerless and to want to challenge authority just to get rid of that feeling of helplessness. I want to show my kids that I do understand where they're coming from, and that I'm willing to help them get where they need to be. I just hope I can do a good job of that.

Are the Pearls responsible?

There's this parenting book out there that gets a lot of love from one side, and a lot of hate from the other. Really, there's no one who's indifferent to it. The book is called To Train Up a Child, by Michael and Debi Pearl. The New York Times has recently brought the book to public attention again in this article. (Unfortunately, you need an account to read past the first page, so I can't comment in depth on that particular article.)

Here's the controversy. The book is extremely popular, especially in Fundamentalist Protestant families. Over 600,000 copies have been sold. But at this time, three children have died from beatings and other abuse which may be related to the book. It was found in the parents' homes, and the parents said they were following what the book said.

Of course the Pearls say their book had nothing to do with the deaths. They say that, in order for a child to die, the parents must have not followed the instructions in the book. And they claim that the parents must have lost their temper, and that sort of thing is exactly what the book warns against and tries to prevent.

However, I've read the book. My mom got it from someone years ago, and was reading it. At first she was impressed: it taught calmness and consistency -- and what parent couldn't use more of those? But then she started making a face as she read it. "It says to spank babies who wiggle on the changing table with a switch!" So I went and read the whole book.

The philosophy is pretty simple. It's based on conditioning. You condition your child from a very early age (though there's no particular age limit for starting) to obey you instantly. When they don't obey instantly, they get spanked. It should never be the hand, but always a "rod" of some sort. The Pearls recommend willow wands, wooden spoons, or flexible plumbing line. There is no specific limit on the amount of time spent spanking the child or the number of licks, but instead it is to continue until the child "submits." You can tell a child has submitted because they are no longer screaming, struggling, or trying to shield themselves from the blows, but are lying quietly and maybe softly crying.

Children raised in this system from birth do learn how to make the spankings stop. Though it's contrary to their instincts, they learn to stifle their cries and hold still so they don't involuntarily resist. And they hop to obey their parents' slightest command, because they don't want to be hit.

But there are "stubborn" children who just don't seem to figure this out. The same goes for adopted children (all three of the children who died were adopted) who are subjected to this system at an older age. They simply CAN'T stop crying or struggling. So the beatings continue. That is exactly what Pearl recommends.

I simply can't see where in the book there is any warning against the sort of things that have been killing children. The Pearls assume that every child will submit eventually. Lydia Schatz didn't. Perhaps she didn't know how. They say right out that no child will starve himself to death rather than obey, so it's fine to withhold food from a child until he "submits." Hana Williams apparently hadn't read that part. I see no evidence that the parents were angry. They simply continued on with a discipline system that wasn't working, and assumed they just needed to punish harder to achieve the goal (explicit in the Pearl book) of "breaking their child's will."

The Pearls presumably were not aware that numerous small bruises release dangerous toxins into the blood and can overload the kidneys, causing death. It is possible to kill a child without hitting hard enough to break a bone or injure an organ. But since they must be aware of this now, there's really no excuse for continuing to sell this book without some kind of warning.

In other words, yes, I believe they are morally responsible for teaching people to strike their children and not telling them that they have to stop. I've heard horrible stories of people raised under this system ... stories of being locked in dark closets for hours, deprived of food for days, all because they were believed to be "obstinate." Sometimes, they just didn't know how to correct their actions. But instead of teaching them how to do better, the parents believed, based on this book, that every misbehavior is a power struggle between them and their children -- and that they must win at all costs.

I don't for a second believe that these three cases are the only cases of child abuse by people following this book. In fact, I can't quite see how following this book could be anything but child abuse. Children are deliberately placed in situations where they will disobey (tempting a toddler with a forbidden object, for instance) and then punished when they do. They are required to maintain a cheerful disposition at all times -- yes, crying could be cause for a spanking! The goal is total, instant, unquestioning obedience. No acknowledgement is made of the child's intrinsic right to free will, or the reality that he will grow up and leave home, at which point he needs to know something other than just obedience.

But the worst of it is that this book, like others of its kind, pressures parents with the fear that if they don't follow these instructions, their children will end up rebellious teenagers who are impossible to restrict or control in any way. That's just scare tactics. Obviously there is a possible medium between beating your children several times a day and letting them walk all over you. You can teach, instruct, convince, and when necessary enact reasonable, harmless consequences.

But please, please, whatever you do, don't buy that awful book. You will not ever hear Dr. Sears, or Elizabeth Pantley, or Ray Guarendi, saying, "Well, it's true that many of our readers have killed their children, but we don't think it's related to their books." You can't accidentally kill your child by rocking them to sleep or explaining why we don't hit or making them write sentences. Why not stick with what is obviously safe?