I am hoping, perhaps naively, that we can avoid with Finn some of the unwelcome, yet common, behavioral phases most kids go through. Right now I am most concerned about avoiding the No! No! No!s, the Gimme! Gimme!s and the the Mine!s.
My strategy is simple: display the behaviors that I expect of Finn and treat him respectfully. Weird. I actually heard someone out there snicker...
Respect is a term I think has very different meanings to different parents, which is funny because it has a very specific meaning. It has to be one of the most commonly used and least understood words in the parental vocabulary. Respect is...
a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements.
It does not mean blind obedience. It does not mean "I am right and you are wrong." It does not mean, "Do as I say, not as I do." It does not mean, "Because I said so."
It does not mean we will always see eye to eye. It does not mean we will always get along. Hopefully though, it means that when we disagree, we can be receptive to each other's opinions and desires, we can remember that we value each other's opinion. Respect means being willing to say, "I was wrong," as a parent and not having that admission undermine my parental authority. Instead it may actually elevate it.
"What? Respect your kid!" you say. "They'll eat you up! They're supposed to respect you!"
Well yes, I want Finn to respect me. But if nothing else respect is a two way street. If it isn't, then you're just a dictator in a gilded throne talking to some reporter in a flack jacket about how loved and respected you are by your people while your people starve outside your gates, patiently digging holes under your palisades with old dental tools and dreaming about sneaking in to strangle you in your sleep. In short, if what you have looks sort of like respect and smells a little like respect, but is not reciprocated by you, then my dear parent-friend what you have in your house is tyranny. In other words, if you didn't earn it by being admirable, it ain't respect.
So how do I (the Smartypants in this conversation) plan on preventing my little dragon-midge from pupating into a full blown bolrag? By following the golden rule: treat others as you would like to be treated.
We in the Piper-Johnson household are big on please and thank you. Finn knows the baby signs for both. We expect him to use them (Daddy Hint #143 Your kid will learn the sign for "please" very quickly if he needs to use them before having a bite of Steak and Shake milkshake. True story.). At his age he can sign "more please" without prompting over a thousand times a minute when he knows there are grapes in the refrigerator. I have actually counted. It's adorable.
And we always say please and thank you to him. This is so simple. Kids are little mimicking sponges. Treat your kid like you want them to treat you and they will! They will know no other way. It's like they won't have a choice but to be nice to you. Be a bully to your kids, be a brat towards them, be unreasonable--and by unreasonable I mean ask them to treat you better than you treat them--and watch them degrade. Oprah always says, "We teach people how to treat us."
One sign of "respect" that is very common in the South is for parents to demand that their children say "yes sir" and/or "yes ma'am" to adults. Note however from the definition of respect that it has nothing to do with being young or old. In theory, the terms sir and ma'am are a way of being cordial with others, rather than treating a person as though you are on familiar terms (For you Northerners out there, I explain it this way: In the North, you treat people as though you are equals while in the South, you treat a stranger as though they are better than you. It's only really a problem when Northerners and Southerns talk to each other [just another argument for succession. 'Just saying.]).
Without some verbal reciprocity from the parent, the parent is simply asking their kid to never forget that they, the parent, are in charge/better than/more powerful than/the owner of the kid. These become terms of reverence, not of mutual admiration!
Danielle had a high school social studies teacher who came up with an ingenious solution to the power differential between him and his students that resulted from the school's requirement that students referred to teachers as Mr., Mrs. or Miss (I will point out that there is evidence that removing perceived social barriers between teachers and students ENHANCES LEARNING): rather than calling his pupils by their first name, he called them all Mr. or Miss. Wow! Imagine that, a teacher who admired his students so much that he addressed them as though they were equals. Respect.
So, with this in mind, I was totally surprised by my southern parent-friends, Josh and Carol, who not only ask there daughters to say "yes sir" and "yes ma'am", but who also say "yes ma'am" to their little ladies. There is something totally adorable about a dad telling his little girl, "Yes ma'am, you can have a juicy." And I bet she will respect him for it.
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