Parenting Philosophy Toolbox, Part 9

(This is part 9 of a series. To see the the first part, click here.)

9. What lesson is my child learning from this? This question should continually play in the background of your mind with everything you do. Ultimately the decisions that you make in life regarding your behavior (as perceived by your child) should be guided by the answers you derive from this constant line of questioning.

When you do something and then tell your child that it is forbidden for him to do the same, you send a mixed message. When you allow the television to be the child's best friend and babysitter and then complain that he or she is poorly behaved or having nightmares from watching scary images or has limited or vulgarity-filled speech, it's time to take a step back and wonder how those behaviors came about.

When you cave into a demand that your child makes after crying and begging for that demand for several minutes, what lesson has the child learned? "Hey, I may have to whine for 5 minutes and listen to Daddy say 'no cookie' over and over again, but eventually I always get a cookie anyway!" "Hmm, Mommy wants me to do this, but I know that she gives me chocolate chips if I hold out for them, so I'll wait and see if I can get some candy!"

I've heard all kinds of stories where parents neglected to consider the lesson(s) the child would learn by certain behaviors. I know of more than one father who has had a toddler girl awaken and have difficulty falling back asleep during the night and has plopped down in front of her favorite movie at 2AM. Guess what happened the next night? And the next? The daughter learned that she could get up for 2AM movies every night, and so the negative behavior was reinforced, rather than extinguished. The inconsistent behavior by these fathers led the children to ignore the notion that when they awaken during the night they should return to sleep.

A few months ago I was faced with a dilemma: the sprinklers were still spraying the lawn when I took my son to our neighborhood playground one morning, and some tempting puddles had formed on the sidewalk. Another mom was there with her two children who kept trying to convince her that it wasn't a problem for them to get wet. I had to consider the issue: would it be acceptable for my son to play in puddles in the future? How much of a problem would it be for him to jump now and expect the same opportunity down the road? In the end all 3 children had a soggy morning romp in the water and enjoyed themselves thoroughly. Jackson got soaking wet, with pruned skin, and while he has had some puddle exploration opportunities since, we haven't had any problematic issues as a result. (Of course, having typed this now, that is sure to change!)

In the above situation, I analyzed the issue before acting. I recognized that puddle jumping was something I was willing to allow to become a consistent game for Jackson. However sometimes I forget to ask myself what lesson my son is learning, and much corrective action later becomes necessary. One issue I have struggled with adjusting is table standing. Traditionally, I have disallowed standing on tables indoors. However in my own mind, I found that outdoor tables are distinct in many ways and generally less of a threat of danger for standing. My son, on the other hand, merely became confused by this distinction which was not as clear to him as it was to me. Sometimes standing on tables was okay, perhaps even encouraged; sometimes he got yelled at for doing it. How confusing! Who is to blame for him standing on indoor tables then? Certainly not Jackson. He was merely applying his preferred of two states of table standing rules: the one in which he got to be on the table!

Unfortunately, there are other situations of a sadder nature that need to be addressed here. Some parents have been raised under the impression that hitting a child (or even an adult) will be educational. I'm no neuroscientist, but to me it makes little sense to spank a child for peeing on the floor or for hitting another child, etc. The part of the brain that reacts to violence would be our more primitive side, our hindbrain, which has very little capacity for reasoning. Expecting that a child will learn the correct lesson from hitting is very strange indeed, particularly in the example of a child being violent. "Wait, Mommy says 'no hitting, hitting is bad', but then she hit me!" It's a very confusing statement to make to a child. It also does not correct the behavior, as with peeing on the floor. Children instead learn to hide the unwanted behavior (or lie about it) if they perceive they will receive punishment, rather than to learn the lesson not to perform the unwanted behavior in the first place. Kids whose parents have often resorted to physical punishment are prone to lying, hiding evidence of soiled underpants, blaming others for knocking over plants, and in one particularly memorable case I experienced recently, a child was unable to locate the garbage can in my bathroom and hid poopy paper behind my toilet so she would not get "in trouble" for making a mess.

The above instances are all ones I have pulled from personal experiences I have had with children, and it takes considerable time and retraining to correct for the behavior of children who learned the wrong lessons from their errors. Rather than trying to help kids gain an understanding of the reason to do or not to do something, many parents and caregivers resort to authoritarian commands that dictate rather than guide or suggest. As a result, these children may behave better, but they are not developing their own reasoning skills. Some recent articles explain this phenomenon in more detail, demonstrating that slightly wilder, less well-behaved children may actually have a scholastic advantage if their parents are prone more to reasoning with kids than to issuing a series of mandates.

After all, if a child runs out into the street without looking, and he is struck by and yelled at by his father, what lesson is he learning from that experience? "I run into the street, and Daddy hits me and yells at me! Ouch! I thought Daddy liked me?" However, if a child is consistently helped with reasoning skills, he can (like my 21 month old son) learn that crossing the street is something to be done with care. Jackson understands that cars are dangerous because they are big, fast, and heavy. When he comes to a street, even if he's been running ahead of me, he waits, holds my hand, looks both ways, and crosses the street when no cars are coming. Since he could walk, street-crossing skills have been practiced and discussed, so that he knows how to be safe. Of course, on occasion he will get distracted by an airplane flying overhead and need a reminder not to stop in the street. That's part of being a kid. But being abused by the people you love and trust more than anyone, being taught that making mistakes is worthy of being hit, the only lesson that is learned is that mistakes and problems must be kept a secret from parents--which is hardly what I think these parents are hoping their children will learn.

So, while keeping the notion in your mind, "What is my child learning from this experience?" you should also consider the correlate question: "What lesson should I be learning from this experience?" It is largely through asking ourselves these two questions that Andrew and I have developed the ideas I've been presenting in this Parenting Philosophy Toolbox. If you take nothing else away from reading this series of concepts, please take this one! When we make time to consider the effects of our behavior on our children and ourselves, our self-reflection helps us to become better parents and more thoughtful people.

Please come back for the next installment in this series in 2 weeks!