Eat Nicely Here, or Play on the Floor
Dinnertime with two-year-old Lukas. Mommy and Daddy are talking over the day’s events and listening to the little tyke’s new words and experiences. A cozy scene for family bonding and love, right? That’s how Mom and Dad see it, but Lukas has different ideas.
First the bread crust is hurled into Dad’s soup, splashing the Christmas tie. Then the little fists are sledgehammering the sliced-up wieners on his tray. Next he’s on his feet trying to climb out the back of the high chair. Then the top is off his safety cup, and he’s anointing Fido with milk, all of which is punctuated with intermittent bloodcurdling screams like those from shoppers at the after-Thanksgiving Day sale at Wal-Mart.
Mom and Dad have a problem. They must convince this child that such dinner behavior is unacceptable. They must set limits.
They could slap his little hands, grab his little shoulders, and peer directly into his little eyes while saying, “Lukas, eat nice or Daddy spanks.” And Lukas would show them just how strong
his little lungs are. Or they could say, “Lukas, would you like to eat nicely in the chair, or would you like to play on the floor?”
Notice that the parents do not ask Lukas to “play nicely” on the floor. We can’t make a child play nicely on the floor, but we can help him to eat nicely. One thing is under our control; the other is not.
Fighting words, or enforceable, thinking words. With fighting words, Mom and Dad have done all of the thinking, and the meal is chaos. With the thinking words, they let Lukas do some thinking, and order is restored. The parents have shown Lukas how they make themselves happy by taking care of themselves, and Lukas can decide about his own happiness.
If Lukas chooses the floor, he may learn soon enough that it’s a long, hunger-filled time until breakfast. Naturally, when providing such options as waiting until breakfast, the average child will make the rest of the night as miserable as possible.
Older children will whine that they are hungry, and younger children will keep parents up with wails of unhappiness. Wise parents show compassion, stick to their guns, and show minimal frustration in spite of the child’s best attempt to provoke it.
On the other hand, after an hour or so, Lukas may have already learned his lesson and be ready to sit and eat nicely.
However it’s handled, the child needs to learn what all happy adults know: “If you are very difficult to be around, there’s a chance it will be harder to get food in life!” All this is accomplished with no anger, threats, or fighting words.
Too bad about the Christmas tie.
Passive-Aggressive Behavior
When children are commanded to do something they don’t like, they often respond with passive-aggressive behavior. Kids know they must comply with the order or else reap punishment. They channel their anger
in a way that will hurt their parents — so subtly that the parents don’t know they’re being hurt. They’ll make it sting sharply enough so that those parents will think twice before giving that order again.
Becca was assigned to do the dishes — something she ranked on her happy-meter right up there with letting dentists drill her teeth. She used every conceivable trick to get out of it. Sometimes she was able to put it off past her bedtime. Then, all of a sudden, she became very mature about her need for the good old eight hours a night: “You’re always telling me I need my sleep,” she’d say. “I’ll do them in the morning.” Of course, when morning came, she was running late and had to rush for the bus.
There the dishes sat, still unwashed. Eventually, Mom did them because they were stinking up the kitchen.
But Mom decided to get tough one night and said to Becca, “I want those dishes washed now! I’m tired of you wasting all evening in front of that television while those dishes sit there.”
“Oh, all right,” Becca replied, “I’ll do it.” She walked to the sink and washed with such enthusiasm and gusto that she “accidentally” dropped one of Mom’s best glasses. It shattered on the floor. “Oh, I’m sorry, Mom,” she said when Mom raced into the room. “I was trying so hard. I wanted to do a good job.” Mom is between a rock and a hard place. How could Mom punish a girl who was trying so hard?
Becca’s passive-aggressive behavior told her mom an important message: You’ll think twice before you make me do the dishes again.
Mom might conclude, “What’s the use? It’s easier to do it myself than to go through all this.”
Passive-Resistive Behavior
When kids react to parental demands with passive-resistive behavior, they resist without telling the parent they are resisting. The resistance is in their actions, not their words. For example, when a parent tells a child to do something, the child responds by claiming he or she forgot the request or with less-than-instantaneous obedience.
One of Brandon’s teachers ordered, “Get down the hall to your class,
young man, and get there right away.” Brandon “got” down the hall, all right, but his movement was imperceptible to the human eye.
The teacher said, “Hurry up, Brandon.”
“Hey, I’m going,” Brandon replied. “I’m doing what you told me. How come you’re always on my case?” Brandon was attempting to wrest back some control of the situation. He was fighting. I’ll go, he said inside. But I won’t go your way — I’ll go my way.
A sure sign of passive-resistant behavior in children is prolonged parental frustration. Certainly, parents may be frustrated without having passive-resistant children, but all passive-resistant children have frustrated parents.
In the sections that follow, we will discuss some techniques that Love and Logic parents use to decrease parental frustration and children’s noncompliance. We’ll discover various options that Becca’s mom or Brandon’s teacher could have used.