Dr. Phil will tell you to never get into a fight with your
child that you don’t win. You don’t have
to commit to every challenge, but once you pick up that gauntlet, be sure you
walk away the winner. It’s a good
strategy. Otherwise, you teach your kids
to fight you incessantly. In the battle
of wills, the parent has to be the victor.
Of course, sometimes it’s hard to tell who won a particular
encounter.
Tonight, we had a battle over supper with Nathan. He did not want his plate of food and threw a
massive kicking and screaming tantrum over it.
I picked my battle: he didn’t have to eat but the plate had to remain on
the table near the TV. (Often, once the
tantrum is over, he’ll decide he’s hungry and eat anyway.) Thus began a battle of screaming where he
would try to grab the plate and bring it into the kitchen to dump it and I
would take it from him and put it back where it belonged.
After an hour of this (which is unusual for Nathan), I began
to wonder if maybe I was asking him to do something beyond him. He’d gotten up very early so maybe he was
just tired and needed to go to bed early.
I called Dave and asked him to come home so that we could do the usual
routine of him putting Nathan to bed.
(No sense pushing a further change which would only upset him more).
Another half hour of intermittent screaming and tantrums
mixed with attempts at bargaining.
Nathan would ask me to take away the plate and offer me a toy or tell me
he’d be mad if I didn’t. I said no the
first few times and then ignored it.
Dave arrives and Nathan is just worn out. He tells Nathan that in five minutes, it’ll
be time for bed.
Figuring we’re at the end of the battle, I clear away the
untouched plate. A few minutes later,
Nathan comes to me and very politely asks for cheese. I decide it’s not a bad idea, given that he
hasn’t had any supper and get him a cheese slice. He’s cheerful and happy and playing and it’s
like the last hour and a half never happened.
So here’s the question: Did he settle because he accepted
screaming and tantruming at me wasn’t getting him what he wanted? Or did he settle because I “caved” and
removed the offending plate of food? Did
he settle because he knew bedtime was coming, which is what he wanted all
along?
Don’t know the answer.
At least two of the scenarios suggest the lesson learned was that if you
tantrum long enough you’ll get what you want (the plate removed or
bedtime). But then he did ask politely
for the cheese rather than whining or screaming.
Ah well. Raising
children is a long-term tactical campaign.
You can’t obsess too long on any one single battle because there’s
always another one coming.
No comments:
Post a Comment