The Revamped Strategy

Not so long ago my fifth-grade child turned in a sloppy book report and brought home a poor grade.  I started in with a lecture on taking pride in your work and soon enough I had worked into a lather about taking your time, checking your work and that sloppy work was unacceptable.  As I built to a crescendo, I realized that my child hadn’t gotten a word in edgewise in about 10 minutes.  Nor had she looked up at me.  Eighty percent of what I said had not registered.  She had probably disengaged from my 100 mph lecture and was simply awaiting the pronouncement of a punishment or for me to stop talking.

I vowed to revamp my strategy for the next time.

When I do all the talking, I come away with no real sense of the nature of the problem and how to best fix it.  My child reverts to silence and the occasional ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer.  This denies me the two things that I — and all parents — need most:  more information as to what exactly is going wrong and secondly for the child to learn the lesson and remember it long enough to put in an improved performance at the next opportunity.

A few weeks later, I found a school test with a bad grade written in red in my child’s schoolbag.  This was my chance.

The fouled up math test wasn’t complicated or tricky.  Straightforward equations, wrong answers.  I started out with a simple, “Tell me what happened here?” and handed my child the test.  “I rushed through it and didn’t check my work.”  I asked if we had ever discussed this problem in the past.  “Yes.”  So you agree that we have dealt with this problem in the past and it still isn’t fixed.  Is that something that me as a parent should be concerned about?  She said, “Yes.” Tell me why I should be concerned.  “Because if I rush through, then I will get things wrong and a bad grade.”

I felt like a football coach breaking down the game film at halftime and making adjustments in the locker room before the second half.  My child and I proceeded to go through what happened on that test step-by-step with me asking the questions and she providing the answers. It felt like a genuine give-and-take.  If she could successfully present me with a valid reason why poor performance on this test should not raise parental concerns, then I was prepared to let her off scot-free.  But as expected she knew where my questions were heading and preemptively confessed to the problem, explained that she is too distracted by her friends in the classroom, and told me she needs to focus better.  She then came up with a suitable punishment: no Facebook or cellphone until she could demonstrate that the problem was fixed.

I became a convert to the second approach.  I came away with a much clearer understanding of why she makes easy errors on tests that had left me scratching my head.  By explaining herself in her own words, this (I hope) thus lessened the chances of a repeat performance.  I don’t have to worry about the punishment fitting the crime because my child had confessed to the crime, described in detail how the crime was committed and then levied the punishment.  Lastly, if this problem resurfaces, I can say, “Remember when you told me ….” and be confident that indeed she will remember her own words.  And if I have to take even stronger measures, I can simply say, “We did it your way last time and now we are going to do it my way.”

But if my revamped strategy works, hopefully it won’t come to that.

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The Pelican We Saw at the Gulf Oil Spill

I took my kids on a 7-day roadtrip down to the Gulf to see the oil spill up close.  It was a fascinating, education and sad trip.  The image that will stay with us is this one of a oiled-up pelican trying to fly.  We saw it at Grand Isle State Park just as we were leaving.  Workers approached the bird with a net, but it had the strength to evade the net, beat its heavy wings, and fly back to the oily water.

I will have more blog entries on this trip in coming days/weeks.

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Speaking to your Kids about Child Molestation

Three times in recent weeks an uncomfortable topic has come up in conversation with my kids; child molestation.  First,my children have heard the drip drip drip of charges in the news against Catholic priests.  Secondly, something happened at my kids’ elementary school a few weeks ago that prompted a call to the police.  Finally the movie Precious came out on DVD.  Child molestation is not an issue my wife and I had planned to address in detail at this moment but now that it has come up, I figured it was time for my  12, 11, and 8 year old to become aware that this issue not only exists but is a topic open for discussion in our house.

I found, however, that the harsh reality that some people feel the need to touch children in a sexual way is almost impossible to explain.  When my kids asked the inevitable question, Why?, I really had no words that get at the motivation of a molester. …

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Stick to Your Guns (Even When Your Powder is Wet)

I am sure that nobody is interested in my youngest son”s potty habits but I am and this is my blog, so I’ll blog about it.  The last time I visited this subject, I thought I had my son pottytrained and comfortably in underwear last summer when he was 2 and a half.  He and I, for example, flew on a plane to Denver, spent four days and four nights and flew home all without a diaper bag or an accident.  He continued his dry ways for the next four months or so much to my delight.

And then something happened about a month ago. ..

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The Final Word on the Hooters Debate

It has been exactly two months since my son stepped foot Hooters.   Hundreds of people from around the world have left comments about my blog post both positive and negative, some thought provoking and others just nasty and dismissive.  The last word (at this blog anyway) goes to Catherine Otwell, who waited on us that day and emailed me recently asking to write a guest post because she’s got something to say.  I think it speaks for itself:

My name is Catherine, and a few weeks ago my photo was featured in a story on the homepage of AOL. Totally unaware of the situation, I was bombarded by phone calls and text messages telling me to check AOL’s top stories.  Initially, I was pleasantly surprised as my friends called exclaiming, “You’re famous!”

When I came home, and finally was able to see the article, I quickly remembered the Saturday when Bob came to Hooter’s with his son after his football game. As I read the article, I was intrigued by Bob’s experiment. I kept reading. Finally, I came to the comments. I was not surprised to see how many people have distaste for Hooters, especially when it comes to children. However, I was disappointed to see how quickly people judge the restaurant and the girls, without even stepping through the doors.

Firstly, Hooter Girls are not the enemy. What you see in the photo is a 20 year old, George Mason student. I was a professional ballet student at the Washington Ballet, I graduated in the top of my class with an IB diploma, and the only thing that stood in the way of Georgetown was the tuition. I support myself on entirely on my own, and I am paying my way through school.

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Kids Growing Up Soft

A few weeks ago I had a serious talk with an old friend until 2 in the morning about raising our kids.  He has two young kids. I have four.  We marveled about how our kids are growing up with many advantages that we did not have at their age, and wondered if perhaps they have it too well.

Like my wife, my friend came to the United States as a war refugee from Vietnam.  His family –dad, mom, and four brothers– lived in a cramped apartment in New Jersey.  His dad supported them on a near minimum-wage job while the kids were tossed into the public school system before they knew much English. They suffered greatly during those years.  His youngest brother tragically drowned one day, sucking the life out of the family and causing his mother to suffer a breakdown that led to crushing medical bills.  He overcame all that, and the hardship he went through made him the man he is today.

The thing is, this conversation took place while we were blowing through a bottle of wine in his nice home in the suburbs.  Our kids and our wives were asleep upstairs in the four spacious bedrooms.  He pointed out the dilemma he thinks about all the time: he wants to provide for his kids so that they never have to suffer like he did.  But if he does a too good job of providing, then his kids might grow up soft.

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Using Chores and Allowance to Instill an Appreciation of Work and Savings

Washing dishes

My wife and I have always wanted our four children from an early age to develop a sense of responsibility and eventually an actual work ethic to prepare them to go out in the world someday with a healthy understanding of how things work.  This process, I think, should begin early by teaching 2 or 3 year old to clean up toys when they are done with them.  You build on it later by having your kids as young as 3 or 4 begin doing simple chores such as getting the mail.  Still later as chores become routine and the work becomes heavier, you can offer your kids an allowance as an incentive.

Here’s how we did it:

CHORES:   There are a lot of things that small kids can do to play an active role in keeping the household running.  I started with having my kids at four years old …

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Never Stop Courting Each Other

This is my third recent piece focused on what keeps the partnership between Mom and Dad healthy and happy.

My wife says that the key to a good marriage is a courtship that doesn’t stop once the honeymoon is over. I’d like to add that the key to being a good parent includes setting aside the time to romance your spouse just the two of you, away from the kids. But we all know that once married couples become parents, courtship tends to get crowded out as both Mom and Dad focus on kid’s activities, day care, sports, school, and everything else that is both time consuming and costly.  Setting aside time to take the focus away from the kids and put it back on each other will pay dividends both for the health of the marriage and the health of your parenting partnership.  But how to squeeze it all in?

We have some friends who have come up with a simple solution: ‘date night’ at home. No calling (or paying) a babysitter. No nothing. Their four kids go down to the basement play room on Saturday night while Mom and Dad hang a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door leading upstairs. The kids–oldest is 11 and the youngest is 2– know this is their time to hang out on their own, get their own food, pick their own movies and perhaps solve their own disputes without Mom and Dad around to referee. Meanwhile, Mom and Dad are upstairs doing what is necessary to keep good marriages happy and healthy.

Everyone wins. Brilliant.

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How to Reduce Your Child’s Crying

Some marine researchers spend their entire lives listening to recordings of whale grunts and figuring out what they all mean.  I do the same thing except I study little kids and crying.  In fact, I dislike the sound of crying–especially fake crying– so much that I have devoted myself to trying to make it stop. I have four children–including a two year old– and thus lots of direct experience and test cases to draw from.

We all know that little kids are clever.  They cry not simply because they are overcome with pain or emotion, but rather they have learned over time that crying produces positive results. Often kids cry simply because they are tired, want something they shouldn’t have, or just trying to gain attention.  But when crying is employed to gain something, then it becomes a habit and increasingly frequent. This is what I call unnecessary crying and I guesstimate that 80 percent of all crying falls into this category (the remaining 20 percent is real crying and a sign of something serious and warrants attention and consoling.)  But the nagging 80 percent is the stuff that drives me crazy and can be reduced.  Here’s what I have come up with:

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How My Kids Learned About the Great Depression

This is the report my 8-year-old wrote about her conversation with her 88-year-old great-grandfather about what the holidays were like for him during the Great Depression.

It really bothers me when my children simply assume they can have all the newest video games, see all the first-run movies, and buy toys they see advertised on Cartoon Network.  Two years ago at Christmas time, I actually felt embarrassed at the obscenely large heap of opened boxes, crumpled wrapping paper and bows at the end of our driveway.  The next year with the economy souring and millions of Americans losing their jobs, my wife and I informed the kids that Christmas, 2008 would be scaled back.  Still on Christmas morning I heard some grumbling coming from their little mouths.  That night I tossed and turned trying to figure out how to give my kids a much-needed dose of perspective and a greater ability to see a bigger picture. It cost me several hours of sleep but I managed to formulate a plan and — finally — to fall asleep.

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