My role as a professional communicator obviously comes into play in my personal life. My wife hates it when I try to think strategically about how we are going to address a conversation with our children or even worse, when I try to influence the way she is trying to frame a discussion or argument with me.
I don’t blame her, I am a general jackass and when I revert to a monotone, placating doofus, nodding my head and waiting for her to finish so I can refute in well-defined key message style bullet points, I would want to hit me in the throat with a rolling pin too.
But as we tell our kids, life is about constant learning and I found myself taking the advice of my own mother (aghast!) and then having it confirmed its effect by my eldest son.
At lunch on Sunday, my mom and discussed anything and everything. Just the two of us over three pints and three glasses of wine, it was a lovely way to spend Mothers day, for her and for me. She casually mentioned what she noticed is that we give our kids too many choices when it comes to daily life. Do you want to go to the mall with me to pick up some new clothes? Do you want to come to blah blah’s house to check out their selection of soccer cleats? Naturally, when presented with an option of a boring necessary task or staying at home in your underwear building an awesome new world in MineCraft, the option would be the latter. This usually leads to confrontation when we switch gears and demand their help in these tasks.
Hud doing something he likes, hanging with his friend Miles, at MayFair, a longtime Toronto community event.
This realization came into play last night when Steph asked Hudson to help her with the groceries as I needed the car to take Tasman to soccer. She presented him with the option of coming to help and he declined, knowing he is at the age where we would leave him alone for 30 minutes or so if we had to go out. When Steph said he had to come, as she earnestly needed his muscles, he balked and got frustrated, so we gave him the floor.
He said, “If you want me to come, just tell me to come, if you give me a choice, I will want to stay at home.”
Steph told him she was giving him the benefit of the doubt of the need for actual help, not company, or not trusting him for being home alone and he acknowledged it, barely, it was difficult to tell with the goldfish crackers spilling from his mouth.
He then said he was glad to go with her to help and that was that. Before I left for soccer, I told him I thought that discussion was helpful, for all of us and he smiled his wickedly devilish smile and agreed, slipping his huge headphones back on.
Constant learning indeed.
Yes, I read somewhere about a couple of years back not to end sentences with, “okay?” because it makes it sound like you’re giving your kids a choice, when you’re actually not. It makes it seem more pleasant… but really, we’re having pasta for dinner whether you like it, or whether you don’t – I try not to make it sound like there’s a choice when there isn’t one, really. Okay? *snort*
I realized recently that I end all my instructions to the kids with “ok?” and that they could (and often do) interpret it to mean a choice, when what I am actually doing is trying to confirm that they heard me. So now I end with “do you understand?” Or “do you have any questions?” It’s much clearer now what my expectations are and whether or not they actually have a choice. There’s a lot of learning with this parenting business!