March 8, 2011 ~ Day 89 Caught You Being Good

A few days ago I had the chance to catch up over the telephone with my big sister who lives in a different city with her husband and four children.

They are quite a bit ahead of us on this parenting road, having sent their eldest daughter off for her freshman year of college this past September. My sister currently has three teens left in the house - ages 16, 15 and 14. To say that she has her hands full would be an understatement... but she is a devoted mother and her kids are thriving.

Like me, my sister is a former educator - she actually holds two Masters degrees in education. At various times she has been a teacher, counselor and administrator. Her most recent job (before retiring to be a full time mother to her kids) was as a high school vice principal. She has a lot of experience with kids of all ages.

I confided in her about our continuing struggles with sibling rivalry, an issue she has definitely seen before. Describing all of the different strategies we have tried out to ease the problem, I confessed my frustration. "I'm really excited about meeting with the play therapist because I don't know what else to try. I need suggestions."

"Have you tried a positive behavior chart?"

"Yes, we've tried it like three times. He can never make it through an entire day without losing his ticket or sticker, which makes him hate the chart."

"Well, a day is a long time for a five year old to act nicely. That is a lot to expect - I know plenty of adults that can't make it through an entire day without having a grumpy patch. Have you tried a 'Caught you being good' chart?"

I asked her to elaborate, and she quickly summed up for me the key points of this kind of behavior reinforcement... you ignore the bad behavior but notice when a child is doing something positive and give him/her immediate reinforcement with a sticker saying "Wow, I caught you being good!" Then when the child has earned X number of stickers, they can redeem them for a small toy or a privilege.

"Sounds great," I decided. "It's definitely worth a try. I'll get some posterboard and stickers today."

My husband and I explained the merits of the chart to our sons, noting that we wouldn't be rewarding them for actively trying to earn a sticker (e.g. "Look mommy, I made my bed, do I get a sticker?") but rather that the stickers would be doled out spontaneously as we noticed them acting with kindness and patience in their daily lives.

We explained that they could 'catch us' being good too, and that it would be a chart not just for them but rather for our entire family.

"Are you going to get a toy when you get your ten stickers too?" our son asked my husband.

"Oh yes, Daddy likes toys. For my toy, I am going to get a new mini-van!" my husband laughed.

"That's going to take you a lot more than ten stickers, buddy," I laughed, "especially since you know full well how much I hate mini-vans."

"Maybe I'll just try for a brand new bicycle," he smiled.

We were off to an auspicious start.

Yesterday I was just in the middle of making our family chart when I received an email from my husband. He had written me the sweetest poem and it made my entire day. Printing out his loving words, I decided to share them with our sons so they could see an example of love between their parents. I think it is really healthy for them as little boys to see that their father acting in a loving way to their mother, since he is their all time hero and role model.

"Look honey!" I called to our eldest son - "I caught your daddy being good!"

"You did?" he came out of his room into the hallway to see what I was talking about.

I read my son his father's poem (something of a cross between Wordsworth and Shakespeare - a landscape poem full of metaphors about me) and said, "This makes me so happy, I am going to give Daddy the very first sticker on our "Caught You Being Good" chart because he did this for me out of the kindness of his heart."

Something about seeing his father get the first sticker on the chart was very motivating to our boy. Over the course of the next several hours I saw him making the conscious effort to find nice things to do and to control his temper with his brother and sister. Twice during that time, I caught him being good - once when he went without being asked to find his little sister and make sure she wasn't getting into trouble (while I was cooking dinner), and another time when he offered to let his brother play with his favorite toy.

"Wow honey, I caught you being good AGAIN!" I exclaimed. "Great job!"

My sons were both very excited to see the stickers going up on their chart. By the end of the night they had each earned three stickers for general kindness and consideration. We were also careful to catch their little sister making good choices too, for example when her brother was looking for a ball to play with and she went and found him one without being asked.

Happily, the feeling of warmth and joy over receiving stickers for positive choices seemed to be contagious. My sons, especially the eldest one, decided that I too deserved to be caught being good. "Mommy," he said, "I caught you being good. You cooked us a yummy and healthy dinner. You get a sticker." He then picked me out a sticker from the package that said, "Nice work!" and we put it on the board.

Later in the evening, right before bedtime my son closed the doors to his bedroom and began to work on a 'secret project' while I bathed his brother and sister. I was just rinsing the shampoo from their little heads when he marched proudly into the bathroom and handed me a crisp white sheet of paper folded in half. "I made this for you!" he crowed, and handed it over. "It's a poem!"

Opening the paper, I got a little misty. It read:

"I LOVE YOU MOMM I WILL COL YOU FALOR MY LUVEEN MOMM."

(I love you mom, I will call you flower, My loving mom.)

This is by far the nicest thing my eldest son has ever said to me in our nearly six years together. He is not an effusive boy and I can probably count the number of times he has told me that he loves me on two hands. Something about knowing that I've seen his positive behaviors seems to be striking a real chord in him... perhaps filling a need of his that I never realized existed.

I realize that there are sure to be bumps in the road ahead... but on this sunny day I'm feeling a lot of hope for our family.

January 5, 2011 ~ Day 27Everybody Wants To Dance

Well it's gorgeous outside and a new day brings a new perspective. Just further proof that everything happens for a reason, because I've got a lot of new ideas about the topic I was trying to write about the other night that got erased.

The new thing around here lately is that one of our sons has suddenly shown an unusual talent at dancing. It's more than a typical "Oh, look ~ that cute little guy is dancing" kind of thing. The kid's got rhythm, style and a real love for it. We learned quite unexpectedly that if you turn on loud music, he can't help himself from breaking into spontaneous dance. He dances in restaurants, in grocery stores, in Target. The boy's a teeny Billy Elliot - he's got Happy Feet.

It's gotten to the point that people outside of our family are noticing, and suggesting that we do something about it. As in, "You should give him a class and see what happens, he's really got something there."

And I've got to confide, it isn't really a huge surprise that one of our kids has the dancing bug - because one of my brothers was a professional dancer for years. He danced with ABT and the Pennsylvania Ballet. I grew up literally flying around the country with my parents to watch him perform. So there's something floating around in the ol' gene pool, and my boy seems to have it.

Most crucially, he loves it. When the little guy starts to dance his face lights up like a firework and he glows. His smile could light the world on fire. Which is a beautiful thing, since this is the same shy child that hides behind me when we talk with strangers... and who sulks for hours if he thinks a friend is being mean to him. He's a sensitive little dude, and his teacher has on more than one occasion during the past four months referred to him as a loner.

So clearly we're looking into how to give him dance lessons (turns out, they aren't cheap). We're also trying to support him enthusiastically, because it is really wonderful to see him find something that he genuinely loves and is naturally good at.

Here's where the tricky part starts.

Our son has a brother and a sister. The sister is too little to have discovered passions for much more than eating like a football player and playing with her brothers' toys. She'll take LEGOs and the infamous plastic Buzz Lightyear any day above a stuffed animal or baby doll. Our middle child though already suffers from "younger brother" syndrome and is constantly trying to keep up with his older brother. If Bug is playing soccer, Bean wants to play soccer too. If Bug learns to write his letters, Bean is grabbing the pencil to try for himself. If Bug grows and inch, Bean tries to stretch himself taller.

Bean is three and he doesn't really understand that fact. Since the very day we brought him home from the hospital, his greatest entertainment has been watching his big brother and yearning to be like him. He thinks it is insanely unfair that he is physically smaller than his older brother and thus subjected to chronic teasing and rough-housing. In his heart he feels equal to his brother and it is torturous for him to have to watch his brother do new things and not be able to participate due to his age or height. The local theme park becomes a nightmare for him, as his older brother can go on all kinds of rides with Daddy that Bean is not allowed upon.

What's a mom to do then, with one child suddenly sparkling and thriving in a newfound limelight... with the other child watching from the sidelines in envy? These are the kind of things new parents never anticipate and it's sort of a shock when they arrive. What do you do when the star and the underdog are BOTH in the same family, and they have to live with each other on a daily basis AND you are the parents of both?

Do you

• ignore the success, because you don't want it to make your child vain or overly proud of himself?


• encourage the little one by saying, "When you're his age, you can do it too!" all the while understanding that this child doesn't really seem like the type of kid that would enjoy that activity?

How do you keep all of your children from feeling overshadowed by their siblings, especially when there are already intractable differences in age and physique?

I still don't really know how to navigate the obvious and steadily widening height differential between my children. Two of them are above 90th percentile in height for their age, meaning that they are taller than 90 percent of children born at the same time they were born. The third child is in the 7th percentile for height. Meaning that 93% of children his age are taller than he is.

I adore my children for their individuality and think they are all stupendously adorable. I could care less that one of them is a little bit on the short side. It just makes him cuter to me. But he seems to care a lot about it, which breaks my heart. He talks all the time about how he is "getting bigger, mommy!" and I just don't have the heart to break it to him that he seems to have inherited the short genes from both sides of our family. My grandmother AND my mother-in-law... both of very petite build.

So I find myself praying that he will grow. Can you believe that ridiculousness? I actually pray to God that my three year old child will grow to be tall so he won't spend the rest of his life feeling inferior to his siblings. What a silly thing to pray about, with all of the suffering in the world, but I still find myself doing it... and spouting trite cliches at bedtime: "Remember honey, good things come in small packages!"

I'm fairly confident that praying for a child to become more like his or her siblings is NOT the right way to handle the situation. It doesn't seem like a very spiritual thing to do, either.

Getting back to the main point then, I've been agonizing over how to exult in the victories of one child without making the other two feel inferior.

This morning I had an epiphany though, and I think it's bright enough to illuminate the way forward.

I suddenly remembered that the only way to get through any tough interpersonal situation with a group of disparate people is to communicate. To talk WITH THEM about it.

And it makes sense!

Our children are the vested stakeholders in the situation. They are the ones whose feelings will be sheltered or hurt based upon our behavior as parents. They are the ones who feel they must compete with each other. So they are the exact people who need to help me construct guidelines for how to celebrate their unique accomplishments in a way that is least hurtful and most constructive for our family.

What a relief! We're all in it together!!!

So, I brought it up with them before school this morning.

"You know guys, Daddy and I need your help."

Little ears perk up, because small children like to be needed and considered important.

"What do you need help with?"

"Well, Daddy and I have noticed that each of you three children is totally unique ~ which means not the same as each other. You all have special things you are good at. Have you noticed that too?"

Older child - "Um, sort of."
Younger child - "We ARE the same as each other!" (Cackling mischievously.)

"Daddy and I would like to find a way to be proud of you for being who you are, each of you, without any of you feeling bad or left out."

"What do you mean, mommy?"

"Well, for example, if you score a goal at your soccer game... we want to be proud of you! But we don't your brother and sister to feel badly because they are too little to play soccer yet."

Older child - smiles. He likes thinking about the idea of himself scoring a goal in soccer.
Younger child - "I'm going to play soccer too!"

"Of course you are, honey. So anyway, what I'm trying to say is, we need your help. Can you tell us how we can make you each feel special without anyone feeling left out?"

Older child - "How about you give us all hugs?"
Younger child - "I LIKE HUGS!"

"I can definitely do that."

Older child - "And maybe there is something good that each of us do. Like I score goals in soccer but he (pointing to his brother) makes a nice picture with crayons. So, you can say "I'm proud of you" to both of us."
Younger child - "I can do both! I can play soccer AND I can draw with crayons!"

"I am very proud of all three of my children. You are all very precious to Daddy and me."

Older child - "Mommy, can we be done talking now? I'm hungry. I want pancakes."
Younger child - "Pancakes!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yummy!!!!!!!!!!! I want lots and lots and lots of syrup!"

"Hmmmmm.... we'll see about the syrup buddy."

And it was that easy.

I'm sure that as the years pass there will be hundreds more of these conversations. I will need to keep asking them the same question - "How can I love and support you in a way that doesn't make your siblings feel badly?" and "How can I love and support your siblings without accidentally making YOU feel badly?"

The main thing is, we've started the conversation. We're in it together, and while my husband and I will always be the parents - our children can help guide our parenting choices when it comes to dealing with their individual sensitivities and emotions. Hopefully between the five of us we can avoid at least some of the pitfalls that arise so easily in any relationship between multiple people. As long as we all keep talking - asking hard questions and really listening to each other - I think we are going to be okay.