Parenting Principles 2.0

I had lots of great ideas after last week's Parenting Principles post. I have revised accordingly. I am constrained by a desire to make each principle exactly two words.

1. Be calm.
(This really is a mantra for life -- I would love to be more laid back, but I'm not. I find faking it does help in all sorts of situations though. Knitting totes helps.)

2. No rushing.
(So key for me. If I have the time to wait, they will usually do whatever it is without reminding and without shouting.)

3. Adults first.
(I got this idea from a friend who had a child before I did. I remember that she and her husband had the rule that if two people in the house were crying, you attend to the adult first. The whole putting on your own mask first principle.)

4. Model well.
(I like "monkey see, monkey do," much better, but the two word thing.)

5. Be playful.
(Supposed to also encompass seeing the funny side, smiling & laughing.)

6. No cheating.
(This is consistency for me. It's almost never worth bending a rule, I find. Whenever I'm flexible with Harry's bedtime, I end up rushing him. Not worth it.)

I also like these 4 ideas, but I'm having trouble condensing them down to two word phrases:

7. This too shall pass.

8. Don't sweat the small stuff.

9. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
(Maybe: Leave it. Though I'm not sure that I personally need this one. I probably let too much go rather than the reverse.)

10. The days are long, but the years are short.
( I may indulge in this video later today. Always yields a nice cry.)

Any (further) suggestions gratefully received!

Family Dinner

I recently came across an article that made me say "I knew it!" out loud. Musick and Meier (2012) use a large American data set to test associations between family dinners and adolescent well-being. The background to this is that family dinners have reached mythical status in the US, been described as a magic bullet to prevent/cure everything from deteriorating family relationships, to depression and eating disorders. Through more careful analysis, Musick and Meier discover that the effect of family dinners is mostly due to the fact that more affluent, well-educated, white parents are more likely to host family dinners than are their less advantaged counterparts. It's a sign of having your shit together as a middle-class American parent to eat dinner together as a family.

Almost 20 years ago I was chatting with an American colleague who was doing some analysis on the Twins Early Development Study, a twin study of all the twins born in England and Wales in 1994 & 1995. My colleague was questioning the accuracy of the data because the item about family dinners wasn't working properly. He said that it should be correlating with household organisation and parent-child relationship quality, and it wasn't. This was one of those times that my cross-cultural upbringing came into its own. I was not the least bit surprised. The twins were only 3 years old. As I explained, any British family with their shit together feeds young children at 5, and gets them to bed by 7 so that the parents can enjoy a civilised dinner at 7:30 or 8.

Don't get me wrong, I can see that family dinners are a great way to actually talk to one another, model good eating behaviours, engender a sense of family cohesion. But these family processes can happen at other times and in other ways too. I'm definitely not ready to give up my civilised adult meal times.

Two Tips for Tuesday

These may well reside in the category of the blindingly obvious, but that makes me feel rather good about myself anyhow, so I won't hold back.

1. Schedule off-time. I love that by leaving the house at 6:40 I get to the gym, all equipment prepped and ready to go by 7. If I leave the house at 8:40, it takes about half an hour just to do the drive.

(Can't resist a little aside. The news coverage of 9/11 in the UK had to include information about the start of the American workday being prior to 9 am. The British workplace doesn't really get going until 9:30.)

2. Empty bags and cars. After every trip/day. I'm not saying I always do this, but it is oh so much better, no? Not nice finding long-lost items in a half-emptied bag. We are thinking to go back to being a one-car family, but our different attitudes to this particular "tip" might be the deal-breaker. (While I'm at it, why let children eat in the car? Really, why?)

The Demon Alcohol

Remember how I said I wouldn't be touching a drop of alcohol? Well, it hasn't quite worked out that way. I've had one glass most weeks. And it really sucks. Not enough for any kind of buzz, but one measly glass gives me a headache and makes me grumpy the next day. Totally not worth it. In all honesty, I just don't think I have the physiology for it.

What makes it hard is that I really don't like the connotations that go along with being teetotal. Earnest. Kill-joy. Dull. Humourless. I've decided to call it a full-on identity crisis. That's why it's so hard to give it up completely. Being a drinker is not quite my master status, but it was certainly in my top 5 for most of my adult life.

I had a really sick thought today. I think it would sound better if I could say that I'm an alcoholic, and that's why I don't drink. That would make me sound edgy. "It just doesn't agree with me, and makes me wish my children would go away," just doesn't cut it. I am absolutely appalled that I would have such an offensive thought. Perhaps appalled enough grow up.

Parenting Project Update

It's been a busy week, so it feels like a bit of a cheat. I haven't had much time to misbehave with the children. Sian says I'm definitely a lot less shouty, so that's good. In terms of defining shouting, I've realised that Harry is the best judge. Last weekend I took the boys to the skate park on Saturday morning. When it was time to go, I did need to yell to get Harry to listen to me. He said that it was turning into the worst day of his life because I was being a mean, shouting mummy. I tried to tell him that I was just "calling out" so that he could hear me, but he was totally right. I was irritated, and my voice was loud and mean. Ah well.

Correcting. I've made an effort. What I need to be better at is doing the think throughs in advance, at a neutral time. We had a couple of very early starts from Harry this week. Once he has already come into our room and bugged us, it's pretty much impossible for him to remain silent in his room. But when I remember to ask him the night before what he should do in the morning if he wakes before 6, he almost always manages to leave us alone. I need to start doing this for politeness (please & thank you). Harry is bad about this, Tom is not. I realise writing this that I am still correcting at the time. I need to wait without comment for the please, and talk to him about this repeatedly at neutral times.

As for physical health, I've had nearly no sugar since Tuesday. I miss it, but I'm coping. My diet could still do with improvement though. I'm eating a lot of crisps. Exercise - tick, and 3 good things - tick! And I do think I'm sleeping better without the headphone in my ear. Reading an actual physical book in bed feels very vintage indeed.

I bought some gold stars for my notebook, but now I can't find them. The coloured dots really aren't doing it for me.

Parenting Principles

I want to come up with 5 Parenting Principles that I can get tattooed on my arm of something.  Here's a draft:

• Be calm.
• No rushing.
• Attend to the adults first.
• Don't sweat the small stuff.

Any other ideas/modifications?

Skinner

Today, how about a little serving of good old-fashioned behaviourism. In all honesty, aren't the principles of learning theory (rewards, punishments, reinforcement) the bread & butter of parenting?

Of all Skinner's principles, the one that I don't think is entirely obvious, and is a particularly pertinent one for parenting, is intermittent reinforcement. The finding is that if that if a behaviour is not rewarded every time, but just occasionally, the behaviour is more likely to persist than if it is rewarded every time. This is a real trap, because it means that even if you manage to ignore your child's whining 90% of the time, but pay attention to it 10% of the time, you have set up a perfect intermittent reinforcement schedule such that the whining will continue. And attention, even negative attention, is a powerful reinforcer. Ouch.

On the more positive side, it means that you don't have to reward a child every time they do a desired behaviour, say staying quietly in their room until 6 o'clock (gee, I wonder why that example popped into my head). You can occasionally give the child a treat, or praise, or whatever, and the behaviour should persist.

5:10 this morning people, 5:10.