Rewards or Consequences — Raising responsible children
Second Guessing Myself
Every parent likely has the thought at some point of “Am I doing this right”. For Deb and I, we have raised our children already, they are grown at 31 and 28 years old respectively. So we haven’t had that thought for years. As our children became adults and had some of life’s struggles, we would often ask ourselves what we could have done differently in the way we raised them to have had a different outcome on whatever their current challenge was.
Every parent likely has the thought at some point of “Am I doing this right”.
Finding mental health
In the end, that became a very unhealthy thing for us to do. We found ourselves taking responsibility for their actions in our own heads. When they had something bad happen in their lives or made bad choices, we assumed we didn’t arm them correctly.
This could be a whole separate long story, but to shorten it, I will just let you know that we finally got to a place where we understood we didn’t own our kid's results. The results they had were of their own making. We provided a loving, supportive household and the choices they made were theirs. We were feeling mentally healthy and not spending time second-guessing things we couldn’t change. We have found that the What-if game is a losing one for sure.
The Sequel?
Much has changed for us over the last year. Our grandkids moved in with us. They are now 3 and 10 and it has started to put us back in this place of thinking a lot about child rearing. We think about how best to provide them with all the tools to be socially responsible, loving, empowered yet humble and thrive in this world that they are growing up in.
For some background, the kids came to us from a fairly tough situation. They were both loved however there was a lot of uncertainty in their lives and they didn’t have a home. They (and their parents) were staying with different people for a few days at a time. For a child in school this, I assume, had to be a tough situation. They did not really know where a bed and home would be that day. The arrangement for the kids to live with us was somewhat temporary but we knew it wouldn’t really be short term.
We spent the first 4–6 months of being together really making sure that the girls felt like they were home. It was important to us that knew and understood they had a place that would be there every day with a meal and the same bed. We had prioritized this above all else at the time and really focused hard in this area.
Stability
At the current time, the girls have been living with us now for just over a year. We have enrolled the older one in tutoring to help her catch up to her class in school and also have been taking her to counseling to make sure she is adjusting well given just how much has gone on in her life. All of that is progressing well so it is really time to focus on behavior which I am seeing as more and more of an issue lately.
Small Spaces
We live on a boat. It is a small space compared to most average US households, but it allows us to focus on what is important to us and not all the material possessions we had when we lived in our 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, 2 car garage house. That said, the kids are not going without anything that they need, nor frankly most of what they want which may be part of the problem.
Selfishness or typical tween behavior
The 10-year-old doesn’t do much for herself unless it is something she wants to do. For example, On a Saturday morning, she may want to sleep in and have cereal for breakfast. If so, she will certainly get up and make her own bowl of cereal without needing help. Where this seems to break down is if there is something that she needs to do that she doesn’t want to do or something we ask her to do that she doesn’t want to do.
For a couple of examples, that same cereal example. There is a 75% chance or better than the cereal box will be left out on the counter or the table still open. When she is done eating, the bowl will be put in the sink, but not rinsed out. Often times it won’t be completely empty so there will be milk and cereal remnants in the bottom of the sink. On a boat, this can lead to problems clogging drains and or smells and something we constantly discuss.
How to deal with a Tween
A recent example led to me feeling like I was just getting on her case all evening rather than spending good quality enjoyable time together for either one of us. This started as she came home from playing at one of her friend,s home. Deb let her go play for a little while before doing her homework so she could play before it got dark and then do homework when she got home.
When she came home, she wanted to do her homework in our room. She brought her books in there and completed 1 of the 2 assignments and then came out and asked about dinner. I agreed to make her dinner with the understanding she would have to finish the homework right after dinner. After dinner, I went back to my room to check on how she was doing and she had the TV on and was taking a lot longer than this number of math problems should have taken. I turned off the TV and let her know she could turn it back on when the work was done. This was met with loud sighs, head flopping back and grunts.
Grunts are now a teenager’s language
When she was complete with her homework she sat all the papers and her books on top of her backpack on the floor in the kitchen rather than putting them in the bag. I asked her to put them away and was again met with this loud sighing and groaning/whining about having to do it.
After she played for a while she wanted to go into her room and watch TV. As she went back I asked if she cleaned up and put away the toys she was playing with. Again groaning, loud sighing, moping and a look of utter defeat on her face.
The Breaking Point
At this point, I had enough of this. It doesn’t seem to make sense to me for this kind of a reaction. I got onto her case and raising my voice told her that I was sick of this reaction for everything that she is asked to do. I went on to tell her that I find it to be terribly selfish and disrespectful to just expect to have things done for her by others and not contributing to her own life and ours by cleaning up after herself and not leaving a mess.
It is one thing to leave a mess in her own room but I don’t want it to spread to other parts of the house. I think the exact words I used was that “If you want to crap up your room and don’t care enough about yourself enough to keep it clean, don’t expect that you can start crapping up other rooms in the house and that someone else is going to just clean it up for you” But the problem is we do.
Are we part of the problem
In such a small space, clutter can be overwhelming and things must be picked up as you go. If we don’t clean it every day, it looks like a disaster, which admittedly we allow to happen to often and then have to spend an hour or 2 putting things away so it doesn’t look as cluttered. Frankly, the clutter gives me some level of anxiety and having it neater seems to be a more peaceful place to be for some reason.
Back in our bedroom, I followed her in there to ensure she actually picked her stuff up and didn’t just put a few things away to say “she did it”. Sure enough, she picked up the figures/dolls she was playing with and 2 pieces of paper she had been drawing on and had them all in her arms about to walk out of the room. I asked if she was done picking up in there and she said yes. There were still the tablets she left on the dresser, a box in the chair, an action figure in the middle of our bed and one piece of drawing paper on the bed and another on the floor. When I pointed this out she was so annoyed. She snatched up the action figure and crumpled up the papers and quickly walked past me and into her room with all of it.
I called her back into the room to put the tablets back away, the box out of the chair and just put things back the way they were. These were not big efforts in themselves, but to me, it is showing a lack of initiative, pride or desire to do things until they are actually complete.
Instilling Pride in their Actions
The tablets were both placed screen down on the dresser with a hanger on top of them, one of which she removed the protective cover from and set that on the bed. I asked about these and why she would put them screen down, pointing out that this is the area of the tablet that needs to be protected. When I first told her about the tablets being this way with a hanger on top of them she insisted they were not left on the dresser on their screens.
We walked to the room so I could show her, and she continued to insist that she didn’t put the hanger on them. I was finding myself again, lecturing her because it seems that she is often times too busy defending or justifying what she did or didn’t do rather than focusing on the actual issue as a whole. I was raising my voice at her during this discussion and felt bad for that afterward. I could see that she was starting to get tears in her eyes and I really felt guilty that I am not showing her the love she needed at that moment. But, I also needed to make sure that she understands the point of these discussions. It is not about the tablet, or the cover, or the doll or the paper on the floor. It is about having initiative and pride and follow through and caring about others besides just herself.
Teachable moments
This is my struggle. I just don’t know how to make this point of pride and initiative and caring for others. How do I illustrate it when we or others model this behavior and attitude we want her to pick up on. I am worried at times, even though she is only 10, that she is 8 years away from adulthood. She is more than halfway there, and these selfish tendencies without pride in work worry me about what they may mean for her future. This makes me feel like a bad or negative person/guardian when I have these thoughts, but I want to do what I can to set her up for the best life possible.
What has served me well in life is understanding how to be in social situations with other people and realize that not everything is about me. There is joy in doing things for others, or allowing others to have some time and joy as well. What has served me well is hard work and initiative in almost everything I do. What has served me well is caring what other people think to enough of a level that I don’t want to let some people down and I follow through on things because of that pressure I put on myself. This is not unhealthy, I don’t think I get manipulated, but I do think that doing the right things because of what others think can be healthy in moderation.
Teaching Responsibility
I am not sure. I think I need to force certain tasks on the girls. They need responsibility and a way to prove they can be. We have tried doing chores for money and honestly, we stopped because there was rarely follow through and the pay associated with chores was only If they got done.
When they were not done, we didn’t pay for them and with so many chores missed during the week the pay was not enough to be an incentive. This was a fairly reasonable list of chores. The things we expected to have done without pay was making the bed, brushing teeth, homework, and things like that. The things that had pay associated with them were taking out the trash, scooping the cat box, cleaning the room and these were done once or twice per week.
Is A Chore done if it had to be reminded
The thing that I find so negative is the constant asking and reminding about chores. We had a chore checklist that hung on the wall and it was not filled in when they were done and often ignored. We would have a discussion about it daily and each and every chore had to be asked to be completed. When they were done often times they would be done partially and I would have to bring this up and force them to go finish the chore. As an example, the cat box may be scooped, but the scoop would be left in the kitchen by the trash rather than put away. The cabinet door where the litter box is would remain open and any litter that was spilled on the floor during the process wouldn’t be swept up.
I wrote this not knowing what is next. I think I want to talk to her about it. I want to ask her what she thinks are reasonable chores. We did this last time and she came up with the chores and it didn’t seem to help, but I don’t know what else to do but try again.
Defining the Value of things
Part of me also thinks that we need to say ‘no’ to more things that they want so that if they want something, they have to work hard to save money for it. I started thinking about some of the really cool moments of my childhood and I recall the first thing I saved my own money to buy. It was a little handheld electronic game called Simon. It looked like an old telephone with 9 buttons on it and you had several different “games” you could play on it. The day my mom took me to the store and I paid for that, it was so cool. I remember feeling so accomplished.
The girls don’t really have that possibility with us. If they want something we often will get it for them or say no at the time and maybe get it as a gift for an upcoming holiday. Maybe because they have enough toys and things to do, they are not overly passionate about anything that I can picture them working hard and saving for it. For example, if she asks for a ‘my little pony set’, if she didn’t get it, I don’t think that she would be longing for it enough that she would be willing to do a few weeks of chores and save that money to get it.
I certainly have more questions than answers through writing this. I am curious about what others have done. Do you make the kids earn the things they get (toys, rewards like movies or social outings, etc) or do you get these things for them as they ask? If so how do you incentivize them to do the things that make them socially responsible young adults? Also, am I just expecting way too much for a 10-year-old?
Parenting seems to be hard, and even though we are doing it a second time now with our grandchildren, it doesn’t get to a place where I feel like “I got this”.
