I called ‘shotgun’!

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Whenever possible, make external processes internal. In this example, instead of resolving a conflict between her sons, Ann acknowledged their perspectives and how they were feeling. Then she restated the problem to be solved and left them to figure it out for themselves. Whenever possible, conflict and its solution should remain with the child.

 

Leave the conflict (and its solution) where it belongs – in the kid.

 

“Owww! Stop!

“Get out!”, yelled Seth.

“No! I was here first,” whined his little brother, Timmy.

“I called ‘shotgun’.”

“After I was getting in the seat.”

“Doesn’t matter. I called it. Get out!”

“Owwww! You’re hurting me! Mommy!”

“Mommy, I called ‘shotgun’ and Timmy won’t get out.”

“Mommy, Seth is pulling my arm.”

Ann approached the car and said, “I hear a lot of yelling and screaming. Seth, you look very angry.” She turned to her younger son and said,  “And Timmy, you look very upset.”  To both of them she continued, “I want each of you to tell me what is going on. Seth.”

“Whoever calls ‘shotgun’ gets to sit there. I called ‘shotgun’ first and Timmy won’t get out.”

Ann observed, “Seth, you’re angry because you called ‘shotgun’ first. Because you called it, you believe you should get to sit in the front seat.”

“Yeah”

Then she turned to her younger son and said, “Timmy. Tell me what happened.”

“I was getting in the seat when Seth called ‘shotgun’. I didn’t even know he was there. It’s not fair. He always yells ‘shotgun’.”

Their mother said, “You sound upset and frustrated. You believe what happened wasn’t fair.”

“Yeah. Seth always yells ‘shotgun’ before I can even think about (doing) it.”

Ann put her hands on her sons’ shoulders and said, “Both of you think you are right. You are both good at figuring things out. I am going to go read my book while you two work out a solution that feels fair to both of you. Come find me when you are done.” ¹

(10 minutes later)

“Mom. We know how we are going to handle it.”

“Yeah. We have the perfect plan,” beamed Timmy.

“I can’t wait to hear it,” Ann responded, eager to hear what her little lawyers had fashioned.

Seth began, “We have a system worked out so we know whose day it is to get ‘shotgun’. No fighting.”

“Yeah. And today is my day,” announced Timmy.

“That’s right. Timmy gets to sit in the front on the even days of the month and I get to sit there on the odd days.”

“And on the even days, Seth also has to set the table,” added Timmy, pleased with the way the day was turning out.

“That is a brilliant plan. I never would have thought of that.”

“Yeah. Pretty cool, eh, Mom. We’re good at this stuff,” Timmy said as he hopped back in the front seat and closed the door.

Ann turned to her son and said, “Seth, does Timmy know that tomorrow is the 31st and you’ll get two days in a row?”

“I have a lot to teach my little brother, don’t I Mom.”

“I never doubted that,” Ann chuckled.

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Here is the basic recipe that Ann followed with the boys:

Recognize how each of them is feeling
Have each give their side of what happened
Recognize each person’s perspective
State the problem that needs to be figured out
Acknowledge their capability of finding a solution together
Walk away and let them handle it

When parents resolve conflicts for their children, they offer external solutions to problems that rob their children of important internal work that needs to be done. These parent solutions often deliver messages that children are not capable and need to depend on others to resolve their problems. In the example above, development of competence in the areas of logical thinking, communication and relatedness were promoted. The mother also modeled empathy and served as a reminder that fairness and caring are essential to moral integrity.

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¹ Example after example of how to do this can be found in Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish’s classic book, Siblings Without Rivalry.

Save it for a rainy day.

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A fun activity for all ages is described that promotes curiosity, logical thinking, and emotional self-control.

 

Solving The Black Box Puzzle

Do you have a little scientist-to-be living under your roof? Does your little scientist have an unquenchable thirst for new toys, projects, and equipment? There will never be enough money or space, will there? And how many “why?” questions can your kid ask before you say, “enough”? Supporting a child’s curiosity should not break the bank, nor should s/he depend on you as the sole source of knowledge. A good little scientist is not only curious, but also self-directed and resilient. Curiosity and persistence is an unbeatable combination in life. However, these characteristics can use some nurturing.

Here is a simple project that costs very little and promotes developmental goals important to a young scientist.

Find an old shoebox, a roll of duct tape, some cardboard, and a knife. Use pieces of cardboard and tape to create a new interior for the box. (Anything goes: ramps, mazes, etc.) Then include some expendable object (a Sammy Sosa autographed baseball, an out-of-date iPhone, …) that will navigate this interior. Close the box and seal it with duct tape.

Present it to your young scientist with this challenge:

“Figure out what object is in the box and what the interior of the box looks like. You can do anything you want to the box, except open it. Take as long as you want.”

A true scientist will need to keep a record of hypotheses and tests performed. A young child may need a scribe, but after that, consider affixing paper to the box or finding a little (lab) notebook. If your spouse wants in on the fun, then the lab notebook can stay with the box, for anyone to annotate. How the experimenting is recorded can take any form. Just don’t open the box.

What are we accomplishing?

Keeping the mess inside a single box (a noble goal in itself)?

Promoting curiosity and inquiry.

Encouraging logical thinking in the form of hypothesis generation & testing.

Encouraging persistence (because you are NOT going to open the box).

Also promoting tolerance and resilience (because you are NOT going to open the box).

Promoting debate and discussion (because you are NOT going to open the box).

Promoting emotional self-control, as in dealing with frustration and impatience (because you are NOT going to open the box).

 Do you think you can resist opening the box? I’ll leave that decision to you. However, scientists have developed useful theories, such as Evolution, The Big Bang, and Relativity without complete access to the inside of the box. At our house, I never did open the boxes, but for the life of me, I can’t seem to find them anywhere.

Falling in love with failing

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Fostering openness to learning and growth

Taking on challenges, struggling, failing, analyzing mistakes, and reengaging is the route to growth, competence and self-esteem. Therefore children must learn to tolerate this process, including the failures. False praise and unrealistic labels create a focus on judgment that undermines a child’s willingness to risk failures.

Striking out in baseball is a mini failure and to some of us, quite painful. So how can I avoid this pain? If I don’t go up to bat, I will never strike out and therefore, never have to feel the pain of humiliation and frustration.Or … I can only hit against pitchers I am sure I can handle – therefore staying free of another dreaded strikeout. Two elegant solutions if I don’t say so. There is only one problem, however, with this elegant plan. If I never bat against challenging pitching, I will never improve. I have to meet the challenge of better pitching so that I can master it and grow.

The act of striking out represents engagement in a challenging zone I have yet to master. If I want to get better, I need to risk striking out. In fact, if I analyze why I missed the pitch, I will get better – whether that analysis takes place behind a video screen or at bat having missed the first two strikes. This is a longwinded way of saying that to become a good baseball player, I must learn to tolerate failures, because they become the sources of learning.

So how do we convince our children that they need to welcome failure as a means of learning and growing? Listen to this praise from a proud baseball dad:

“You are such a good hitter.”

“Wow, you are so good. You hit the ball every time.”

“Three hits today! What a great hitter you are!”

What do you think of the praise Dad has handed out? He’s pretty proud of his son, isn’t he? Does anything worry you about what you just heard?

This is a loving, well-intentioned father. He believes he is heaping well-deserved praise on his son. What he is also heaping on his son is some unnecessary pressure. He has labeled him a “good hitter”, even a “great hitter”. That is a tough standard to live up to. There is added pressure if the child thinks Dad’s interest and caring is dependent upon continuing to be “good” or “great”. Unfortunately, Dad has also attached an unintended standard for what it means to be good or great. He observed, “You hit the ball every time” and “(You got) three hits today” in the process of labeling his son “good” and “great”. So what happens if the boy goes 0 for 4 in the next game? What if he strikes out more often than he gets hits? Is his status as “good” or “great” at risk? Will he worry about disappointing his dad? Will he view himself as a failure?

What do you think of these comments?

After striking out to end the game, his father consoles him,

“Don’t worry. You played great.”

“You guys will win next time.”

So what is a boy to make of that? He certainly knows that striking out is not playing “great”. And what if they don’t win next time? Now do you understand why a kid would only want to go to bat against easy competition? That would certainly eliminate this confusion and potential for disappointment. Or, how about this as a solution? Blame the umpire for a bad third strike call. And find a good excuse why the other team won, such as cheating or unfair home field advantage. These are “great” ideas because they allow the child to preserve the label or expectation that he is “special” or “great”, as his dad called him, and can go on playing.

Can you think what would have been more helpful?

“So, how was it?”

“What did you think of that pitcher today?”

“Did you have fun?” “Why not?” “Is that something you want to work on?”

If this boy is to grow as a ball player and not let the game get the best of him, he needs to tolerate losses and failures, like striking out. He also needs to know that failures or attempts are how he gets better. Perhaps they need to be labeled something other than failures. Something like trials or attempts? Linking trials with analysis, learning and improvement is the preferable route rather than linking success and failure with ratings of the person. Judgment is ultimately what steers boys away from activities such as sports, academics or talking to girls. Sometimes avoidance and a good set of excuses are better than multiple wounds to lick and explain.

Perhaps the best way to promote this openness to failure and learning is for the father or coach to model it himself. When the child sees that the adult welcomes and learns from failures, it clearly becomes something acceptable for the child as well.

Key words: tolerating failure; failure as learning; resilience; labeling;

Our assumptions about natural ability and the capacity for change profoundly affect our approaches for working with children. Mindset by Carol Dweck is a must read for all teachers and parents. After reading the first chapter your “mindset” will be forever altered. You will begin to quickly recognize teaching strategies and parenting approaches as growth promoting or fixed and limiting.

Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address eloquently describes how he turned the three greatest “failures” in his life into sources of creativity and growth.