New Adventures Need to be Nurtured

Earlier this year, Sophia had a play date on a Sunday with her friend Megan. Megan’s family normally goes to church so Sophia went with them. The kids played in the youth section, but at one point Sophia lost sight of her friend and became nervous; she didn’t know any other kids.

Last week, my wife Tanya had mentioned a desire to take the kids to church every now and again as she missed the spirituality and sense of community. Sophia was not interested.

“I thought you had fun the last time you went,” I said. “Didn’t you play with other kids?”

“No, it wasn’t fun at all. I couldn’t find Megan!” Sophia replied.

After hearing Sophia’s reasoning — nothing to do with the church experience itself — I wondered: How do we convince our children to do things they don’t want to do, but we know might benefit them?

Religious services or, for that matter, extracurricular activities in general, aren’t necessary for survival. They can, however, be beneficial to a child’s development. It’s not always easy to convince a child of the long term benefits of what we have planned for him or her. It takes patience, creativity and sometimes, trickery.

Depending on the situation, we coerce, cajole, convince, compromise, or bargain to get our kids to do what we tell them is best. When diplomacy doesn’t work, we’re left with good old fashioned dictatorship. All of those methods have their place, but choosing the most appropriate one takes practice. And failure is inevitable.

None of us is born with a clear understanding of our emotional needs. (I’m still figuring mine out.) From emotional or physical discomfort, to feeling unsafe, to a fear of the unknown, young children especially are subject to numerous factors that can make novel experiences harrowing. Also, 6-year-olds like Sophia tend to form opinions quickly, which are often based on one experience.

When choosing our plan of attack, it’s important to remember that even though we assume we know best, kids are sometimes smarter than we think. I’ve been surprised by their insight on many occasions. Still, parents are in charge for a reason. Experience matters, and children crave guidance.

Behavioral manipulation is a parental staple, but we need to be prepared to accept the consequences of our actions. Give in too soon, and our kids might miss out on valuable development opportunities. Push too hard, and we risk losing their trust. Either way, adolescence and adulthood have ways of magnifying issues that start years earlier.

Life provides many adventures that, if based on the first go around, many of us would not repeat. That initial session with the personal trainer, trying Brussels sprouts, or public speaking engagements come to mind. Even adults can require convincing.

My first grader and her older sister, Ella, need help to develop their spiritual, intellectual and emotional faculties, and new experiences are a good place to start. Sometimes kids are beyond convincing, but the discussion might end up being as important as the activity itself.

How Good Do You Have It? Only Time Will Tell...

Last week while grocery shopping, I painstakingly checked the ingredients on just about every box in the cereal aisle. After much deliberation, I compromised with lightly sweetened multi-grain Cheerios. They had at least two times less sugar than many other brands but were still tasty.

The moment of truth came the next morning. “Dad, these don’t taste very good,” Ella said. “I don’t want them.”

Sophia, Ella’s 6-year-old sister, was less polite. “Eewww! These are awful!” she exclaimed in typical excessive fashion.

I explained to my daughters the dangers of eating too much sugar, especially early in the school day, when crashing an hour later wasn’t an option. I told them it was a reasonable compromise between tasteless and toothless. When they held firm in their boycott, I pulled out the “some-kids-are-so-poor-they-don’t-even-get-breakfast” card. Those kids, I said gravely, would not complain.

I want Ella and Sophia to understand the struggles of others so they can better appreciate what they have. With Thanksgiving around the corner, I wondered: Is it possible for 9- and 6-year-olds to grasp the concepts of hunger and poverty without seeing them firsthand?

Tanya and I are aware of our good fortune. Like many in our generous community, we try to impress this on our children by demonstrating acts of charity and by showing gratitude. But young children assume that what happens in their homes is normal. They aren’t born understanding how demoralizing poverty can be. And no matter how much we explain the horrors of going to bed hungry, surviving a Colorado winter without heat or wearing the same clothes every day, I fear that my children won’t really get it until they see it for themselves.

Throughout my childhood, I was always well-protected and provided for by loving, capable parents. I suppose I knew I was lucky, but I didn’t grasp the degree of my good fortune until I was on my own. Through the combination of work, travel, where I chose to live and what I did with my time — not lectures and explanations — I learned that not everyone is born with same chance to succeed and there will always be people who need help. I’m not sure I would have understood it any other way.

Having no doubts about where your next meal comes from is a privilege that eludes many children. I want my daughters to understand their advantages, as well as the tenuous and relative natures of success. I also don’t want them to feel guilty for having what they need; they shouldn’t feel bad for being comfortable. If anyone is culpable for their circumstances, it’s Tanya and me.

After my sermon, I told the girls they needed to finish their bowls or make their own breakfast. Ella finished her portion. Sophia grudgingly ate half of hers after supplementing with a tortilla with peanut butter. Both were quiet. They knew I was upset. But maybe I was the one who learned a lesson.

Breaking Rules

This summer while vacationing in Winter Park, my wife Tanya took Ella to a concert. The show finished at around 10 at night and they had to walk the quarter-mile walk back to the condo in the dark. Tanya decided to cut through someone’s yard, past a sign that warned against it.

“Mom, I’m confused,” Ella said. “At home I have to follow the rules but in Winter Park I don’t?”

After Tanya put Ella to bed and told me what our 9-year-old had said, I wondered: Are there times when it’s OK for parents to break the rules? If so, are we negatively impacting our children?

Like most parents, Tanya and I enforce certain behavioral requirements in our home. No physical violence, clean up your own mess and be kind to others. These guidelines form the basis for life skills like responsibility, healthy living and staying out of prison. But rules in general can be tricky: They’re hard to follow 100 percent of the time, hard to enforce and sometimes they don’t make much sense.

Tanya and Ella didn’t need to cut through the private yard, but Tanya was alone with her exhausted fourth-grader in complete darkness in an unfamiliar place and trusted her instincts. Breaking the rule wasn’t necessary; they got home safely, and no one’s property was destroyed. This one situation surely won’t affect Ella’s morality, even if they smudged the line between right and wrong.

Had they gotten caught in the act of trespassing, I suppose I might look at this situation differently. Maybe Ella would, in the future, be less likely to flaunt the lack of enforcement of some common societal rules, regardless of whether we OK it. I suspect Tanya would think twice, as well, but probably not to the same extent.

Some might say that a lifetime of rule breaking starts with one instance. And for some situations, like doing drugs or theft, I would agree. But we also need to be practical. While a parent’s main role is to set a positive example, that doesn’t always happen.

I’m generally an excellent rule follower, yet when I jaywalk or run into a store to use a bathroom clearly marked “Restroom for Customers Only” and don’t get caught, the lack of vigilant enforcement leads me to feel like I can do it again.

But I don’t.

That’s because a moral compass is both subjective and situational. The challenge for parents is to teach these principles while modeling them, yet somehow live our lives as the flawed beings we are. Maybe parents and children should get caught breaking rules together — to teach both parties a lesson.

Indeed, history has taught us that sometimes breaking rules can lead us forward. Galileo broke from tradition to support the solar system model we know today to be true. Rosa Parks knew that sitting in the front of the bus was her right, rules be damned. I would be proud if my child did something similar.