Читать книгу The Good Behaviour Book: How to have a better-behaved child from birth to age ten - Martha Sears - Страница 75

One afternoon Martha walked into the TV room and saw Matthew and his friend watching a video that the older children had rented and watched the day before. (Later we found out Matthew had also watched it at that time.) She took one look at the movie and realized she would have to ask him to turn it off. Besides, it was the middle of the day and the boys should have been playing outside. As she stood watching the movie for a few moments, planning her course of action, Martha caught the flavour of the character in the movie and in a spurt of inspiration decided to use humour to say no. As she clicked off the TV, she spun around on her heels and launched into a monologue using the character’s facial expressions, accent, and hand gestures. She must have done a good job of impersonating this actor because both boys sat staring at her wide-eyed as though they couldn’t believe a mum was capable of such improvised insanity. They both jumped up and headed out the door as the voice of this character told them to find something better to do. They were still laughing.

Personalize “No”. We are convinced Lauren is destined for public relations. Her “No, Dad” was the diplomatic way to say no. By adding “Dad” she personalized her message. Rather than giving a dictatorial “No”, we add the child’s name. If you tend to shout, personalized address at least softens the sound and shows respect for the listener. Some parents confuse respecting the child with granting him equal power, but this is not a power issue. The person with the power should respect the person taken charge of. That consideration holds true in parenting; it holds true in other relationships as well.

Be considerate. When you have to stop a behaviour, there is no reason to be rude. For example, your baby discovers the tape dispenser someone left out. This is a wonderful toy. Instead of descending on him and snatching it from his hands, causing him to wail pitifully as you carry him off, you can take a few moments to explore it with him. Then you say “bye-bye” to the tape and hand him a decent length of the fascinating stuff to compensate for not getting the whole roll as you turn his attention to a perhaps less interesting but more age-appropriate activity.

When you say it, mean it. Follow through on your directives. For months we said to Lauren that in order to have bedtime stories she had to submit to tooth brushing. And for months it worked, sometimes easily, sometimes with a certain amount of coaxing and saying, “OK, no stories …” One night she decided to test. Martha She could tell by the set of Lauren’s jaw and firmly shut lips that she finally was “calling our bluff”. So rather than proceed with coaxing and humouring, Martha calmly said, “OK, no stories!” turned off the lights, and carried her to bed. She fussed a bit as Martha lay there with her because she realized Martha had called her bluff and now the lights were out – the irreversible sign that the next step was to go to sleep. After that, tooth brushing went unchallenged and stories were reinstated.