One of the aspects of teaching children is to help them tell the truth about themselves, and we need to know that they can be very slippery about it.
Timestamps:
00:00 Parents' responsibility is to teach their children to tell the truth about themselves.
00:48 Example of parent teaching child to tell the truth about themselves.
05:56 Child's excuses and mom's brilliant response.
06:54 Mother's response to child's complaining.
07:33 The appearance of learning vs the truth.
09:27 What Natalie really learned.
10:47 Parents rescuing children from their mistakes.
12:20 By not teaching children correct principles, you are teaching them wrong principles.
15:23 We owe our children our best efforts.
Transcript:
Parents have the responsibility of loving and teaching their children. And we can’t be casual about it. We have to give it all our attention. One of the aspects of teaching children is to help them tell the truth about themselves, and we need to know that they can be very slippery about it. Instead of really listening to you and really telling the truth about themselves, often they only APPEAR to listen and SEEM to be telling the truth. Like most people, they do the least possible. Human.
During the week Natalie asked to go to Mia’s birthday party—her friend—on Saturday, and Mom agreed to take her if she could be ready by exactly 10:00. Mom said she’d be leaving the driveway at 10 am to get to the party on time, whether Natalie was ready or not. Natalie said it would be no problem.
Mom knew that Natalie had agreed to bring cupcakes to the party, and she knew how long that task—the cupcakes—would take, having done it herself many times. Mom had made cupcakes with Natalie several times before, so she knew that Natalie KNEW that it was a big job from beginning to end. Making cupcakes isn’t just popping them in the oven, which takes only about 20 mins. But beginning to end, the task is like 1:45 mins. It involves getting utensils and pans out, ingredients, mixing, baking, cooling, icing, cleaning up the kitchen (I’ve heard, never having done it).
Mom suggested that Natalie make the cupcakes Friday night, but Natalie said she wanted to watch a movie. She did. She promised that she’d get up Saturday morning and get it done. Then she slept in Saturday morning. Didn’t get up until 8:30 am, 90 mins before Mom said she’d be leaving. Natalie was already doomed from the beginning, 15 mins behind. And that’s with NOTHING else to do, no distractions—and there are always distractions and other things to do.
Mom asked if Natalie would be ready. “Oh, sure,” her daughter said. Then Natalie texted a couple of friends, had a long shower, picked out the clothes she’d be wearing, and watched a YouTube. She started the cupcakes 30 mins before 10:00. They weren’t even in the oven when 9:30 arrived. Natalie began to sense that she wasn’t going to make it. She hurried, but you can’t hurry baking once something is in the oven. She still hadn’t put on her makeup and gotten together some other things she would be taking to the party.
At 9:55, Mom mentioned that she was going to sit and wait in the car. Natalie knew she wasn’t even close and began to beg for more time. “It won’t matter if I’m a ‘little’ late (lie, because it would have been a LOT late).” Then “I ran out of time.” Then “I couldn’t find one of the pans.” The usual excuses.
Mom (brilliantly): “At 10 o’clock exactly, either I leave, or I come back into the house and go back to what I was going to do this morning.”
Natalie didn’t make it, and she began to complain that it wasn’t “fair.” Mom said, simply, “300 words,” meaning that Natalie had to write 300 words about what she had learned, or she could continue protesting, but then the length of the essay would increase, as would the number of subjects she’d have to address.
Natalie wrote an essay, and one of the first things she said was this:
“Today I missed my opportunity to go to Mia’s birthday party and sleepover because I didn’t manage my time well.”
**That initial sentence might appear to be evidence of learning, but as parents we MUST be aware that children have a habit of APPEARING to listen or respond just enough to fool the parents. They play all day with that line between excellence or truth, and mediocrity or half-truth. When they fool us, they think they got away with something, but actually they do themselves a disservice. Imagine an engineering professor who let his students do their work “pretty good.” You’d have bridges and buildings failing, which is not so funny. Or a surgery professor who said, “That’s not too bad” to a student, when the truth is that such a level of performance would end up badly on many occasions.
It's time to introduce to her and everybody else the difference between (listen to the difference):
A (Natalie): I didn't manage my time WELL. (She learns nothing from that—not well?)
AND
B (truth): I did a really terrible job of managing my time. Actually I didn't manage it at all. I just did what I felt like, and I hoped that somehow at the end I’d be rescued from my lack of responsibility.
And the truth is that most parents DO rescue their children from their mistakes:
Take homework to school that kid left home.
Help them do their homework at last minute. (Real help along the way is fine. Help, not doing.)
Do jobs around the house for them.
Help them get a job done that belongs to the kid
Sit and avoid the confrontation when two kids are fighting.
We LET STUFF go, and we can’t afford that. EVERY time we fail to teach a child what they need to know, we are TEACHING them how to be irresponsible or confused, or both.
Natalie said she didn’t manage time WELL. Let’s say, arbitrarily, that WELL is about 8 on a scale from 0-10. Natalie’s performance was about a 1. Calling that “not well” is very far from the truth.
So what do we do?
Mom, point out that one sentence and have Natalie re-write it, until she can name all the irresponsible things she did (which we named).
Why matter? Why not just let it go? Because Natalie won’t learn how FAR from responsible she was if she just calls it “not great” or “not well.” It’s a self-deception. A little subtle, but wrong to let the deception go.
I hear people—including adults—a LOT say versions of what Natalie did.
"I wasn't perfect."
"I could have done better."
In other words, we make our performance sound MARGINAL, when the truth is:
"I didn't even THINK about what I was doing."
"I didn't care about anybody but myself, and didn't even think of long-term consequences to me or others."
“I didn’t pay attention at all to doing it right.”
We OWE our children our best efforts. We’re teaching them how to live in the world—responsible and loving—and if we’re satisfied with half-explanations or excuses, we doom them to live like that the rest of their lives. They’ll do badly in school, in their careers, and in their relationships. We can do better.
