Teaching Younger Children

Parenting is NOT magical. You won't get results with a wave of a wand or magic words. Parenting can BE miraculous but only after you have done all you can do.

Timestamps:

00:00 Mother feels lost in her parenting.

02:08 Parenting is about preparation. Steps to prepare.

05:57 Fatal Optimism, living crisis to crisis.

06:30 Mother's response to a mess the child makes.

09:26 An approach to a repetitive, unproductive behavior. First: No anger.

10:21 Look at her when you talk to her. No multitasking.

11:15 Ask, "What are you doing?"

12:45 Ask, don't tell, ask, "Are you supposed to xyz?"

14:18 Ask, "So now we have a mess. What do we do with a mess?"

15:29 Have her show you how to clean it up or tell them how. Don't do it for her.

17:29 Put her in her room to stay until she tells you why she's in her room.

17:35 Leave and come back until she does. No anger. No punishment.

20:11 Dealing with a child who is diverting your attention from the task at hand.

23:15 If she repeats, don't teach again. Apply a consequence.

Transcript:

This letter is from a mother who has had all the Real Love materials available to her—including those regarding parenting—for years. But she has a strong tendency not to complete what she begins, so now she finds herself ill-prepared to raise her 18-month-old child, Eliza. Mother moves frantically from one crisis to another with this child, rather than actively loving and teaching her daughter in a way that would prepare Eliza for a happier life. 

Parenting is Preparation, Not Moving from Crisis to Crisis

Mother writes to me: “I seem to have gotten lost with Eliza. I don’t know how it happened.”  

**The truth is, you DO know how it happened. You have had Real Love videos and writings for years, but you never used them with anything approaching consistency.

No criticism, just answering your implied question as you say, “I don’t know how this happened.” You’ve had the Ridiculously Effective Parenting Training for months, but you’re not watching the videos, which could make all this so very easy for you. (Turns out that it’s not Ridiculously Effective unless you actually watch and implement the principles of the training)

You have plenty of time for it, but you don’t do it. Parenting is about preparation—getting sufficient love and guidance so that you know how to loveandteach a child in a way that she can then feel loved, loving, and responsible.

Parenting is not about solving one crisis after another. That approach never ends—usually worsens over time as the child learns how to create bigger crises.  

How to Prepare to Parent without a Crisis

**I strongly suggest that you watch the REPT for at least an hour every day. Every single day schedule the time that you’ll study the training the next day.

Every week watch the video answer that comes to you, and read the written answer, and listen to the conference calls—three invaluable Parenting Supports that add immeasurably to the Training itself. Even in 45 hours of video, we couldn’t possibly learn all we need to know about parenting.

So far you haven’t done that. Parenting isn’t magic, where things happen with a spell or wave of the wand. Parenting can, however, be MIRACULOUS, where spectacular results can still happen but only after you have done all YOU can do.  

**I also suggest that you partner with another parent from the Ridiculously Effective Parenting Facebook group. Share experiences. Learn from that person.

Try another step: Find another parent outside the group—somebody you know well enough to say this to—and say, “I’m doing this parenting training that is crazy different from everything else I’ve seen. It puts a bigger responsibility on US as parents, because we have to learn to genuinely love and teach our kids. It’s not a technique. And it WORKS. I would love to go through the training WITH someone. Would you be willing to look at it?” (Then send them to RealLoveParents.com) You need all the assets you can find and create 

Mom: Today was good until it wasn't.  

**And that’s the very definition of moving from crisis to crisis. We just HOPE that THINGS will go well, without any preparation on our part. And then if anything at all happens to disturb the peace, we’re lost in the dark, we stumble, we respond badly, and we make things worse as conditions and feelings spiral down the toilet. (Often in seconds)

Prepare to Manage Repetitive Unproductive Behaviors 

Mom: I came into the kitchen, and there was Eliza playing in the dog’s food, with food all over her and all over the floor. I firmly told her NO, but she seemed to think it was some kind of game. She was laughing.  

**And THERE is the problem, or a demonstration of the problem. The problem isn’t Eliza. The problem is that YOU have prepared poorly to be her parent. Again, I emphasize that I am not criticizing you. I’m helping you see how to turn around these endless crises, and then how you can avoid nearly all of them.

If you were dying from cancer and had to follow a strict chemotherapy routine, you would figure out how to make the time. But so far you are not consistently making time to learn how to raise a happy child, which is every bit as important as saving your own life. You have the responsibility to save HER life. You brought her into the world, and now her care belongs to you.  

Mom: I have told her many, many times not to play in the dog’s food, but she keeps doing it.  

**Anytime a parent says, “I have told him/her many times not to do something, but they do it anyway,” the parent is saying that they have no clue how to love and teach. If you’re having to repeat yourself, WHAT YOU’RE DOING IS NOT WORKING, so why do you keep doing the same unproductive thing?

A Way to Manage Repetitive Unproductive Behaviors

Let’s talk about another way to approach a repetitive unproductive behavior—not necessarily THE way—but A way that has proven to work hundreds of times.  

1. You can’t be angry. Ever. If you are, leave and return when you’re not.  
2. You look at her, sit down on the floor, and talk to her. Touch her. She has to be LISTENING, not just you talking.  
3. You ask, “What are you doing?” She says, “Playing with dog’s food.” You are NOT telling her what she’s doing, or that it’s the 100th time. You do NOT tell her NOT to play with the food. Why? Because she already KNOWS that. She KNOWS, and you treat her like she doesn’t. So she ACTS like she doesn’t know. She’s more than willing to play this I’m-too-stupid-to-be-accountable game with you. She can feel that you’re lost in guiding her, so she does what she wants.
4.  You ask, “Are you supposed to play with the dog’s food?”
5.  No.   “WHY not?” (Notice, not “WHY are you doing this?”) (Teach responsibility here. Keep going, giving hints if necessary, until she says, “Makes a mess,” which she already knows. You are nagging her FAR too much, instead of requiring that SHE tell you what she’s doing.  
6. You: “So now we have a mess. What do we do with a mess?”  Her: Clean it up. You: YOU made the mess, so WHO is going to clean it up?” (Responsibility along with CHOICE) “Me?” 
7.  You tell her, “Show me how.” You’ve already told her how. I know, because I’ve told you how to do this before, and you’ve told her. And she’s done it. She KNOWS how (other parents, if your child doesn’t know, simply tell them, do NOT do it for them) Step stool to sink, wash rags, ready for such events. 
8. She WILL do a lousy job. So you keep at it, until she’s really cleaned it. RESPONSIBILITY. She CAN do it at 18 months. It will take long time, she won’t like it, but she’ll LEARN from it, which is the entire point of this. 
9.  Then you tell her to follow you to her room. You set her on her bed, and you tell her that she’ll have to stay there until she can come and tell you why you’ve put her in her room. “Think about it, you know.”  
10. She’ll come out or not. You have to keep going, possibly in and out of room (you and her), possibly her staying there for a while, until she can say that if we break the rules of the house where we all live happily together, we don’t get to be in the house where we all live. We have to be by ourselves until we remember. NO irritation. (Message here is not punishment, or staying in your room. Message is that happiness comes from order and keeping rules. If you want to be part of that happiness, YOU have to keep the rules. THAT is responsibility.) 

 **If she knows why she's there, you let her out. Then if she does another thing to require going to her room, you leave her longer. The point is to make is sufficiently inconvenient that she'll remember the lesson. THAT is the purpose of consequences.  

Prepare to Notice When You are Being Played 

Mom: After dinner we went to the bathroom, took a bath, but then she wouldn’t sit still while I dried and brushed her hair. So I stopped the music that was playing (one of the consequences I use in there because she loves music).  

**Good for you. She knows that she is supposed to sit still while getting dried and hair brushed. If WORDS are not working, as they obviously are not, immediate consequences are the appropriate teaching tool.  

But stopping the music didn't help her stop wiggling and playing, so I held her pretty firmly on my lap and combed her hair, but she kept playing and getting into things, so I pretty forcefully pulled her away a few times and sat her down ... she laughs it's a game.  

**(Those listening, I know this mother well, hence what I’m saying.) Here’s a huge problem that you need to see in Eliza, or she’ll be manipulating people with it for the rest of her life. LOTS of kids learn this. When she plays and sings to music and acts all cute, you smile and laugh and play with her. That CAN be GOOD—fun.

It’s also a perfect illustration of how a particular behavior can be good in one setting but not in another—like driving a car is good on road and with rules, but not so good if driving the car through somebody else’s house.  

**Eliza isn’t just playing WITH you. She’s PLAYING YOU, as in using you—playing you like a musical instrument. You are so obviously entertained when she plays around and sings and dances that she USES it—unconsciously—to get her way.

She ignores what she is supposed to do, and she distracts you with cuteness and playing around. From the outside it looks fun, but this kid is creating her own little world, where she’s in charge. And that won’t work, because she actually needs a mother. She’s not prepared to be the boss of her own world. She needs a mother who will teach her life and how to be happy in all circumstances.  

**It's become a game because you're not consistent. Consistent as gravity. You don't act like you know what you're doing, no confidence, and she knows it. So she runs her own world. Very dangerous for her.  

Plan for Dealing with Unproductive Behaviors 

So, what do I recommend?  

• Continue parenting training.  
• Responding to her EVERY time she does what she knows is wrong.  

1. First, ASK her what she’s doing 
2. Require her to say why it’s not the right thing 
3. If she does same thing ONE more time, don’t teach again, just consequence (if a pattern, skip the teaching and go right to consequence, like playing after bath time).  

• Create play between you so that she feels more connected to you. Play when it’s TIME to play, not when it’s time to go to bed, or to eat dinner, or whatever.  
• Making consequences unpleasant enough. Above you said you took away music, and that "didn't help." But then you held her firmly and combed her hair. No. For one thing, you failed to teach, then you came back with pure force, holding her firmly. Force isn’t how we parent.  
• What instead? The second that taking away the music doesn't work, you have to just put her in bed in whatever condition she is and say that you'll see her in the morning. No more bedtime routine because she didn't do what you said (no story, kissing, whatever you do). If her hair is still wet, tough. Again, consequences have to be unpleasant. You have to be firm, unyielding, like gravity. Gravity never varies. You do.  

Mom: I have to get her dressed for bed.  

**No, you don't have to get her dressed. Not if she misbehaves after (1) reminding her what her optimal behavior is OR asking her what it is (age dependent), (2) doing a consequence (turning off music). If she continues after ONE consequence, CLEARLY that is NOT WORKING. So you have to increase the price. You put her in bed. Give her blanket. Done. Bye.  

She will scream bloody murder the first time, but if you give in, she’ll just learn that getting her way now involves fooling around, then ignoring consequence, then screaming bloody murder. See how this gets worse and worse?  

Then in morning you remind her why she had to go to bed without routine, or wet hair or whatever. ASK her.  

**Parenting is tough. But you have to do it. Not harsh. It’s harsh NOT to loveandteach the School of Life.