Teaching your children how to succeed in life is priceless.
Timestamps:
00:00 Son given the task of researching how to fix the toilet.
03:13 Handling kids who want to do "less".
05:25 Mom tells him to figure out the problem and leaves him alone to do it.
06:47 Son fixed toilet; examples of how to tell him what a big deal he is.
09:21 How to help him experience the feeling of having done something well.
Transcript:
A mother wrote me, one who has studied the Ridiculously Effective Parenting Training. She said: “The master bathroom toilet doesn't stop trying to fill up the tank, because the sensor that indicates the tank is full doesn’t work. The reaction of my husband, who always tries to do as little as possible, is to simply turn off the water supply to the toilet, which means we have to turn it on and back off with every use. I decided to ask my son, Julian, age 12, to research the problem and see if he could fix it.”
Helping Your Child Learn a New Job
**Brilliant. Most kids leave home not knowing how to do ANYTHING: cook, wash clothes, iron, fix the simplest things. And those kids act like uneducated and helpless morons the rest of their lives, always asking for help and then complaining when other people won’t help them. Horrible way to live. You’re teaching your son how to succeed in life, and the teaching never stops. You teach as many lessons in life as you can. How to fix a toilet would be a good one.
I gave Julian the job this morning. Immediately he was upset about it. He didn't say anything with words but his face showed it. Clearly he didn’t like being assigned this job.
I held up my hand—like you recommended—and said STOP and THINK. And LISTEN (I found myself speaking very slowly and deliberately). I am asking you to take a look at it and to learn about it and SEE if you can fix it. I am not telling you it has to be done by tonight, just investigate and learn how to fix it. [His face was still upset.]
So he’s been working at it. This morning my husband said he'll pick up the broken part from Lowe's after work. I said not to, I'll take Julian to Lowe's. I didn't have confidence that James would get the job done,
**No, it wouldn’t have. Your husband always does the least possible in doing a job, and he doesn’t really care if it’s fixed right.
Mom: And I also wanted Julian to learn to do it.
Trying to Get Away with Doing the Least Possible
When I spoke with Julian later in the day, he said: I thought Papa would pick up the part from Lowe's.
**I’m sure you’ve noticed, he’s already arguing already. He wanted his father to just get the right part—even though he didn’t KNOW the right part—so that Julian would have to do little. Stop him right here. When he says, "I thought," it’s the same as him saying, "but I'm right" or “BUT I want to do the least possible.
Mom: He didn't (Papa didn’t get the part).
Julian: He said he would.
Mom: I want YOU to deal with this.
Julian: But Papa said...
Mom: STOP.
**Good for you. When you give him a job, he almost always says some version of “I thought” or “BUT.” Notice that his questions and responses are always designed for him to do LESS. NEVER offers to do more. Knowing that, you stopped him.
Mom to me: It doesn't matter what Papa said.
Mom to Julian: What matters is that I told you that I want you to deal with it.
Encouraging Learning in a New Job
Julian had only looked at a video of how to replace the part that James had described as being broken. Just a couple of videos and settled on one.
**Wise of you to have Julian pursue it, because it's so unlikely that your husband would even know what was broken. He simply does whatever is easiest.
and so he only thought of going to Lowe's to get the part. I told him to do more research—to investigate until he figured it out—then I went away for a couple of hours.
When I came back, Julian had fixed it. He had looked at the toilet / the problem more closely, googled the precise symptoms, found someone who suggested just rinsing one of the parts. He did that, and poof! the problem was solved. No trip to Lowe's, no money spent, and fairly quick and easy.
Gush Over a Child Who Completes a New Job
**You have had a tendency to point out how Julian and unloving and selfish and tries to always do less, and YES, he does need to learn those things. But now you get to teach him something different and equally important. You get to gush all over Julian. You say some version of one or more of the following:
"Julian, YOU did this. Nobody else could, only you."
“You contributed to making our household a more pleasant, functional place. That’s a big deal.”
"How does it feel to acquire a skill on your own?"
"This is impressive, that you figured it out. It PROVES the ingenuity and persistence that are two of your gifts. How does that FEEL?”
"This was well done, and you’ll discover that this kind of creativity and insight will serve you and other people well for the rest of your life."
And so on.
He has to learn what it feels like to do something RIGHT. He knows too well how it feels to be sneaky, manipulative, irresponsible. He needs to feel responsible, ingenious, creative, and persistent, so he can COMPARE the feelings.
I took him aside and said I am really glad for him having this experience. He said it wasn't all smooth, and yes, he admitted that he had resisted. I said yes, I could see that he had wanted to do as little as possible. He was following Papa's lead (to do least possible). But then HE DID IT. He looked/ dug until he found the actual problem, and then googled/ YouTube the solution. Amazing.
**Excellent, what you just did. Now add a little more like I said above (but no need to copy any of it exactly). THIS is an opportunity for him to see what happens and how it feels when he doesn't resist, when he’s responsible.
I said that Papa couldn't be bothered to make that effort—to stick with it and figure it out. Lots of time and money gets wasted by not figuring out problems, and often solutions can't be found.
If you want to have a happy partnership with your wife in the future, you must be able to listen to her, to understand her, to care about her. You must be able to express honestly and clearly what's going on with YOU, instead of posturing and pretending. What you are learning now is invaluable for you to have a happy future. This is about much more than fixing a toilet or taking down a tree. I said this shows that you can really solve problems.
He asked, “Can't everybody do that?”
I said, “No, they can't.”
**Another thing to emphasize. When he gets older and gets a job, for example, guess who they will promote. The guy who just GETS IT DONE, never the whiner and resister. Nice work, Julian. He needs to see this as the great stepping stone that it is.
Mom to son: “A year ago you couldn't have done this. You would have started crying and fussing, you would have given up so easily, you would not have had faith that you can do it, you would not have cared enough and you wouldn't have had the skills. Remember when you researched stuff online and could only find the answer you wanted on the Internet? He remembered. You can learn to stick with a problem and keep digging into it until you find the solution. He said he was glad he did that. He smiled. He liked it.
**ASSESS. He CAN be happy and fulfilled, if he just keeps going. Stopping to argue or complain just ends all that.
Hurray.
