Attitude isn't just important. It’s not even the most important thing. It's THE thing. Help your children change their beliefs and attitudes and their behavior will follow.
Timestamps:
00:00 Indispensable subject.
01:29 "Absolutely minimal compliance" explanation
03:01 Metaphor explaining selfishness.
05:45 We unconsciously train them to go for our breaking point. Examples.
13:35 Child pretends to comply minimally and parents go along.
15:00 Attitude is what truly reflects our inner character.
16:01 Teaching attitude, example of older brother hitting younger.
Transcript:
This is a significant addition to the Ridiculously Effective Parenting. It’s an expansion of the basic principles, not just an illustration of them. In other words, this is important, even indispensable.
Attitude: Absolutely Minimal Compliance
Not a day goes by without my hearing from a parent who has begun to apply the principles of the Ridiculously Effective Parenting Training, and who then says something like this to me:
“My daughter, Sylvia, doing so much better. She’s not kicking holes in walls anymore.”
Greg: Now, there’s no doubt that it’s a good thing NOT to punch holes in walls, but that’s hardly a life goal. As parents we don’t want our children to grow up so that we can think, “What a kid. Doesn’t punch holes in walls.”
No, we want something much, much better for our children than that. We hope that by loving and teaching them, they will feel loved and be loving and responsible.
Mom: Sometimes she even does chores without being reminded.
Greg: Let me introduce you to a concept that most parents are not aware of.
Absolutely Minimal Compliance
I’ll explain:
We parents do parenting part-time. We’re occupied with making a living, doing errands, watching television, working out, keeping a marriage together, gossiping, acting like victims, social media, and on and on.
Kids have only one thing to do: They watch us closely to learn what behaviors and attitudes get them what they want. So what is the one thing? Get what they want. Minimize pain. THEM.
THEY are the focus of their lives. Is this selfish? Sure, and it’s also just human, especially for a child who hasn’t been taught how to be unconditionally loving.
We’re all somewhat selfish. Would you rather than $100 or $200 from me? Duh, more for YOU. Selfish. And what if you notice that every time we’re together, and you say the word “strawberry,” I give you $200? You’d say it every time—without fail.
Selfishness and Attitude
It’s human nature to want more and to simply NOTICE what gets us more. Sure, sometimes that turns into conscious manipulation, but mostly we just notice what works, and we tend to do that.
So your child is watching you closely all day to look for indications of how they can get what they want. No accusation. No uncovering of an evil plot. Human nature, and they are dedicated to it.
Examples:
*Your child demands something: candy, new iPhone, “just one more hour of video games when it’s bedtime,” and on and on. You say no. You refuse to cooperate even when they whine—once, twice, three times.
But then they whine FOUR times, or for 15 mins. There IS a number where you weaken. Nearly all parents have their breaking point, and it’s a virtual certainty that you have yours.
Whatever it is, the kids KNOW it, so they just go straight there. And then we wonder why they keep whining, or fighting, or begging, or rebelling.
* You give them a consequence, and they experiment with just how LITTLE they can cooperate before you’ll accept their sub-standard offering and let them off the hook.
You tell them to go to their room for 5 mins, and they go 3. You tell them to clean the bathroom, and they wave a cloth in the air. And then they resume whatever activity you interrupted with your “stupid” consequence.
How do I know this is true? Because I know how to ask parents questions. They tell me everything is great, but then I ask them to describe the last time they gave a consequence. In detail. Word for word, every gesture and body posture, facial expressions, tones, and all.
Consequences and Attitude
And here’s what I heard in the case of this mother with Sylvia, the one who used to kick holes in walls.
During ONE interaction with her mother, Sylvia did the following:
- While her mother was teaching her something, she rolled her eyes at what her mother was saying. Sounds so small. But what is the underlying message that the child is screaming while APPEARING to comply with the discussion (or consequence)? “You stupid cow, when are you going to shut up and let me get on with my selfish existence?”
- She sighed when her mother confronted her about a behavior. Message? “Okay, so you caught me doing this tiny, nothing thing. Just shut up and don’t make a big thing of it. I have better things to do, but you keep pounding me with this ridiculous loving and responsible garbage, and I’m tired of it.”
- Mother: Long pauses between my asking her to describe the unloving behavior she just demonstrated and her willingness to actually describe it in terms that don’t minimize the behavior, excuse it, blame it on something or someone else. The PAUSE is the real response, not the words. The pause is defiance, resistance, an absolute guarantee that she is not learning.
- Mom: “Cutting her eyes at me,” which means not looking directly at me, but looking angrily at me from the side. (Called “glaring” in many cultures) We’ve all seen this done. Actors are trained how to do this in order to convey anger but in a more subtle way than punching somebody in the face.
- When the discussion was over, and the child APPEARED to have listened to the lesson, she turned in a huff—we all know the difference between turning away and turning away with a dismissive attitude—and stomped out of the room. Message? FINALLY! Finally, you shut up and bought into the complete lie I’ve been telling you so that you’d quit talking.
Attitude is THE Most Important Thing
Anybody seeing the problem?
Sure, with teaching (including consequences) you might be getting the kid to bed on time, or the dishes done, or whatever, but THAT is not what they need most.
They can PRETEND that. They can do it with absolutely minimum compliance just to get you to go away, so they can get back to lying around, being on social media, withdrawing, playing video games, teasing a sibling, or whatever.
With consequences, we can improve the outward behavior of a child—like training a dog—but that’s not the goal, and we’re not looking hard enough to get TO the real goals of our children being loving and responsible.
As long as they display ANY evidence of reluctance, irritation, hesitation, we’re accomplishing nothing except to teach our children to lie.
Attitude isn't just important. It’s not even the most important thing. It's THE thing. Attitude is what truly reflects our inner character, our desires, our direction.
Words and behaviors often simply cover up attitudes that are rotten to the core, or even malignant. Words and behaviors can be the sheep's clothing covering the ravening wolves beneath.
All day, every day, we see around us people and organizations who claim to be doing good in the world, only to discover in the news and in other more personal ways that they use the appearance of doing good to distract us—the classic misdirection of every magician—from what they really want, which is to build up their own power, wealth, reputation, and endless bag of selfish entertainments.
Teaching Attitude
Another example of teaching attitude:
Parent called me to describe 9-year-old son who fairly often got his way by hitting his 7-year-old brother.
This is NOT a small thing if allowed to continue EVER. This isn’t the kind of behavior we can minimize. This is the kind of behavior that must be entirely eliminated RIGHT NOW.
Why? What’s the problem? It’s not like the 9-year-old breaks his brother’s jaw. He “just” pushes him or punches him in the arm, or slaps him on the head (“not hard”) as he walks by.
1. It teaches the 9-year-old that he doesn’t have to be loving.
- Such kids grow up to focus only on themselves. They tend to become narcissistic to varying degrees.
- It teaches the 9-year-old that he doesn’t have to be responsible for his behavior. With each hit of his brother, he justifies his selfishness and blames it on the behavior of the person he hits or belittles.
- Allowing someone to be a bully cripples the BULLY every bit as much as the person he bullies. How do you think bullies function in the workplace? Unless they inherit the job as CEO, generally other people avoid them, hate them, don’t cooperate with them, and they end up isolated and miserable.
- How about bullying in relationships? They CAN’T be loving, can’t be truly connected, so they find someone they can bully for a lifetime, or their partner gets sick of it, and the bully moves on to the next marriage or relationship, looking for someone to control and feel powerful with. Horrible way to live.
2. It teaches the 7-year-old that he’s worthless. Period. Full stop. Not joking.
- Netflix, The Crown. Charles often comes across as weak, and then you see how he was raised. He was bullied by his father, who pushed him to be athletic and strong and everything he didn’t naturally want to do.
- Everyone disregarded his opinion and desires. Nobody put their arm around him and loved him.
- Charles felt worthless, so when he went to school, he had a TARGET on his face that said, “I don’t feel worthwhile. I’m weak, so you’re welcome to pick on me.”
- Which of course his classmates DID, making him feel even more weak.
- He was never treated as though he mattered, so now he’s 72 -year-old. and still comes across as weak.
Back to the brother hitting his younger brother. After a hit, Dad says to 9-year-old, “What are you doing?”
“Just playing.” ALWAYS an excuse or justification. Pay attention, because it’s the reason he’ll use in his head to do it again.
“No, that’s not what you’re doing. If you were playing, your brother would be smiling, but he’s not. He looks miserable. You were picking on him and making him feel bad.”
“Okay, sorry,” and turns to walk away. (He’d LEARNED the absolutely minimal compliance required to get Dad off his back. No change in attitude, just a game he learned to play to get what he wanted)
Dad let this happen. Child learns that a superficial and meaningless “sorry” is enough to minimally comply with his dad, but his attitude isn’t changed one bit. Attitude actually worse, because he’s learned another way to manipulate to get out of being responsible.
Require the Child to State the Attitude
Parents MUST be more observant of attitude. They must point it out.
Then, after a couple of times, they need to require the CHILD to state the underlying attitude:
“What is the real message of:
Your not doing your assigned chore.
Your speaking unkindly to your sister
Your being late to the family meeting/school/whatever
Otherwise, the behavior escalates, and eventually they punch their spouse in the face and think “sorry” is enough.
We do need consequences, yes, but their character, from which comes behavior.
Children are addicted to what has worked. They have to reach bottom, where the old behavior doesn’t work.
Help them change beliefs, attitudes, judgments, and behavior follows. We want our job to be easier. Just change the behavior. Not enough.
Watch them, not with skepticism, just with honest eyes. Watch their attitudes, which leak out all over the place.
Love them. Teach them. Review the parenting training and all these weekly video answers and written principles and conf calls.
Our job can change the world of our children, and our own worlds—and, by extension, the entire world if enough of us have the courage to do it.
