If you have ever tried your hand at playing pool you know that everything, simply everything is about the angle. Head to head struggles between 2 people gives us equal and opposite forces and stalemates full of frustration. If you have read The Zax by Dr. Seuss you catch my meaning.
Finding yourself in a head-to-head power struggle with your child can be the most frustrating thing about parenting. It’s not fun (or effective long term) to pull the ‘because I said so’ card, even when we know we’re right about what needs to happen.
So if you are looking for a better way… change the angle.
One of my favorite angle changing tools is gamification. Children are built to play. It is the natural state of their learning process. Experimentation, watching others at play, and imaginative play are the ways they begin to understand what works and what doesn’t work.
So let’s use it:
I need to read this email but baby wants my attention. I hold a piece of cereal in my closed hand and they open each finger to get to it. Repeat as needed.
My son is 2 and practicing saying no, for no other reason than that he has discovered that he can. When his head starts shaking I shake my head too saying ‘silly baby’ and we are wiggling around together laughing. He forgets his aversion to getting into the highchair for dinner and we have a lovely (if short) meal together.
Son number 2 hates to get into the car. We race, play leap frog, carry a heavy thing together, compete to see who has the silliest walk, or try to find three sticks and two leaves while walking straight to the car.
My 7 year old is having trouble sitting and waiting for our food at the restaurant. We try to carefully stack the silverware, sugar packets, cups and plates into a high tower, or have a rousing game of thumb war.
My 11 year old resists homework or studying for a test. We throw a ball back and forth as I ask them quiz questions or spelling words, paint one fingernail for each math problem accomplished, or try to find the most outrageous topic for the paragraph they have to write.
Boring car ride? Pick a word and go around so each person sings a song with that word in it until you can’t think of any more. Then pick a new word.
If you try, you can make a game out of almost anything. The thing that needs to be done can get done without the riveting conversation of: ‘Yes.’ ‘No.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘NO!’ ‘YES!!’ And when it comes down to it… it’s all about connection. ‘Because I said so’ doesn’t feel connective, it’s a blocking strategy with a winner and a loser. We want our children to come to us when their friends are encouraging them into self destructive behavior. We want them to have the life skills they need to move out of the house and make a life they love. And when they move out, we want them to reach out to us for love, connection and happy shared times.
Putting a little angle on getting our children’s cooperation shifts the head-to-head stalemate so that we can continue together in a shared direction that gets us both where we want to go.
