Over the years I have collected solutions to many of life’s common problems, including parenting problems. Here are a few I wish I'd thought of about 40 years ago!
Shopping with Children
Section titled “Shopping with Children”Children see you walking through the store choosing things to buy. Naturally, they will imitate you and show you things they wish to buy. This probably isn’t the greatest time for a lesson in household economics! What to do?
Take a photo.
Pose them with the toy, the shirt, the stuffed animal, whatever it is. This alone makes most children happy. Show them the picture and ask if they would like to add the item to their wish list.
That solves the moment. It also solves something else: you're quietly building next year's gift list. Before time for a gift, and without blowing your cover, reminisce with them about the fun you had shopping together, and include the pictures of the things they liked. You'll find out what they think of these things now, and what should brighten their eyes on the day you give it to them.
Toy Jail
Section titled “Toy Jail”One mother came up with the idea of “toy jail.” When her children drag their feet too long picking up their toys, she puts the toys in a cardboard box in her closet. This is the toy jail. No toys come out until the child does an extra chore to pay the bail. Her children find this entirely reasonable and fair.
Another mother reported that her child enjoyed the game so much that she put her mother’s magazine into toy jail when her mother left it in the car. Mother was delighted. What a wonderful way for a child to learn about adult interactions!
Helping with Schoolwork
Section titled “Helping with Schoolwork”Some of what I've collected isn't a trick at all—it's an understanding of why my parents raised us as they did.
I've met parents today who sometimes do their children's homework for them.
Mine never did. They did something far more valuable, and my father was the most skilled at it. When I had difficulty with, say, a math problem, he asked question after question he knew I could answer. As I answered them, my curiosity circuits got going. The solution to the problem became evident to me, as my father knew it would.
My mother never was a science or math person, but she was involved. Once a teacher unjustly found me guilty of some classroom misdemeanor and punished me with a 500-word essay. I appealed this miscarriage of justice to my parents. This being the 1950s, they upheld the conviction without delay. I wrote the essay. As I wrote, I realized there was no eighth-grade teacher in the entire United States who had enough time to read every word in every kid’s 500 word essay. I added a couple of brief sentences in the middle protesting my innocence and expressing sarcastic displeasure with the punishment. To my dismay my mother checked the essay before her bedtime and noticed my addition. I doubt my teacher ever read it, but my mother did.
My brothers and I often grouched to each other about our parents. Yet time has revealed that underneath our child-appropriate discontents, our parents built something precious, a firm and loving structure upon which to build our lives. As time went on, they gave us something else—acceptance of our individual modifications of that structure to make real our evolving selves.
My parents are gone now, but my brothers and I accept that no matter our differing views of things, we are a family.