Is your home a democracy or tyranny?

After a rough patch of what I can only call "spring fever", with the kids being unusually disobedient and combative with one another, we sat down for a family meeting to sort it all out.

Now, I am aware that the season did have something to do with it. With my work schedule being increasingly erratic, then factor in baseball games making for late nights and thus less sleep and many more activities at school where sweets are served, the kids are all over the place. Sleep deprived, wired on sugar, and getting home at odd hours after school with no regular schedule, the kids naturally were out of sorts. They were fighting amongst themselves and becoming increasingly disrespectful to me.

So I went and got a piece of blank white posterboard and called a family meeting to discuss a simple but clear rule chart with equally simple but clear consequences. All voices were heard. The kids and I together came up with rules that are important to us, that benefit all equally, and are easy for even the youngest to follow (5 years old).

They are astonishingly simple. Show respect. Do your chores. No means no. And the consequences are simple and easy...first step: warning, second step: time-out on your bed for 20 minutes, third step: removal of privileges (taking away video game or trip to the pool/playground for the immediate time frame), fourth step: "grounding" for one week (extended removal of said privileges, no playdates or friend time).  We haven't made it past step two.

I've found that good parenting is being able to be constantly in flux. As kids grow and mature, their needs, wants, and responsibilities change. My eight year old wants desperately to know his voice is being heard while my five year old just needs to clearly know his boundaries so he can play blissfully within them without worrying about being in trouble.  Of course, all children are different with unique personalities, and my daughter needs a stricter hand than either of the boys. But to know any of this about your children, you must listen.

I grew up during the twilight of the "children shall be seen and not heard" days.  I was, and always have been, fiercely independent and outspoken, and I never felt my voice was heard or respected in the home. This is not the same as allowing your child to dictate your rules or run your home.  But children are human beings, not pets or houseplants, and for them to be happy, secure, and healthy, they must feel that they are not only loved but valued as a contributing member of the family. Whether or not you ultimately go in the direction they wish, it's important for them to feel that you listened and for you to explain why you're making a different decision. If they understand, for instance, that bedtime is at 9 pm because being sleep-deprived leads to poorer grades, bad behavior the next day (resulting in punishment!), and, after long periods of sleep deprivation, even sickness, they'll be more likely to head to bed when asked.

I use the example of an adult going to a new job. If you show up and your boss leads you to your new office and then simply leaves you there with no instruction, how would you feel if he then returned in two weeks to yell at you for not doing a proper job? You'd be angry! Raising children is the exact same thing. They expect, need, crave, and desperately want guidance and instruction. Children thrive in a structured environment where boundaries are clearly marked.

Parenting has been the biggest learning evolution of my life, but I think when someone approaches it as such, as a learning process where we (the parents) have just as much to learn as the children, then success is imminent. Kids are people, too, and one day, they're the people who'll come home for holidays, call you from college and beyond, and one day, far in the future, will raise their own kids. Think about the example you're setting. Are you teaching your kids to hit their children, tell them to "sit down and shut up", and guide by fear and repression, or will your kids be kind and gentle with your grandchildren? A parent's behavior has ramifications that reach potentially generations into the future.  Create traditions, not bad memories. A few things I've learned over the years:


Take time to listen. Yesterday, John had a meltdown after getting almost through one entire level of a video game and losing at the last scene. He lost all of that work and will have to start over. Yes, it's trivial, but imagine you spent an hour writing an essay or working and your computer blanked out, losing all of your work. It's happened to all of us....isn't it the most frustrating thing ever?! So while he sobbed, I just held him and ultimately laid down with him on his bed, and he ended up drifting off into a nap snuggled under my chin doing those hiccup things kids do after a hard cry (I know, I was melting too). The rest of the day, he was a perfect angel and came to sit in my lap while we watched a movie last night. Create lasting bonds with your children and build trust by just being there for them!

Learn when to admit you're wrong. It happens to all of us...we're tired, cranky, or just don't understand, so we make a snap decision. I've done this...said no to something because I was too tired to deal with it or because I didn't fully ask questions. Imagine you're at work and you want to attend a one-day conference...it's very low cost (something you know is in your budget), it's pretty fun, it's a real learning opportunity to your job, so you gather all the materials and take it to your boss. Your boss is clearly distracted and busy and immediately says "No," without even looking at your materials. You'd be angry, frustrated, and rightfully so! So this happened to me a couple of years ago when Grayson asked to get on a website and I immediately said no. It wasn't until I saw a commercial for the same site and became interested that Grayson pointed out it was the same site he told me about...about three months prior. A completely free, open-source educational site for PreK through 6th grade....a wonderful resource that we've used a lot since. I apologized for not listening to him and we enrolled on the site.

Learn that rules can and will change. The basics will never change. Respect and responsibility will always be cornerstones in our home. But some things, like bedtimes, chores, allowances, and later on, curfews, will always be in flux. It takes teamwork...you, your partner, and your kids... to determine the appropriate rules for their ages, personalities, and stages of development.


Conflict is OK. I think my family had a hard time with this growing up, because any conflict was seen as negative and was immediately squashed, but it led to me having a hard time learning to appropriately deal with conflict as an adult.  Your children are going to grow up and have disagreements with friends, future roommates, coworkers, partners, teammates, and they need to learn appropriate skills for dealing with those disagreements. Whenever I hear my kids arguing, I stop myself from barging in and I listen outside the door for a bit. Sometimes they resolve the problem themselves!  And sometimes I hear a toy hurtling into a wall and realize direct intervention is needed and I step in. But I feel very strongly that being a "helicopter parent", hovering just out of reach so you can step in and solve every single problem for your children, is doing them a great disservice, as they will never learn to deal with conflict on their own! Talk to them about appropriate conflict resolution and then allow them to utilize the tools with their siblings and classmates before they're getting into brawls with roommates and friends over a poorly managed disagreement.

Everyone is different. My oldest son, Grayson, is a very good child as far as listening, obeying, and observing boundaries and he likes having a specific set of rules (although he does have a bit of a naturally "legal" mind in finding loopholes in those rules). However, with his little brother and sister, he is authoritative, bossy, demanding, and pushy. He needs to be reminded to scale it back and not be so bossy.  Callie is independent, creative, social, and chatty...she needs constant reminding of the rules and expectations and a very swift and immediate punishment for infractions or she will go way out of bounds. Her artistic, creative brain sometimes doesn't recognize the need for structure and so I maintain a constant stream of communication with her on why we're doing what we're doing, what time it is, where we're going, why we're going there, for this provides her with the reassurance she likes to feel comfortable and to behave. John is eager to please and responds better to positive stimuli than threat of negative punishment. He will go above and beyond for hugs and kisses while skirting the boundaries if only trying to avoid punishment (it took his preschool teachers a while to figure this out). He loves validation and rewards. All kids are different, so in multiple-child households, keep the rules list short and simple...generic "golden rule" type rules work very well.

Love conquers all. Even if your kids are frustrated with the rules or with a punishment, let them know they're loved. I tell my kids, "If I didn't love you, I wouldn't care about providing you with rules and structure...I'd let you run wild." Express clearly to your kids that parents who love and care about their kids will prepare them for being successful adults, and successful adults have to live within a structure of rules their whole lives. From federal and state laws to workplace rules to tax code to unspoken social expectations, people always have to live within some system of rules and there are consequences for all of our actions. Approach discipline from a place of love, discipline with love, and discuss with love, and your kids will feel loved. Don't discipline from anger or make rules from frustration.

I know I make lists like these from time to time, and I freely admit I'm not perfect and that being a parent has been, and continues to be, a learning process for me. Sometimes I see other parents and I just feel so bad for their children. I took the kids to a nearby lake this past Saturday, and while they were swimming, a nearby mother was berating her son, telling him repeatedly to "shut up", calling him names, etc. I was horrified and very sad for that child, who looked like a show dog trying to jump through every hoop for a tiny bit of approval. He said "yes ma'am", was incredibly respectful to me and my kids, very friendly but polite and reserved, yet he was treated like crap. No child deserves that, even one who is misbehaving, but I was mystified why she would treat an obviously well-behaved child this way. Everyone's methods of discipline are going to be different, but respect is universal, and parents should respect their children as much as kids should respect parents. If you nail the basics of respect and love, you'll be raising kids who reflect those principles out into the world.

~m