Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here or post it in the Slate Parenting Facebook group.
Dear Care and Feeding,
Our 3-year-old is a delightful, cheerful, and helpful kid. He can be a little stubborn, but once a decision is fait accompli, he’s resilient and rolls with it. Our biggest behavioral struggle is getting him dressed in the morning, and it’s always been this way. He won’t put on clothes by himself and apparently thinks it’s hilarious to yank each leg out of his pants as we try to wrangle the second leg in. He ducks and rolls as we reach to put a shirt on, forcing us to grab him and pin him down. Sometimes it takes two of us to wrestle clothes onto him. He laughs maniacally through the whole process.
We have tried sitting him down and talking him through how frustrated we feel. We’ve certainly displayed frustration with emotional cues. We haven’t tried a reward system yet, since we’re not inclined to introduce bribes for what needs to be routine behavior. (We have been using treats for potty training, and so far it has gone remarkably well, but we haven’t tried to wean him yet). We also haven’t tried just taking him out and putting him in the car without pants/shirt/shoes so he can suffer the consequences, mostly because we don’t think those consequences will be a motivator and we don’t want to be dressing him in the parking lot of daycare.
It’s mostly a problem on weekday mornings since on weekends we have the luxury to let him goof off for a while before it’s time to get going. He likes daycare, though he usually tells us he would prefer to stay home and play. So maybe this is a delaying tactic. Or it could be that he’s just having fun with this “game” that’s not a game for us. Occasionally it helps a little if we let him pick his own clothes, but more often than not he refuses to participate in choosing (he’ll reject our selections, but won’t select an alternative, which is a pattern for him that is annoying but tolerable in other contexts such as bedtime stories). Any suggestions?
—Not a Pro-Wrestler
Dear Not a Pro Wrestler,
I agree with you that rewarding him for something that should be routine isn’t the answer. I also agree that leaving the house half-dressed isn’t really a consequence for him (and could actually turn into another silly game for him, just like his pants-leg antics).
What I don’t see in your letter is threatening any consequences that are important to him. I know a lot of parents and parent advice-givers recommend natural consequences, and that is great when there are logical, natural consequences to be had (don’t eat your dinner, feel hungry at bedtime). But what is the natural consequence of not getting ready for school? Not going at all?
Maybe this is old school, but when my 4-year-old behaves the way you describe (which, by the way, he does daily. Daily. I could have written your letter.), I threaten things that are precious to him: bedtime stories and screen time. I tell him the consequence if he continues to behave in X way, and then I count to three, á la I, 2, 3 Magic. No negotiation or sucking up to me allowed. I try to use a calm, dispassionate tone and I let the consequences be “the heavy,” since no amount of screaming from me is going to make a difference. Does it work all the time? Heck no. But it works enough of the time that it keeps me from losing my mind and my cool too often. And yes, sometimes I briefly explain that his behavior frustrates me, like you say you do. But I do that because I’m planting a seed for the future when he’ll be more equipped to empathize and assess how his behavior impacts me. I don’t expect it to make an impression right now. So, continue to deploy that tactic if you want; just know it doesn’t have much persuasion power yet. Good luck!
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Dear Care and Feeding,
I have a 7-year-old who is an awesome kid. He’s excelling in every way academically, and his teachers just gave us a glowing end-of-the-year conference where they just said, “Keep doing what you’re doing because it’s working!” I worry about him a lot in the long term, though. He’s extremely structured to the point that I had to teach him to knock block towers down as a baby. He listens to rules as if they are religious texts and that stops him from being inquisitive and skeptical. Even though I know a lot of this is just his personality, he is very similar to my sibling who has had a pretty rough life path directly because of it. So I’m trying my best to help my kid relax those traits, if possible.
We enrolled him in a nature school as a toddler and, currently, a school with a lot of outdoor play and learning to try to gently broaden his comfort zone. It has worked well in terms of him getting him to be comfortable with messy play, but not necessarily unstructured play. We’ve been working on cognitive flexibility by telling him detailed plans and then tweaking them at the last minute because if one thing goes wrong in his plans, he tends to just abandon the entire effort instead of finding a plan B. I want to help my son now, while he’s more receptive to changing very deep-set traits.
My question is: Should I be doing more, or just be patient and continue to try to guide him toward more flexible thinking? I’ve thought about taking him to a professional, but I don’t want him to think there’s something “wrong” with him, and I am pretty sure he’d take it that way. He’s such a wonderful, sensitive kid who is full of confidence and I just want him to continue to grow instead of stifling himself and being afraid of failure.
—Probably Overthinking It
Dear Overthinking,
Contrary to how I addressed you, I don’t think you’re overthinking it, and it sounds like you’re already deploying some great tactics to help him “loosen up” his thinking. You’ve kind of created your own exposure therapy regiment. I’d keep that up. I don’t know if you’re a board game family, but I think games are great ways to practice life lessons. One that comes to mind for your situation is Ticket to Ride: First Journey, a game where you build trains to connect cities. Rather than spin-and-move type games where random chance determines a winner, this game depends on strategy, and it often happens that your perfectly sound strategy gets interrupted or undermined by another player’s choices. When that happens, you must choose a plan B. For even more unpredictability, Fluxx is a card game where the players literally change the rules of the game as they play. On the book side of things, a mom friend of mine recently recommended to me A Little SPOT of Flexible Thinking, which uses the metaphor of oak and palm trees to explain the value in adapting to change.
Even though I like your current approach, if I were in your shoes, I would consider taking your son to see a psychologist. There could be something going on beneath the surface that is better to know about now. And if nothing else, it would give you general insight into your kid. In fact, that’s exactly how I would frame it to your son if you do go this route. Tell him flat-out that there isn’t anything wrong with him, but that you want to understand more about how his brain works and how he thinks and feels so that you can be the best mom to him (which is nothing but the truth). If you’ve taken a Myers-Briggs, DiSC, or Strengths Finder assessment (or any of these other psychological profiles), sharing what you learned about yourself from them may help contextualize and de-stigmatize this visit for your kid. Good luck, you’re on the right track!
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Dear Care and Feeding,
My mother-in-law unexpectedly stops at our house at least twice a month while I am home with the kids, invites herself in, and stays for extended periods of time, despite hints and even direct requests to go. I know you’re thinking, “Why not just not open the door when she shows up?” And the answer is that I’m not prepared for the all-out war that would start. I know I could take the kids and go somewhere else so we’re not there, but I don’t want to have to be away from home constantly, especially when my youngest (6 months) takes great naps at home but not elsewhere. It would be great if I could just embrace her presence and go get some stuff done without the kids, but she has a lot of physical limitations and cannot care for my two kids on her own. The last time she came by, I decided to relax as much as I could and just hung out in the living room in case she needed help with something, doing a bunch of things on my phone that needed to get done (made a grocery list, ordered decorations for an upcoming birthday party, posted some outgrown kids clothing online for sale, etc.). When I saw her at a family picnic that the following weekend, she pulled me aside to tell me that she thinks I need to be more present while I’m taking care of the kids since I was on my phone the whole time she was there.
I need this to stop. My husband passed away last year, so I have to be the one to do this. I make sure my in-laws see the kids very regularly, both with and without me and at my house and theirs. Suggestions on how to do this with very emotional people that take things very personally? I don’t want to cut them off, I just don’t want unannounced visitors popping up and refusing to leave!
—Overstaying Their Welcome
Dear Overstaying,
I hear you in this letter, and I’m on your side in terms of trying to establish some boundaries. But before we go there, I just want to point out a couple of things that might help as “quick fixes.”
The first is that it sounds like you didn’t tell your mother-in-law your expectations when you stepped out of the room. If that’s true, telegraphing your actions a little more next time (“Since you’re here, I’ll let you and the kids have some solo time while I get some chores done!”) might help you avoid being chastised. It might also subtly teach her that when she drops by, she gets put to work. The second thing I notice in this letter is that you say your MIL pops by unannounced about twice a month. You don’t need to justify anything to me (or anyone else), but understand that there are many folks out there for whom this would be an acceptable visit frequency—remember that when you talk to her and be gracious.
So as you ponder those two points, how do you actually carve out space for yourself? I think you need to be clear with her about your needs, preferably at a time when you aren’t already feeling smothered or stressed. Invite her to dinner, and during the meal, say you’d like to chat about her spontaneous visits. Make the conversation about you. “I love that you want to see me and the kids often. Maintaining a relationship with you is really important to me. But I’m more introverted than you, and it takes a lot out of me to have a pop-in visit. It activates my fight-or-flight response, which I know seems crazy, but it’s how I’m built. So, I really need your help here. Can we find a system that works for us both?”
If she isn’t willing to compromise under that kind of framing, then you might need to get more direct and risk the all-out war. Because even if it got to that point, the fact is that you hold all the cards. If she gets mad and stops speaking to you, for example, she is cut off from her grandkids—which I doubt she would withstand for very long. A fight or two might actually do the trick of teaching her to play by your rules. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but you are an adult juggling a lot on your plate, and you are allowed to put your needs first sometimes, even at the expense of others’ feelings.
Dear Care and Feeding,
I have a 14-year-old son, “John,” who is an incoming freshman next year. John is very smart, funny, kind, and has great social skills. He is particularly talented in social studies, plays two instruments, and has high hopes to get into a great college. John is also an avid gamer who loves strategy and puzzle games. John is an only child. His dad and I are divorced and he lives primarily with me and my parents, but sees his dad, stepmom, and stepbrothers regularly, particularly over the summer.
My problem is that John has a very hard time doing his homework and studying for tests. Part of the problem is disorganization. He doesn’t write down test dates or assignments and therefore often forgets due dates. The other part of the problem is that sometimes his homework will overwhelm him (especially in math) and he just plain doesn’t do it. John doesn’t have ADD; he’s been tested. He does have mild anxiety but has a good therapist and seems to be doing very well with it.
I have tried: long talks soliciting John’s feedback on barriers to homework completion and studying for tests; explaining why it’s important to study and giving him tips on how to get organized; natural consequences (I.e., getting a bad grade); removing video game privileges when he either gets a “0” on his homework or fails to study for a test; and tutoring as needed, particularly for math. He does great in tutoring. At the end of the day, none of this has had the desired effect of making John take responsibility and just do his work—and he’s starting high school in the fall! I have thought about attempting to enlist John’s dad, but I tend to think it would cause more harm than good. I left John’s dad because he was abusive, and he’s still a difficult person at best. He is not abusive to John, but he’s a jerk and often an unkind parent, and I have suspicions that a lot of emotionally fraught things happen at his house. What can I do to support John and get him up to speed?
—Out of Ideas
Dear Out of Ideas,
There’s one word in one phrase of your letter I want to draw your attention to: “None of this has had the desired effect of making John take responsibility and just do his work.” I’m sure you’re feeling at your wits’ end, and “just doing the work” feels like the obvious, intrinsically clear way for John to solve his woes. But for John (I suspect) there is no “just.” He probably wants to have his act together when it comes to school since he has his eye on college. But it isn’t easy for him to take that first step into action; he doesn’t have the right components to enact the behavior you (and he) want. Essentially, I suspect you’re asking him to rev the engine even though he is out of gas. So, if you find yourself framing his behaviors as a lack of action, I would invite you to think about it instead as a lack of resources.
To me, John’s situation screams of executive functioning difficulties. I am not a psychologist, so I don’t know if the anxiety could be a related or causal factor. I would talk to his therapist and see if your experience and my instincts track with their observations of John. You may also inquire whether some additional testing (or ADHD re-testing, especially if it’s been a few years) is warranted.
Meanwhile, look into hiring an academic coach to help John establish better executive functioning habits. These professionals are different than tutors because they focus more on the student’s overall academic behavior rather than a specific content area. I know you’ve attempted to fill this role, and I applaud you for it, but they might be able to teach John some practical skills tailored to his needs and abilities. Plus, they have the advantage of being “Not Mom”—and thus more likely to be listened to! Good luck!
—Allison
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My wife and I feel that preparing a meal and sitting down with our young kids to eat together is a valuable thing. We refuse to be short order cooks or prepare separate kid-friendly meals, but always try to prepare something that the kids like. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but for the most part our kids are good eaters and our dinners are enjoyable. We spend a lot of time with other families, in situations where one family is responsible for preparing a meal for the group. Many of our friends’ kids are picky eaters, and this is reinforced by parents who prepare or expect special kid-friendly meals in addition to the main meal.