Paradigm Shift
Trade Standard American Parenting Strategies of :
convincing, correcting, wheedling cajoling, and anger
to get kids to do things they don’t want to do
for the Anti-Parenting Strategies of:
empathy, reflective-listening, toughness, fairness, truth, and love
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Every parent is faced with the moment their toddler or tenth grader looks at the plate you set in front of them and says “yuck” either in their head or out loud. This is a critical moment. Show no fear. You can keep this from devolving into a teary whiny power struggle, I promise. Here’s how.
- Agree with them. - I get a lot of resistance from parents on this but first of all, seriously, when has anyone ever listened to your rational pleas to "just try it, you might like it" ? I have yet to hear a two year old say “my goodness mom/dad, you are right! What was I thinking? I do want to be healthy even if it means eating something that looks funny and tastes different, pass the Lima beans!”
The technique I used, and it worked/works to this day is …. Agree with them!!! Agree with them that it looks funny! Agree with them that it's not what they are used to! Agree with them that it might not taste good! You know what will happen then? They will feel like you UNDERSTAND where they are coming from, and will no longer feel the need to dig in their heels to make their point because you are too much of a moron to really hear what they are saying. And children who feel understood can be negotiated with. Keeping an argument going about whether or not the food is yucky is irrelevant to the point. The food may taste yucky to them, but there are some foods we eat because they are good for us, not because we like them. Period. End. Of. Story. The discussion should be about how we are going to make this food palatable to them, not about whether or not it is yucky. That has already firmly been established, righ?
Now, when they say its yucky, you can re-frame it a bit, “It looks yucky to you. - You've never had it before so it looks yucky and will probably taste different from anything you've ever had.- olives look yucky to you" Now notice that I deliberately said, “It looks yucky to you. You've never…”, rather than: “It looks yucky to you because you never” or “It looks yucky to you but you haven’t". Do you hear the difference in tones each implies? "Because" and ”But” change a statement into a wheedling, convincing, and cajoling tone, and we don’t want to be trying to convince our children of anything. Baby I hate to tell you, but it takes you out of the power position and puts them in charge and I for one do not like life when it is being ruled by my kids (I also don’t like it when I rule my kids life, but that is a subject for another post). I like when we work together.
So this is your task today. Agree with your children. (As an aside, I have noticed that people who agree with their children often have children who agree with them. Huh, go figure.)
So agree that it is yucky looking-tasting-smelling! IT IS cold outside! IT IS hard to do homework! Life will never ever ever ever ever get easier, so teach them how to deal with the yucky, stinky, cold, hard stuff now! And instead of yelling at them to get over it, here’s a great anti-parenting idea … LOVE them through it!!
Let them know that you understand what they are saying and they don’t have to dig in to defend their position or try and convince you how yucky it is. THAT is what they have been trying to do all these years when you replied with “no it's not, it's good." If you do that, they will listen when you say, "I know fish tastes yucky to you. Let me put some ketchup on it and lets eat it up because it isn't going to get any less yucky the longer we wait". My 7 year old eats fish. He used to hate it. He now dislikes it. That is good enough for me.
Remember, whether over mealtime or some other issue, EVERY human being on the planet responds to being contradicted by doing their best to defend their position, which in turn makes it harder to back down. It does the opposite of what you want it to do. It convinces them its more yucky than they previously thought it was. (The only human exception to this rule is people like the Dali Lama, but apparently he has an edge, he's used re-incarnation to get a lot of practice being human)
Please, I’m begging you, do it the anti-parenting way. END the madness people! I promise you and your kids will be much, much happier. 