Have a New Kid by Friday (20 page)

If this is happening, the “B doesn’t happen unless A is completed” principle works very nicely. If your child is ignoringyou, you don’t have to take her to a friend’s house, do you? If your teenage son is ignoring you and goes to find the car keys in their usual spot, those keys could be “missing”—in your pocket. If your child is ignoring you, there could be one less spot at the dinner table. If you don’t exist in his world, why should you cook or provide dinner for him?

Remember, an unhappy child is a healthy child. Your job as a parent is not to make your child happy. It’s to raise a child who will be a productive, responsible, and respectful member of society.

The key to the turnaround is your own behavior—your consistency, your follow-through, and your calm, reasonable manner. If you get angry and say, “What’s your problem?” your powerful child wins.

Internet Use

Let’s face it. We live in a high-tech world, and a lot of us parents are anything but high-tech. However, computers and the Internet are a fact of life, and every child growing up today will be miles ahead of their parents in computer skills. My children certainly are!

That means you’ll never be able to keep up with them, but you also need to be savvy about what your children are using the computer for. The Internet is a wonderful source of information for school projects. But it can also be a tremendous danger.

Would you ever let your 13-year-old walk into a strip club or a porn shop? Would you let your 16-year-old take the car and go to the sleaziest part of town to check out the prostitutes? Would you let your 11-year-old hang out with pedophiles? Of course not! But on the Internet, with one click of the mouse, your 13-year-old son can see the worst of the worst photos—and more. Your 11-year-old daughter can email a pedophile writing her under the guise of a 13-year-old boy who is interested in her life. That means right now your child could be seeing some of the most bizarre, perverted material you could possibly view. In fact,
www.max.com
reports:

There are 3 facts every parent should know:

If you don’t know anything about computers or know just the bare minimum, this is a mountain you have to pay attention to. Go take some computer lessons (or ask your kids to give you some). Find the history button on your computer and use it. Find out what your children are looking at, what sites they’ve visited.

Move your computer to a central location of the house. Computers should never be in a child’s bedroom. They should be in a heavily traveled area where you and others are constantly walking by and can view what’s on the screen.

Because of the dangers of the Internet and the fact that children can inadvertently click on a search word and get directly into a porn site, I suggest that you install a safety card that prohibits downloading objectionable material. For further tips, go to www .protectkids.com.

As a parent, your job is to protect your child from danger, and the biggest danger is sitting right in your home. Computers are not going to go away, so it’s your job to find ways for your child to use the computer safely. But it takes
your involvement
.

Every child is curious. And it’s not just “bad kids” who come across pornography on the Internet and then get hooked. Dan was a straight-A student who had a lot of friends. He loved to play the guitar and was always the child who helped his mother bring in the groceries from the car without being asked. But when his father accessed the history button on their computer, he found out that for the last 6 months, his 14-year-old son had regularly been accessing a porn site. When confronted with the knowledge, Dan said, “I was Googling something else and clicked on it. At first I was shocked, then I was curious. I wanted to go back and see more, even though I knew it was wrong. I just wanted to see what girls looked like.” Those wise parents, after they got over their own shock, assigned their son a project—to research and write an 8-page paper about pornography, including how it affects the viewer and how it views women. They also moved the computer to a central desk in their kitchen.

B didn’t happen until A was completed either. That meant that before Dan went out with friends, before he even could IM his friends again, the paper had to be completed, turned in to his parents, and approved.

Dan is now in college and says he hates that he ever viewed those images. They still linger in his mind.

Parents, protect your children from Internet dangers. This is a mountain you can’t afford not to face.

Interruptions

Children want your attention, and they want it most desperately when you’re on the telephone. You know the drill well. You escape to some far corner of the house to call a friend, and within 25.5 seconds, a child is on your tail and absolutely has to have something at that very moment. So what do you say? “Just a minute!” And you go on talking.

In another 5.5 seconds, there’s another tug on your arm and a plea for attention. “Just a minute!” you say again.

Within a few more seconds, you have a whiner or a screamer on your hands.

This behavior is not only annoying, it’s a mountain. It may not seem like a mountain, compared to other issues you’re facing thatbother you more, but it is. Why? Because it’s all about respect. If a child continually interrupts you (whether you are working, are on the telephone, or have guests over for dinner), he is not respecting you.

Sure, there are times when your kids do need your attention (like when you leave something on the stove and they smell it burning), but many times theirinterruptions are merely that—interruptions. It’s another way to control you, to be boss of the home. You deserve some uninterrupted times—to complete work, talk with girlfriends on the phone, etc.

So what can you do to get your point across, other than yelling (which doesn’t get your point across anyway)? As soon as your kids start their dog and pony show, continue talking on the phone, but remove your children from the situation and isolate them (perhaps in their room or even outside the kitchen door). With young children, doing this for a couple minutes will seem like a lifetime. For older children, it can be a longer period of time.

Then after you’re off the phone, talk to your children about how their interruption made you feel. “It’s important to me to talk to Sandy. She’s my friend and I enjoy talking to her. You like talking to your friends too, don’t you? When you interrupt me when I’m on the phone, I don’t appreciate it. I take it personally. By interrupting me, you’re saying you don’t care about me, what interests me, or my friends.”

In other words, take action, and follow that action with an explanation. But do not interrupt what you’re doing.

I got an email from a mom who heard me talk about this in a seminar. She tried it on a beautiful summer day after she returned home, when her children interrupted her as she talked on the phone with her girlfriend. She simply continued talking and ushered them outside the kitchen door into the backyard and locked the door. Forty-five minutes later she said to her girlfriend, “Oh, my goodness! I forgot something—the kids are still outside!” (See “Telephone Courtesy” for the rest of the story.)

Do you think those children forgot that lesson? After that, when their mom was on the phone and they felt they needed something, they merely shrugged and walked away. Most of the time what they needed was something they could get themselves—and they learned to be more independent.

You deserve the freedom to talk on the phone without interruptions. That’s your time, and it’s all part of the respect issue. Don’t let it go unaddressed.

Irresponsibility with Car, Driving

Driving is a privilege, not a given, in my book. A child’s first responsibilities are to home, school, sports practice, music lessons, etc. Driving follows those in importance, but it can become the singular focus in a child’s mind once she turns 15.

In order to be able to take out the family car or have a car of her own, a child needs to show a tremendous level of responsibility. Also, it’s smart for the child to have taken driver’s education classes (it also saves you in insurance money). Some very smart parents I know have rules if the child wants to drive the family car after she turns 16:

1. No more than one friend in the car with you.

2. No talking on the phone or text messaging.

3. No alcohol
ever
in the car.

4. Be home at a reasonable hour.

5. You pay half the insurance every six months.

Do you think their daughter, now 18, is respectful of her parents and careful with the family vehicle?

Just because your child turns 16 doesn’t mean he’s ready to drive. Driving requires focus, seriousness, and discipline. If your child is irresponsible, why would you want him driving your child is irresponsible, why would you your $32,000 vehicle? And why would you want him to take his life and the lives of his friends and other drivers into his hands? Driving is a mountain, a very serious mountain.

If your child isn’t responsible enough to drive, he shouldn’t get the keys to the family car. Or if he does, then you or another responsible adult need to go with him as he drives. Is this an inconvenience, since you hoped to be free of all the running to activities when your child turned 16? Of course it is. But so is the majority of parenting. However, the flip side is far costlier.

Recently in western New York, 5 girls who were on the cheerleading squad—popular kids in school, good students who had just graduated from high school and were college bound—were in a tragic, head-on collision. The investigators discovered that, seconds before the crash, the driver had received a text message and that she’d been texting along the way as she drove. When she tried to pass a car, she smashed head on into a semi.

Now, I ask you: is it worth having certain rules that your children must follow for driving the family car? If your child doesn’t follow those rules and acts irresponsibly, is it really so bad that she will have to take a 1-month or 3-month time-out on driving? The alternative could be so much worse, as the parents of those 5 girls have discovered.

Taking away the car keys will gain you a temporary earful but will save your child—and others on the road—from tremendous danger.

Isolating Oneself (in His or Her Room)

“Since Andrea turned 13, I never see her anymore. She comes home from school and goes straight to her room. She spends her time on the phone, text messaging, and changing clothes. It’s like she’s not even a member of the family anymore.”

Let me clarify something from the beginning. It is very
normal
for teens to come home from school, go to their room, and close the door for a while. Talking to friends on the phone, text messaging, etc., is very important to teenagers. And spending time alone helps them process all the changing hormones and resulting emotions.