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Parenting successes?

Chanson at Letters from a Broad has a post which includes of one of her parenting successes, involving the benedictory smile of a Swiss cashier. I've had some of those public recognitions of good parenting, and I always try to point out to parents when their kids are doing particularly well (especially when the parents look harried). Sometimes, though, the success doesn't look like a success to outsiders.

Last week we took the kids to our favorite Greek restaurant. We have been getting gyros for Amanda for a few years now (dairy, egg and nut free!), and we have typically gotten one plate of gyros for Amanda and Luke to share. We get it with french fries, and Amanda is "rewarded" for eating the meat by getting to eat as many french fries as she can (she needs all the calories she can get). Luke's idea, smart boy that he is, is that he doesn't need to eat anything other than the french fries.

This week we had had enough of this, and instead of letting Luke eat his french fry lunch, we tried to get him to eat the gyros first. He was having none of it, so he threw a fit in the middle of the restaurant.

Rather than giving in and reinforcing his bad behavior, Michael and I stood our ground. In hopes that he would not disturb the other diners, one of us would take him out of the restaurant while the other ate. Every once in a while, Luke would calm down and agree to be quiet and eat his food, only to dissolve in tears again when we brought him inside and wouldn't let him eat the fries. This went on for a long time, while Amanda proceeded to eat all but one of the slices of meat from the adult sized gyros platter, as well as most of the french fries. I had resigned myself to taking Luke home hungry---not a tragedy, but not what I had hoped for.

Finally he came in and took one bite of the gyros. Then another, and another, until he had eaten all that was on his plate. I think he would have eaten more if we had saved some for him---once he got over his dislike, he found it tasted good! And then he got to eat his favorite, french fries.

To someone looking on, it looked like one ill-behaved child, being taken out of the restaurant by parents who would probably never get to eat a nice meal again and had no right to bring the baby to the restaurant in the first place. But to me, it looked like a little boy learning that his temper tantrums did not result in getting what he wanted, and learning that when he is at a restaurant he is expected to eat what is in front of him without complaining. I can't imagine anyone telling me that I did a good job there, but I do feel that progress was made---doesn't that count as success? I think so.

(I did notice myself judging the parents who brought McDonalds for their 8-year-old boy, which seems a bit gauche. But perhaps he had allergies, and I really can't talk, since my boy was screaming and throwing himself on the floor.)

Unfortunately, since that small success, Luke still insists that he gets to choose what to eat (mostly dessert, sometimes chips, etc.) and he doesn't want to eat whatever I have ordered him for lunch. Maybe a few hundred times more... or maybe he'll learn to tell me what he wants for lunch, first.

Comments

Danlj said…
I think that parenting can perhaps be represented as an N-dimensional table where N=characteristics and each characteristic has two axes: one for 'parent' and one for 'child' (we will ignore for now the geometrical effect of multiple children and multiple parents/friends/teachers/grands/strangers). And each characteristic has at least 3 qualitative ratings: constructive / neutral / counterproductive or damaging.
Characteristics include things like 'compliance' 'anxiety' 'social perceptiveness' 'strength of will' 'emotional lability' 'orderliness (nee OCD)' and on and on.

We are simply unaware of the profundity of individual differences this creates, and delude us unto thinking that we are actually responsible for the good (or the bad) outcomes of our parenting interventions. Children mature because they are designed, like oaks to mature; and they are more or less socially competent because we are designed to be social.

Everything else is nuance.

As parents, we mostly help the process along, and sometime we are clumsy and break parts of our kids; the most troublesome broken-ness comes from thinking we must do something (or must refrain), or from pure ignorance (of which there is plenty enough to pass around).

As a friend said once when I complimented him on his children's good outcomes, "You get what you pay attention to." And he paid (and pays) attention to his kids in positive ways. Never "permissive" in the negligent sense, always attentive in the interpersonal sense. His children have not gone hungry for their father. This makes a difference.
Unknown said…
I miss Neomande, the best Lebanese restaurant in Raleigh!

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