Avoid power struggles by giving your child choices

Have you ever seen a kid have a meltdown over something that seemed unimportant? For example, while helping your toddler get dressed and you grab the truck shirt rather than the dinosaur shirt and he suddenly goes ballistic. Or maybe you order a hamburger rather than chicken nuggets and your child throws a conniption in the back seat. What’s so important about a dinosaur shirt and chicken nuggets that could cause our kids to fall apart?

Frankly, the reason our kids fall apart is not about the dinosaur shirt and it isn’t about chicken nuggets. It’s about a much deeper need – a need that’s found inside each person across cultures and continents. It’s the need for power! Yes our kids, like us, crave to have power over their lives. And sometimes they’re willing to do the most awful things in order to get it.

As parents, we can either be greedy when it comes to power, or we can share it with our kids. The fact is, if we don’t share it with our kids, they will eventually take it, and it’ll be painful for all those involved. Since we can’t just let our kids run wild in the streets, how do we share control with them in an effective way?

Love and Logic principles give the following guidelines when it comes to sharing control through giving choices:

1.   Give as many choices as possible when things are going well.

2.   Give choices over things that will only affect the child; not the parent (Would you like to brush your teeth upstairs or downstairs? Would you like to have a pink spoon or a silver spoon with your cereal?)

3.   Give choices that would be satisfactory to you no matter which choice they choose.

4.   Give choices before the resistance, not after. (Giving choices after the resistance teaches kids that resistance pays off.)

5.   Give your child about 10 seconds to make a choice, if it takes longer than that then you decide.

6.   Give choices that aren’t disguised as threats. (Bad examples include: Do you want to clean up your toys or do you want me to throw them away? Do you want to do your chores or do you want to spend the rest of the week grounded?)

When it comes to sharing control with our kids, it’s far better to be generous than greedy. Parents who give the control they don’t need to their kids have an easier time taking control of the situations that do matter. These parent’s say things like, “Didn’t I let you make a lot of decisions today? Well, now it is time for me to decide. Thanks for understanding.”

For more examples and suggestions, we highly recommend the book Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood: Practical Parenting from Birth to Six Years and Parenting With Love And Logic.

Try it and tell us what you think. If you’ve applied these techniques to your parenting, what changes did you see?

Shiloh Lundahl

Shiloh Lundahl, LCSW, is a child and family therapist and an independent facilitator of Love and Logic® curricula. He currently teaches parenting classes in Mesa, Arizona and provides in-home therapy and counseling services. Shiloh uses an attachment and a family systems approach to therapy and has specialized training in working with children ages birth through six. Shiloh has three children of his own and he manages the parenting websites ParentArizona.com and ArizonaFamilyInstitute.com.

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