Parenting with Laughter, Part Two

As my son Brendon grew older I continued to use laughter as my ammunition, to make a point.   When he was about to make a mistake or said something that wasn’t necessarily a good idea, I would use a “Columbo."   Let me explain further.

 He would have an idea about something that was in left field, like most 16 year olds who know everything there is to know.  I would answer him, “Very interesting, Brendon, I would have never thought of that.  So that I can learn too, please tell me how you came to that conclusion?” 

As he would go through his thought process I would be overly attentive and appear to be concentrating on every word. As he explained, I would ask pertinent questions that would make him think it through further and eventually he would laugh and say to me, “Dad, I guess it really doesn’t make sense, does it?”

I agreed and we came to a better conclusion.  Much better than telling him, “That makes no sense” or “You’re an idiot.”  This way he figured it out on his own and would make the right decision.  It was much easier on both of us and not intimidating to him.  I never wanted him to lose his desire to try something different or challenging.  Just attempt something that made sense. 

That’s not to say sometimes, you need to let him fall on his face so he knows he made a mistake and learns from it.  It’s not easy, but who said being a parent is easy?  Once while he was learning to walk, he was showing off that he was going up the stairs by himself.  It was a three stair walk up and it was well padded and carpeted.  As he turned around to display his new feat, I said to his mother, “Let him fall.” 

She looked at me as if I was crazy to let our baby fall and went to get him.  I stopped her before she got to him and let him fall.  She was very angry at me and said, “Why did you do that?”  I explained that it is better he fall on those stairs (he was on the first step) while we are here than for him to pull the same stunt on the garage stairs (13 wooden steps) and he really hurt himself.”

When he fell down the one step, he cried of course, and he never did the “stair dance” again.  It’s just like life, sometimes you have to fall and get up before you know what not to do. 

Actually, I believe it’s called “Wisdom.”  Some will gain wisdom through life and adjust their life accordingly.  Some will continue to make the same stupid mistakes and never learn to make it through life’s maize effectively.  The difference is how you as a parent point out the mistakes and direct them to the right path to take, so they don’t continue making these mistakes. 

Have you ever been out to eat a nice restaurant and there’s a child running around the table uncontrolled by their parents as they are not paying any attention to them while they are creating an annoying nuisance to others in the restaurant? 

Here’s one way to handle it.  Stop the child and ask, “Are you going to be in the circus that’s coming to town?  Do you like to going to the circus? Go ask your Dad if you can go to the circus.”  Obviously, there is no circus, but then the child can bother their parents directly for awhile and maybe pay attention to them and see they are bothering others.

 A former teacher uses, “What if you fell down and broke both legs and had blood coming out all over you.  Then we’d have to spend a lot of time cleaning you up.” 

I have seen many parents that just ignore or not address the issue at hand either out of ignorance or by trying to avoid confrontation. To me, that makes no sense at all.  If you can make a child laugh, especially at them, they will actually learn and remember it in the future.  Instead of remembering the mistakes, they will remember the laughs and the problems they averted or solved. 

 Today I have found many parents won’t get involved and let their children continue making mistakes into adulthood.  If it was stopped and shown that what they were doing was wrong and have each figure out why.  They might stop running into the walls of life, and get through the maize successfully. 

See you next week.

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