Setting Limits by Darylynn Starr Rank

Hi everyone.  I hope you had good holidays and managed well in our very white new year.  Though I'm sure both things are rapidly fading from memory as regular life takes over. 

Still, if you're the parents of young children, toddlers, the terrible but adorable two's, three's, four's, even five year olds, I bet you still have some holiday memories of when the kids just drove you absolutely 'round the bend.

How many times did you say?   That many?  Oh, my.  I'm really sorry…

There you are shopping and cooking, wrapping and visiting, working hard to give your children holiday fun, and they are just not cooperating.  To put it mildly.

So I'm sure you already have a thousand techniques for dealing with your kids when they're being 'difficult':  tricks and tools, ideas and philosophies.  I just thought I'd offer one or two anyway.  Maybe new, maybe not. 

A thought I had when I was talking with a friend of mine (a bit of an expert in this area), was how much storytelling is an essential part of parenting.  Especially at this age.  Now if you've read my columns before, you know I like to tell stories.  I like the drama and the fun, the 'What happens next?'  I think it's actually built in.  Part of our nature.  I just never thought of it in these terms before.  Let me show you what I mean.

So my friend, with her four year old, is visiting her brother.  They're all sitting down to eat at the dinner table.  The glass dinner table.  The four year old starts banging his fork on the glass.  Now my friend's got a bunch of choices here, on how to deal with this.  She (all of us, actually) knows a lot of the choices will end in a screaming, crying fit.  But she really doesn't want him shattering the table, or throwing a fit at her brother's.  So here's what she did.

Her voice gets very dramatic, very excited, in a perfectly lovely way.  "Oh, Stevie.  This table is made of glass!  Glass is very fragile.  It can break if you bang on it.  Did you know that?  (Well, of course he didn't.  He's four years old.  So she's letting him know.)  But you really want to bang on something, don't you!?   He nods enthusiastically.  They're both now really excited about this banging on something thing.  (Notice how she utterly acknowledges what Stevie wants to do.)  

"Well, maybe we could bang on the chair, instead.  It won't break.  Or the floor?  It's wood.  It's strong!  What do you think?  (Here's she's given him some choices.  So he knows he's in control.  Which is really, really, really what he wants.)  So he thinks for a minute, and opts for the chair.  And away he goes.

Now, mind you, we all know this solution will last for maybe three minutes.  But still.  The whole process became an adventure.  In this adventure she taught him, she acknowledged his feelings and his desires, and she gave him control of his world.  But it was interesting.  It had emotion.  It had suspense.  It was a story.

And that's my story for today.  So good luck in 2004.

Take care all.

Darylynn Starr Rank (psychologist/writer) works part-time for Family Services of Greater Vancouver as a group facilitator. Her articles appear bi-weekly in The Record (New Westminster) and the Richmond Review.

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