The Messy Room Dilemma - When to ignore behavior, when to change it.

[The Straight Story]

So, yes, you can change your child's behavior, but that doesn't mean you always should. When faced with an unwanted behavior, first ask yourself, Can I let this go? Sometimes the answer is Hell, no! If your kid likes to spend hours at his window in full-body camo and a Sad Clown mask, tracking the neighbors in the sights of his BB gun, you'll probably want to put a stop to that right now. But a lot of behaviors fall into the lesser category of annoying but not necessarily worth addressing. Ask yourself if changing a behavior will really make a worthwhile difference in your child's life and your own.

Many unwanted behaviors, including some that disturb parents, tend to drop out on their own, especially if you don't overreact to them and reinforce them with a great deal of excited attention. Take thumb sucking, which is quite common up to age 5. At that point it drops off sharply and continues to decline. Unless the dentist tells you that you need to do something about it right now, you can probably let thumb sucking go. The same principle applies for most stuttering. Approximately 5 percent of all children stutter, usually at some point between ages 2 and 5. Parents get understandably nervous when their children stutter, but the vast majority of these children (approximately 80 percent) stop stuttering on their own by age 6. If stuttering persists past that point or lasts for a period extending more than six months, then it's time to do something about it.
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There are a lot more behaviors, running the range from annoying to unacceptable, in this category. Approximately 60 percent of 4- and 5-year-old boys can't sit still as long as adults want them to, and approximately 50 percent of 4- and 5-year-old boys and girls whine to the extent that their parents consider it a significant problem. Both fidgeting and whining tend to decrease on their own with age, especially if you don't reinforce these annoying behaviors by showing your child that they're a surefire way to get your (exasperated) attention. Thirty to 40 percent of 10- and 11-year-old boys and girls lie in a way that their parents identify as a significant problem, but this age seems to be the peak, and the rate of problem lying tends to plummet thereafter and cease to be an issue. By adolescence, more than 50 percent of males and 20 percent to 35 percent of females have engaged in one delinquent behavior—typically theft or vandalism. For most children, it does not turn into a continuing problem.

Now, we're not saying that you should ignore lying or stealing or some other potentially serious misbehavior just because it will probably drop out on its own in good time. There's an important distinction to be made here between managing behavior and other parental motives and duties. Parents punish for several reasons—to teach right and wrong, to satisfy the demands of justice, to establish their authority—that have little to do with changing behavior. You can't just let vandalism go without consequences, and it's reasonable to refuse to put up with even a lesser offense such as undue whining, but don't confuse punishing misbehavior with taking effective steps to eliminate it. Punishment on its own (that is, not supplemented by reinforced practice of the positive opposite) has been proven again and again to be a fairly weak method for changing behavior. The misbehaviors in question, minor or serious, are more likely to drop out on their own than they are to be eliminated through punishment.

http://www.slate.com/id/2214678/

[predfan]

1. Is this , like, choose your battles?

If you're a parent of a six year old with a messy room, remember........one day he/she will drive, and all this will be a happy memory.

[marylanddem]

2. The stupidest battle I ever waged with my child

Was the classic "Sit here and finish this 3-bean salad" - Well, she sat forever, didn't finish it, and what a waste of all of our times. I can't remember how the stupid battle actually ended, but it certainly wasn't worth it.

[WalrusSlayer]

7. "How to get your child to eat - But not too much"

...is a great, great book. The age group we have now (3 and 5 year old boys), the biggest take-away message there is:

It's the parents' job to provide a healthy, balanced, wide range of food choices in front of them. It's the child's job to eat it. Or not eat it. In which order. In what quantity.

That leads to some rather unconventional attitudes and procedures around food:

• It's ok to have dessert first, or with the meal.
  
• It's ok for the child to not "clean their plate".
  
• It's ok for the child to decide they don't like something, not finish it, or not eat any of it.

As you might imagine, this gets under the skin of the grandparents pretty easily. But the relationship with food during their formative years was one of scarcity. The problem now is too many calories chasing too few people, so to insist that all food served be consumed is counterproductive.

This also gets a passionate reaction from even some of our pediatrician friends. But people tend to assume the worst, so when they hear "dessert first" they think "big slice of cheesecake with every meal, of course my child will then ignore his beans." Dessert first requires that dessert be balanced with the meal. I.e., if dessert is something that will fill the child up, then it's too big, regardless of the order in which it is served.

Our boys love and devour broccoli, swiss chard, spinach, beans, cherry tomatoes, and all sorts of other foods that many parents would never believe their child capable of enjoying. It's not unheard of for our oldest to eat the swiss chard before the fruit or lowfat pudding that may be on his plate at the same time.

Anyway, all this to say that making food a battle really is a supreme waste of energy all the way around. There are so many other struggles you'll have with your kid, food really doesn't need to be one of them.

[SheilaT]

8. Oh, yes, the food battles.

My sister claimed her kids ate everything. I knew my kids were on the fussy side.

Once at a restaurant she spent the entire time nonstop coaching the kids ("eat some of your hamburger now, that's enough coke, have some more salad") and the end my two ate as well and various food as here. Plus, whenever she orders pizza "with everything" her kids complained bitterly about the onions and mushrooms and picked them off with expressions of great disgust.

[adamuu]

15. that sounds like a fun approach. :) n/t

[monmouth]

18. Oh I remember that one. I do not, never have and never will like lima

beans. I think it's the texture, but anyway, I sat at that damned kitchen table for hours (not allowed to leave until I cleaned my plate, children in Europe starving to death). I outdid Mom, didn't do my homework and had to go to bed........Ah, good times. Lima beans, makes me shiver just to think about them....LOL.

[acmavm]

19. Crap, mine was over beef stew. Bianca wouldn't eat it (I was broke) and I

told her she would. She didn't. She sat there until bed time. So I told her she'd have to eat if for breakfast. (I was really being anal but I needed to teach her a lesson: 1. Wasting food is wrong; 2. There was nothing wrong with beef stew; and 3. She needed to do what she was told; 4. We had no money and I couldn't afford to have her waste food like that; and 5. I wasn't running a cafeteria.

Well, when it was time to go to school there was that damn plate of stew, totally untouched.

She won that one.

[SheilaT]

3. I often think that too many

parents obsess about the wrong things. One thing I learned in raising two kids was that I got far better results when ignoring behavior I didn't like and focusing on those that I did like than I ever get by punishing.

In addition, my younger son was arrested on possession of marijuana the summer before his senior year of high school, starting what we call the Year From Hell. I'll spare you the details, other than to mention they include his moving out in the spring and staying away for a month, during which time we did not know for sure where he was staying. But we kept lines of communication open, he returned home, graduated high school, went off to college from which he graduates in May. With honors. So what we thought was so awful turned out to be a glitch.

On the other hand I know two families with sons just a little older who have gotten into the sad spiral of drinking, drug-taking, rehab, and falling back. I don't know why my son didn't go down that path and those others did. I'm not a better parent, they aren't worse parents. In one family the parents divorced when the son was about ten or twelve. The other still has an intact, strong marriage. So that's probably not truly a factor. (My husband and I divorced last year)

Being a parent is hard work. You set standards, love as much as you possibly can, and at some point they are on their own.

[predfan]

5. I've been blessed with two great kids, never been in any trouble.

But they're a lot like me, just never been caught. They have friends who are good kids, good families, who made bad decisions and DID get caught. Most of those kids have grown out of it, have kids of their own, coach T-Ball and go to PTA meetings.

What seemed so big at the time wasn't such a big deal 15 years later.

[SheilaT]

9. Never been caught. Yep.

I don't get very sanctimonious about the fact that in forty-five years of driving I've had exactly one speeding ticket. I just am careful about where and when I speed. Plus, now that I'm a middle-aged gray-haired woman I'm likely to get a warning than my young sons, no matter how well they behave to the officer who stops them. When they get stopped they get the ticket. I look like Mom, and so I'll get off. And I've actually only been stopped for some infraction maybe half a dozen times in my entire driving life, resulting in that one ticket several years ago.

[proud2BlibKansan]

4. As long as they put their clothes away I didn't care how they kept their rooms

It was their space. I figured as soon as they couldn't find something important they would clean it up. And they did.

I also never fuss at my students for having messy desks. Again, it is their space. Some of us thrive on chaos.

[PassingFair]

6. My mom and dad used to have this fight...

My mother shrieked and railed about the state of
our rooms, my dad didn't give a crap.

I distinctly remember one evening in the upstairs
hallway, where my mother DEMANDED that my father
"DO SOMETHING" about my brother's room, because she
"couldn't stand to look at it".

He walked over to the entrance of the room and slammed
the door shut.

"There, he said, problem solved."

We nearly died...

The rooms were never actually in terrible
shape (we didn't eat in them, which is
what creates the TRUE horror-show bedrooms
I've seen throughout my life), and we never
had many belongings, or even clothes.

I think my mother just expected that we hove
to the same expectations that HER neurotic
mother had created in her childhood.

My girls clean their rooms when they want
something...and they ALWAYS want something...

:P

[JerseygirlCT]

10. I'm really on your side

my husband is more concerned with things like made beds, and straightened up rooms. So we go with that.

But food is an absolute no-no in the bedrooms. Ever. As you say, that's the road to real nightmares!

I tend to be messy (not dirty, just messy - books around in piles, magazines, etc.), so I have to work at it.

The only thing that really troubles me on this topic is when things are treated badly - that mp3 player they had to have is tossed in a corner, or lost, the toys the young one desperately wanted are thrown around and breaking... if you have to have it, you ought to treat it right. It's not that the "thing" needs respect, but the person who provided you with said "thing" does!

[PassingFair]

11. Pssst. Is your husband the "keeper of the batteries" for the MP3 players?

This has created more stress in my house than
the "clean your room" scenario, which is really
just something my husband says when the kids
WANT something.

The battery racket my husband runs is like extortion.

:rofl:

[JerseygirlCT]

12. LOL. No, the kitchen "junk drawer" is

But that might have to change!

(Actually, my younger, who is still at home, is fairly neat most of the time. When he's stressed, he likes to clean his room, lol. Papers, though, and books - he inherited that one from his mother. My college guy? Oy. We just don't go to his room when we visit. It's a nightmare!)

[PassingFair]

13. Don't tell your husband about my husband's extortion racket.

Power corrupts.

:rofl:

[JerseygirlCT]

16. LOL. Yeah, we don't need any more of that! nt

[The Straight Story]

20. wow - so other people have junk drawers too?

:) I don't know how so many things get in them or why. One of life's great mysteries!

[JerseygirlCT]

24. Far too many of them around here! You

know you're in trouble when you start off organizing the kitchen by designating one that way!

[recoveringrepublican]

17. HeeHee, that reminds me of a story my husband told me

His mother walked into his brother's room to wake brother up, saw how messy the room was and screamed "look at this mess, you can't even see the floor", to which brother replied "what do you want to do, dance?". I don't know why I find that so funny.

[arcadian]

14. Military school at age 7, problem solved.

:sarcasm:

[Rabrrrrrr]

21. Precisely why homes that don't have staff shouldn't have children.

If you can't afford to hire people to do everything for your children, you shouldn't be raising children. Unless you're busy raising the children who will be the staff in my children's homes.

:P

[blogslut]

22. I used a "bites" method with my kid

It started during that toddler phase where you begin to freak out because the child won't eat anything.

I would tell her that she couldn't leave the table until she ate a certain number of bites. Five bites of chicken, three bites of peas and so on. It worked pretty well. I had her enjoying crazy things like broccoli, spinach, even linguine with clams.

Then she got into pre-K and started to "hate" anything that was green. That was very frustrating because I would buy the things I thought she liked and suddenly she didn't like them anymore. I stuck with the "bite" method. I told her to take one bite of something and if she truly hated it, she never had to eat it again. This is how I found out she wasn't fond of red meat and sincerely hated tomatoes. I adjusted my shopping habits. I gave up tomatoes, beef and pork for her. The only thing I really missed was the tomatoes.

Now she's a fish-loving, rice-devouring, spinach fan who still hates tomatoes.

[alfredo]

23. A study found that Dems are not as good house keepers as

Republicans. Dems are not neat freaks and can handle more disorder. Kid have a messy room? Congrats! You're raising a Democrat! :toast: