“Go spoil your appetite.”
- If eating a sweet before dinner really does ruin your appetite, it would be all the rage. Aren’t dieters looking for ways to ruin their appetite, limit calories and watch their weight? Or maybe the wisdom is worthless. It seemed that way, so that was not a house rule of mine. Everyone ended up happier with moderation.
Guerilla Tip: “We’re about to eat, but if you can’t resist, sneak a little dessert. Okay?”
With moderation, there was no sugar fest. Call it subversive, but it worked. There was peace. For more on eating dessert without earning it, see Let Them Eat Cake.
Cleaning house of useless rules means what’s left is for real: Preschoolers never cross the street alone, rudeness is never okay, we all apologize for our mistakes, adults always have to set an example.
Guerilla Tip: Target all rules around two teaching goals—Think for yourself and show respect.
We can require basic respect, all the while trying to actually earn it and hoping for love in the process.
- Since you cannot win every time, make sure the fights you fight are worth it.
Guerilla Tip: Choose your battles and pick your shots.
Which ones are they? Those forming your key values and also winnable. You have to be very selective in choosing. If something is critical for you, you have found a better candidate for a rule. If another area matters less to you and you have usually lost in that area, that is a poorer candidate.
Another useless rule: “Don’t let her nap now, or she’ll be up all night. We need her to sleep when we are at the wedding!” Sounds good, to alter a kid’s schedule now to fit into some timing we need later, but it does not work.
Guerilla Tip: If kids are healthy and sleep when tired, be happy for it.
- Baby boomers like me came of age at a time when Western society was discovering a new right to question authority: Could our leaders lead, let alone dictate our lives? Consequently, we had the hardest time believing in our own leadership or the right to claim authority, when we started leading. Many of us became mothers and fathers who did not trust or own our leadership. It was the fear of success: Leading with authority would make us hated simply because we had hated leaders.
Guerilla Tip: Who should lead a family if not adults—preschoolers, teens? Being authoritative does not make you authoritarian or humorless.
Daniel used to say, “You’re not my boss!” “No,” was my response, “I’m your father. I love you and this is my decision.”
Letting it all hang out was a flower child motto, but Baby Boomer, control yourself. Hanging out is for relaxing, not for leading the way. When you lead a team, you have to show by example that team members pull together for the good of the team, while each subdues a little bit of the individual self and selfish aims. You can now stop letting it all hang out.
Presidential speechwriter and editor Peggy Noonan beautifully addresses stepping up to leadership (Wall Street Journal, Opinion, Jan. 8, 2011):
“It’s a great mistake when you are in a leadership position to want to be like everyone else. Because that, actually, is not your job. Your job is to be better, and to set standards that those below you have to reach to meet. And you have to do this even when it’s hard, even when you know you yourself don’t quite meet the standards you represent.
“A captain has to be a captain.
“…A lot of our leaders—the only exceptions I can think of at the moment are nuns in orders that wear habits—have become confused about something, and it has to do with being an adult, with being truly mature and sober. When no one want to be the stuffy old person, when no one wants to the ‘the establishment,’ when no one accepts the role of authority figure, everything gets damaged, lowered. The young aren’t taught what they need to know. And they know they’re not being taught, and on some level they resent it.”
- Early in the twentieth century, King Edward VIII said, “The thing that impresses me the most about America is the way parents obey their children.” This thing that once impressed a king is still impressive, and not in a good way.
Guerilla Tip: Don’t be cruel or naïve. Don’t be cold when you’re angry. But above all, please don’t be ineffective, as most other sins are pardonable.
Anything effective is probably very good. In every case that you find what works, it’s only one thing you need to get down, not a thousand.
Granted that blind obedience to parent and teacher finally fell entirely out of fashion in America as the 1960’s took hold, but balanced reason could be seeing a comeback. Just as respecting natural resources and being frugal at home and work have returned to common sense, respect for house rules can once again be the norm. Fashionable or not, the question is what do you want for your family sphere and for your own life?
Years ago, adults actually did not want to hear from kids, not their cheerful voices nor their polite opinions, but shutting them out is the opposite of what this book advocates.
Guerilla Tip: Forget that children should be seen and not heard. Kids can be heard, and parents get the final word.
- As a kid, were you ever told just to be yourself? Did you know what that meant? Did you even know who you were, let alone who you were supposed to become? Teens are still finding and forming the person they will become; they are not there yet.
Guerilla Tip: Help your kids find out who they are meant to be. Help them find themselves by trying out new roles, new activities, new friends.
They may know what they want to have; they may have learned what they should be doing; but what do they really need to do for themselves and for their long-term benefit? This is no overnight discovery and will need your gentle guidance.
Betty G., late of Highland Park, NJ, had been a viola player in the Broadway pit for 45 years. As her co-worker, I once asked how parents know which instrument suits a kid. Betty said kids’ ears will find the sound most pleasing to them and then gravitate towards that instrument.
Guerilla Tip: Help your kids find their instrument of joy—in music, in the garden spade and otherwise in their life’s work.
When the rich creativity of the untapped mind is freed to discover its nature, it naturally puts the free flow of an unmined resource on tap and creates rich rewards.
- An Example of Best Practices
Craig H. of Highland Park, NJ has a best practice for handling big shopping malls lots: He parks in the lane directly in line with the main entrance, no matter how far out. The way he sees things, a closer space in a side lane would clutter his mind by forcing him to remember the lane, whereas he never has to remember where he parked. He simply walks straight until he reaches his car.
Guerilla Tip: Modern life dispenses clutter all day long. Simplify daily.
My best practice, when writing out a check, is to post the details in my check register before writing and mailing the check. It would be too easy for me otherwise to mail the check and then forget to post it in my register.
- Parents at our dinner table would be blown away when … their kid acted up — I said it was against house rules — the kid listened.
It surprised the parents to see their unruly kid accept discipline just because an adult said so like he meant it.
Guerilla Tip: When other parents tell you to say what you mean and mean what you say, this is what they mean. As a parent, say it like you mean it. Sure, the rule was new, made up along the way, but I was just as serious about them. If they are not setting down rules in their own homes, how did those parents expect the rule of law to take hold?
Invoking the rule of table manners was as simple as politely spelling out the rule, and so the kid accepted it. No asking a kid’s permission to be in charge of my own home. My actual words were, “Excuse me, the food comes from God.” If that language would not be real for you, say that food comes from the earth or from nature, which deserves our respect. “In this house, if we don’t like a dish, we don’t eat it and we keep quiet. No saying yuck, no saying politely it’s not good and no throwing food (exaggerated for laughs, because that much a six-year old knew, in theory).
Guerilla Tip: Whatever age you live in, how will peace guide the planet, by wishing it or working on it? Set boundaries clearly and seriously.
You may do this but not that = I love you enough to guide you.
- If the heavens are not helpful, and the earth, too crunchy, make up your own reason not to waste. What if you don’t care? Not about wasting food as a resource, nor the money it costs, nor the effort it takes to grow and prepare it? Then find some tiny corner of your heart where you can honestly teach that wasting is a bad habit.
Guerilla Tip: Teach kids good habits.
Look at tobacco. It does not matter to me if you smoke or not, and one cigarette won’t kill you. Smoking is, though, a good example of a bad habit seen worldwide as an adult choice frowned upon for kids. Grant me that? So even if you do not care whether your kids begin smoking at 13, the usual age for starting, surely you don’t want to set the habit for younger kids. Same for wasting food. For adults, finishing your plate has its merits and its calories, but do not leave it up to kids to decide what is wasteful and what is wise.
Guerilla Tip: Teach what you believe in when kids are very young—eating and smoking.
- Eliminate every meaningless rule.
Guerilla Tip: Any rule you make that the kids don’t follow weakens your authority, and the rule deserves to die.
Not only will you be able to live without the rule—get ready, ‘cause here it comes—you already do. Just as we help kids mature over time, kids help us mature as parents. To be addressed later in Don’t Drive it Underground—Ask.
Guerilla Tip: We add to our stature immeasurably when we let kids see we are big enough to improve on our own style.
The Jewish sages put it humbly in Sayings of our Sages, “Who is wisest? Whoever learns from everyone.”
Guerilla Tip: Wisdom is gathered from all sources, big and small.
For a fresh start, look at some of your house rules. Put aside for now those solid rules that are working. What about a rule that is frequently broken? If you drop that rule, your kids will love you for it. Why is it even a rule?
A broken rule started for some reason, albeit a weak and forgotten one. You originally thought it was…
- Traditional
- Seemingly right
- A good idea
- A community norm many others follow
- A rule your parents used
A broken rule is broken because it is completely hollow…You don’t stand behind the rule.
Proof: You do not care enough to put teeth in it.
A broken rule is hollow because it was a mistake to start with…You do not care about the rule.
Proof: The kids break it often because you allow them to break it, and they don’t like it, to boot.
Here is the reason the rule is over … You’re okay without it, certainly no worse. Now drop the rule.
Proof: You picked an unwanted, unneeded and unnecessary rule, and you will do better next time.
Alternatively, if you can find a flaw in the above reasoning, you may truly want to find a way to make the rule stand. You have your work cut out for you, but you can do it.
Guerilla Tip: To get behind a rule like you mean it, tell the kids what will happen when they violate it and, above all, deliver on your promise without fail.
- Traditionally, the Zuni tribe in the American Southwest had a unique child-rearing practice for babies. Until the age of two, kids were free to do whatever they wanted within reason. Parents felt there was plenty of time for discipline later, and it apparently all fell into place.
Guerilla Tip: If lessons are too early to be heard or absorbed, it is not worth the effort to teach them.
Jews refer to a fruitless conversation as, “Talk to him, talk to the wall!” The Zunis may have been onto something there.
- My co-worker Iris R. of Plainsboro, NJ once complained to a doctor that her teenage son was eating only tuna fish with potato chips and would touch nothing else. My interest was to learn what tricks worked with teens, as my kids would eventually reach that state. Iris’s doctor thought she was lucky—some patients came in complaining of kids with a one-food diet. “It’ll pass,” he said, “and two foods are better than one.”
Guerilla Tip: Repeat what the doctor says—”Could be worse.”
- Consider another mother: “My daughter is 10 and will eat only white rice, which has absolutely no nutritional value. Your household is vegetarian. How did you get brown rice into your kids?” First of all, the continent known as Asia lives on white rice, it is blessedly easy to digest and there is fiber in other foods. On the other hand, if you said your daughter will only eat fried pork rinds, stop stocking it in your cupboard and wondering why your kid eats it. The law calls that activity entrapment—setting up bad stuff and blaming the kid.
Guerilla Tip: Nurture and nourish by bending and accommodating, which is kind and models flexibility, but not for things you’ll regret doing.
As for brown rice, I cooked it, and kids either ate that or they ate other things. Then I would cook more...of the other things. Sabbath main dishes alternated between two dishes they would eat: either cheese lasagna or sour cream onion quiche. Salad became Romaine lettuce alone, home dressing on the side. When it came to dessert, they were more flexible.
M&Ms contain artificial dyes. (AP)
Another food issue: “My brother is having a problem with my two-year-old niece at meal times. She won’t blah, blah, blah when she should, and the family’s upset.” I repeatedly asked my friend what part of the concern was the problem part. She thought I wasn’t getting it and she was right. Why waste energy trying to find a solution when there is no tangible problem, or fix something that is not actually broken? It is much easier to correct something that needs a lot of correcting than something that barely needs it.
Guerilla Tip: Lighten up. Not every issue is a pathology.
- Just yesterday in a New York City subway car, a woman created a scene of self-righteous indignation. Nothing new about New Yorkers making a scene in the subway, and self-righteous must be a requirement for all indignation.
She began by calling a man a pervert for using his cell phone to secretly video a girl about 10, sitting with her family and chewing gum. It is anyone’s guess why he wanted the video—some reasons creepy, some harmless and some unknown. The man did not answer her accusations, but got off the train at the next stop.
Next, the woman cycled endlessly through her story of how she was protecting the girl. With the woman as the only one aware of the man’s tricky invasion of privacy, the girl and her family were not harmed in any way before they were made aware of his odd behavior. However, after repeating her story over and over, the woman brought the girl to tears, and then assured the girl’s parents they could comfort the girl by telling her everything is all right.
Guerilla Tip: Before you label the behavior of a stranger or of your own kids as pathology, make sure the label is deserved. Check your facts, be slow to judge and really listen. Once you have made a scene, you do not get to say forget it. - In Stephen Covey’s book First Things First, he retells the story of the glass jar. A lecturer once filled rocks into a glass jar to show how we fill our lives. “Is your life full?” The students all nodded. He then added gravel to fill the spaces, “Is your life full?” They said yes, now definitely. He filled the jar with sand and asked, “Is your life full now?” They said they really thought so, but wondered. Pouring water to the top, he asked, “Is your life full?” The whole room agreed the jar was finally full.
The lecturer challenged the room for the lesson of the jar. “We can always fit more into our lives,” came one response, “There is always room to do a little more.” “There is always room for a little more,” with the lecturer adding one caveat, “if we start with the big things. Others can be fit around them, but the big things have to go in first to make sure we get them in.”
Treat the big things with respect. You know what the big things are. Keep your priorities straight, and you can pack your car for a trip the same way. For the big rules to have a place, you cannot wait until the end to find them a place. They have to be placed in first, and that would be you doing the placing. Use the priorities that you say you set for the big things. That is what they deserve, and you do, too. Your home will fall into place from the rule of organizing your rules.
Guerilla Tip: Fit your big rules in first. Fit other rules and minor preferences around them as room allows. Forget about fitting the big things in later.
