This article is a further application of the principle first introduced in the article, "Teach Your Children to Love You" but the field of this article is our daughter, the younger, more spontaneous one.
For numerous reasons, Ginny and I had only two children. But we kind of got the full challenge of a larger family since our two were opposite poles of the globe concerning... Well, with regard to everything. They were of distinct genders--one boy and one girl--and four years apart. We like to say we raised two only children! About the closest we could come to describing their sibling relationships were that they sometimes tolerated each other. One was a deep meditator who would only acknowledge after reasoning things through, sometimes for weeks. The other was a flash of gasoline on a fire who reacted naturally and often with good instincts. One wanted cake; the other wanted ice cream. One was all the time hot; the other cold. I could go on and on.
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The prior article, "Teach Your Children to Love You," offered the principle that it is our accountability as parents to teach our children how to express their love and affection in ways that are proper even if they are not feeling especially loving. In other words, love is a commitment, not merely an emotional reaction. Since love is a commitment, we can control its expression--we are not at the mercy of having had a bad day. Back to our daughter.
The Story
Rebekah was headstrong and had not yet learned how to play nice--not atypical for a two-year-old. But then I found my self out of work for about three months. Nothing I did seemed to help me find a job. I was depressed each day as I watched our meager savings pour into the gas tank as I drove from place to place submitting my applications. I finally decided there must be some higher purpose to this time off. That's when my Rebekah's behavior caught my attention more than normal. This girl needed help!
If we held her, she would push away and try to lean back as far as she could (murder on my back). If we tried to hug her, she resisted. She would rarely climb up into our laps or snuggle up with us. Fortunately I had learned my lesson: it was our accountability to teach her how to express the natural love she had for her mom and me. We love Rebekah and treated her fairly and very well so she had no cause to be unloving. She simply had not been taught nor had she learned to acknowledge more appropriately.
The Application Using Gaming Techniques
I was not without teaching and studying tools for I had learned much about the power of games to introduce and deepen learning. As I had worked to enhance my teaching and my students' learning, I had discovered some of the components of gamesmanship: rules, repetition, ritual, rhymes, songs and sayings. I know there are treatises out there about game law but what I observed and practiced was adequate for me. I have never looked into it beyond what I learned in the secondary classroom. So it was some of these hard-won techniques that I brought to bear on my daughter.
I can remember like it was yesterday the morning that I got on my knees before our sliding door out onto the patio and told Rebekah that we were going to learn a poem. Her reaction was, "unh uh," translated as "no."
I told her how fantastic poems are and how they sometimes rhyme and gave her an example or two. Again I asked, "Wouldn't you like to learn a poem?" She did not.
I may lose a few of you on the next step but here goes. I told her that this was prominent and that I would have to spank her if she did not cooperate. Yes, we spanked our kids when significant but we also had read up on the permissible way to spank so the spanking would sting but not bruise or injure.
The spanking thing convinced her and she finally agreed to learn a poem. The poem was: "Hugs are nice but kisses are sweeter."
Pulling together all the skills I ever needed to subdue an insane class of high school freshmen, I recited the brief poem with feeling and energy. Then I had her say it. She did, although reluctantly. We said it together a few times, changing the tone and emphasis, development it practically like a song sometimes. Then we said it back and forth. By the end of our session, she was giggling but I didn't push her beyond recitation.
We did this for several days as we made a game out of "our poem." Then came application day.
I swept her up off the floor and hugged her tightly as I said, "Hugs are nice." I then looked at her expectantly. She completed the poem and said, "But kisses are sweeter." Now you might think it just fell into place that she then kissed me on the cheek but I knew better. I didn't push it.
We played that game for a some time and one day she naturally kissed me. Gone were the behaviors of pushing away and averting her head from us as we picked her up or carried her.
I hope you are able to adapt this to your parenting challenges and teach your children to be loving and caring individuals. I'm sure many of you have techniques that are great or equally good. I'd love to hear them.
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