How to Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes: 3 Takeaways
How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes by Melinda Wenner Moyer is a science-based guide for parents seeking to shape their children into honest, kind, and resilient kids. As an award-winning science journalist, Moyer writes chapters that include many of the broad issues about raising kids:
Selfishness
Resilience and motivation
Bullying
Lying and swearing
Sexism
Self-esteem
Behavior
Sibling rivalry
Screens, games, and social media
Sex and porm
Each chapter discusses the issue and then pulls in the evidence and the experts on the topic which concludes with multiple, specific strategies to raise better kids. I highly recommend this book.'
Let’s dive into three takeaways from the book.
3 Takeaways From How To Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes
Raising Resilient, Ambitious, & Motivated Kids
Chapter 2, “This Is Too Hard” is dedicated to raising resilient kids with strategies including the best ways to praise, how to minimize procrastination, and more. Here is one of these motivational strategies: “Encourage kids to try new, fun, hard things.”
Nurturing well-rounded and resilient children involves encouraging them to venture into new and challenging activities that align with their interests. Following the work of Angela who wrote Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, emphasizes that extracurriculars are important to develop this skill. Grit requires four components: interest, practice, purpose, and hope. By mastering the viola or engaging in programs like Boy Scouts or Outward Bound, these activities, overseen by adults outside the family, not only build confidence but also motivates children, setting the stage for a positive cycle of accomplishments.
Based on this, Duckworth has the Hard Thing Rule:
“Her kids have to do something fun that also requires deliberate practice, and they can’t quit in the middle of the season or school year. Importantly , too, they hav eto pick the activity themselvesit can’t be parent imposed.”
This encourages comfort in doing hard things, more attempts to do said things, and success leading to a success spiral. The success spiral works like this: By participating in activities that require effort and dedication, children experience the satisfaction of overcoming difficulties. This success, in turn, fuels their confidence and motivation, creating a cycle that propels them toward further achievements. It's a strategy grounded in fostering resilience, self-assurance, and a proactive approach to life, ultimately contributing to the development of kids who are not only skilled but also resilient and motivated individuals.
2. Sibling Rivalry: Sharing & Fighting
Sharing
When two kids are fighting over something the parent tends to come in and decide who gets the toy. This reinforces the behavior that a kid can just grab a toy since the parent just did it. Furthermore, “When children learn that adults will snatch a toy away once the adult’s arbitrary idea of ‘long enough’ has passed, they become more possessive,” wrote Laura Markham, author of Peaceful Parent, Happy Siblings.
Instead, here is an alternate approach. Encourage "self-regulated turns" letting the child in possession of the toy decide how long their turn lasts before sharing. Acknowledge the waiting child's feelings and frustration, offering them another toy or addressing the tantrum that may ensue. Though it may not always go smoothly, consistent implementation of this approach allows the child with the toy to witness their sibling eventually getting a turn, fostering a sense of satisfaction in sharing joy.
Fighting
Siblings fight and if they’re left to resolve it on their own then compromise or reconciliation is only achieved 12% of the time which means bullying and coercion often win out. This doesn’t mean that parents should jump in and be the arbitrators. Instead, use these mediation strategies instead:
Establish ground rules that prevent further conflict while the issue is being addressed (“As you take your long breaths I’m going to take the racecar and put it in the other room while we discuss this.”)
Ask each sibling to describe their perspective of the incident, alternate turns while highlighting areas of disagreement and agreement.
Promote shared understanding and empathy by facilitating a conversation about their emotions, with each child repeating the other's sentiments.
Guide each sibling in problem-solving solutions to the issue, gently steering them back if their ideas seem unrealistic.
3. Time Outs: How To Do Them Right
Chapter 8 is “You Can’t Make Me!” Shaping Behavior and Values. In addition to discussing the kinds of parenting styles, she discusses three main behavior strategies: responding to misbehavior, modeling healthy emotional behavior, and time outs. These points are from authors and experts who have scoured the evidence to see what is truly effective for time-outs instead of the popular press or parents using their anecdotal strategies.
I highlighted and dog-eared about half of this chapter which I highly recommend reading, but here are the takeaways from the section on time-outs:
Timeout is actually an abbreviation for “time-out from positive reinforcement.
Always ask yourself whether your child’s behavior is truly defiant or just a consequence of the fact that she doesn’t have the skills you think she has.
The proper way to do a time-out
Keep it simple, factual, and evaluative. (“Now you’re going to have to go in time-out because you through your racecar.”)
Keep them brief and infrequent (not the default discipline response)
Avoid turning the time-out into positive reinforcement. If the kid is crying in time-out, don’t acknowledge him.
Don’t require an apology or for i’m to admit anything at the end of the time-out.
Location is not important so long as your child doesn’t get to interact with anything interesting. This means that time-outs can be in chairs, cars, strollers, cribs, etc.
Time-out length:
Between 4-10 minutes or one minute per year of a child’s life, or….
One study, however, found that for 4-8-year-olds, contingency-based releases were more effective than time-based ones. (“You can be done once you sit still on the chair for five minutes.)
Conclude them with positive feedback and connection with a parent.
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