Parenting With Love and Logic: Teaching Children Responsibility

pay big bucks to satisfy their cravings. Indeed, the most-requested
speakers, the most sought-after entertainers, and the world’s greatest
sports stars are among the most highly paid people on earth. What do
they have in common? They all stimulate our emotions.
There are a number of emotions effective in modifying behavior. Stark
terror, for instance, brings quick response, but there’s another common
emotion almost as effective as stark terror. This emotion, generally given
by adults to kids, affects children’s behavior far more frequently than any
other emotion. What is that emotion so frequently given to children?
You might guess love, but actually love is often very slow in
motivating behavior. Not only that, it’s often not effective. People who
love each other often hurt each other the most. Love is important, for
loving parents generally raise great kids. But to children, everyday, plain
old love can be a little boring. It’s not the movies about love that they
love to see! Which movie do most kids want to see: Jurassic Park (about
dinosaurs dining on humans) or a sweet little love story like Sleepless in
Seattle? Most kids would rather see a dinosaur eat a lawyer in an
outhouse any old day!
But by far the most effective emotion for modifying children’s
behavior is the showing of frustration. From a kid’s point of view,
frustration is an irresistible mix of wonderful emotions. Adult anger and
adult loss of control — no kid could ask for anything more exciting! As a
matter of fact, we all love frustration and loss of control by others. Most
of today’s sitcoms and many comic strips are based on frustrated
authority figures.
The toddlerhood game of peekaboo and the subsequent, “Oh, no! You
see me!” is often based on mock frustration. Kids love mock frustration.
“Oh, no, you beat me to the car!” Whenever adults show real frustration,
they give off vibrations of strong emotion, usually anger, and then
delightfully declare they have no control in the situation. Frustration
almost always indicates a loss of control. This is the irresistible
combination frustration shows: The parent turns red, lights up, gets noisy,
and hands control to the child. Now what kid wouldn’t want that?!