All’s fair in love and war

I almost made it through the morning without bribery and corruption. Unfortunately I was caught red-handed by a fellow school-mum, whilst trying (unsuccessfully) to negotiate peace between my two children. They both wanted a toy that neither of them had bothered to play with for the past five months (the layer of dust on it put ruins in Egypt to shame), but suddenly that morning it was the prized possession that neither could part with. A battle of wills and sheer brute force ensued and I was left with little choice but to whisper that if they stopped fighting over it I would buy each of them a lollypop. It worked marvellously with each of them gushing that the other could gladly play with it because “sharing is caring”.

A good mother would have promptly taken the offending object and announced that neither child would play with it until everybody learnt to get along. Teary tantrums would have followed, with shouting’s of the unfairness of it all. But an important lesson would have been learnt – that life isn’t always fair and we don’t always get what we want.

I took the cowardly way. The one shunned upon by all parenting books, psychologists, teachers and particularly your mother-in-law. Giving in to your children has been added to the Ten Commandments as far as they’re concerned and should not be entertained in the least.

But why not, I ask? I don’t particularly like playing the fun police who is constantly threatening and sounding thunderous. I know without a shadow of a doubt that had I done the supposed “right” thing, both children would have wailed like banshees prolonging the heinous ordeal, and I would have gone about my day hating myself.

But rather by simply, let’s call it “rewarding good behaviour”, I managed to divert the attention off the ridiculous toy and gave them something to works towards. This is not such a new concept. In fact many companies manage their staff members in such a way “If you play nicely and win us some big business then you could have that promotion you always wanted...” The difference being that I live up to my promises
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I’m often questioned about my parenting tactics generally by my husband as his differ so greatly from my own. Whilst he believes that we should be running a small military operation at home, with himself as commander-in-chief shouting orders, I would probably have a more gypsy existence if left to my own devices. The thing is that everyone likes to please others, and this is no truer in children. So why not use this as a behaviour modification tool. No need to scream (ok sometimes you’re not left much choice, particularly when you’ve reached your patience threshold), but rather dangle that carrot. A far easier approach to reach that same destination plus you’ll come out with fairy godmother status instead of the bearer of all things unfair in life. And nothing beats the reward of that smile you’ll get in return, because we too like to please others.