Children are like wet cement.
If you’ve ever worked with wet cement or seen someone work with it, it does harden up pretty quickly and so it is with the personalities of our kids. If you want to put this to test in your life, here’s a suggestion around the dinner table. Parents, ask your son or daughter that’s a teenager to describe themselves as a little kid, and just sit back and listen. And listen to the adjectives that they use to describe their personality. And then ask yourself the question, “Did they not just name and enumerate the qualities that they now have at 15, 16, 17 years of age?”
At age two, about 20 to 40% of your kid’s personality is already formed. That’s frightening. Three, 60%. Four, 80%. Five, nearly 100%. So we take this topic on today. And by the way, just for everyone’s enjoyment. I hate the question that Doug asked me today. It’s name the three. Let me tell you, it could be name the 17 things that are important to teach your child before they harden up, so to speak.
1. ESTABLISH YOUR AUTHORITY IN THE HOME WITH THAT CHILD THAT’S UNDER FIVE.
Well, what does that mean? It means you’re not their friend, you’re not their best buddy, you’re not their playmate. You’re mom, you’re dad. You come with a presence of love and acceptance and all the hugs and kisses and all those things. Please, I’m not taking anything out away. Do that as much as you want, but you have to learn as kids develop before your very eyes, what’s developmentally appropriate behavior and what isn’t.
Some parents think that their two-year old is going to do everything they ask them to do in double time and salute them as well. It doesn’t work that way with two-year olds. The kid just begins to get powerful around age 18 months and that’s when he begins to, and she begins to look at life from behind their rose colored glasses, or at least their skewed blends, and they see life as, “My playground. I’m the center of the universe. I want. It’s mine.” And you’ll get the mine, all the way through the threes. So kids are very hedonistic.
Do you let a 17-month old hit you or a 19-month old hit you? No you don’t. Well, what do you do, Leman? You hold their arms. You’re the adult. Act like an adult, “Honey, we don’t hit people.” So you’re always teaching. And this is three steps forward and two behind. Go back to my earlier statement. This isn’t the military. You don’t issue a dictate and the kids follow in. It takes training. And because different kids come into this world with different mindsets, sort of a build-in personality if you will genetically, you’ve got kids that come out of the womb strong-willed. They got a little bit more fight in them than the guy next to them. So is there an art form to all this? It is. But I think overall number one is establishing your authority.
If you’re an authoritarian, you’ll crush your kid. You’ll tell them what to do, how to do it, and do it on a double. That’s the authoritarian model.
Here’s the problem.
All of us essentially grew up in an authoritarian environment. If you’re really a young mom today, you’re that 20 year old, 21, 22-year-old, maybe your home was not that authoritarian. My guess would be it would be more permissive, because we have certainly moved traditionally from our authoritarian stance to one of permissiveness. And so again, if you love your child, you’ll discipline them. That is a biblical concept. Well, how do you discipline a two year old? I mean, do you swat them on the bottom? I don’t think that’s good. I think you’re just going to make them a more powerful kid.
But I think you give them the look, a look of disapproval, you pick them up, you may move them from the scene. Sometimes you put them in a little playpen, which reminds me of the old song “Don’t Fence Me In”. There’s something great about fencing in a kid quite frankly. There’s a time where a kid realizes, “Hey, wait, you’re way over bouncy. You need time just to settle down.”
And so that’s part of the disciplinary process. But as kids get into the threes and the fours, trust me, they know what they’re doing. I mean, they’re setting you up. They’re playing you like a violin. So being an authority is always part of being loving and empathetic. So we’re not taking any of that away from you as a parent. We’re just saying you just can’t get frustrated. You’re the adult. You have to control your emotions. And kids will test your emotions and your patience and if you just strike out at your child, then you’re certainly going down the wrong path quickly.
2. LISTENING.
Most of us as adults are not good listeners, and here I am saying that number two behind established authority is to teach kids to listen. Well, we train kids essentially in our society not to listen. How do we do that? Well, we do it by telling most kids at least three times when we ask a question. And we say, “Honey, would you do this?” Or it’s time to get ready or turn off the television or pick up your shoes or whatever the command might be. The kids sort of train us to say it three times. I’ve asked kids straight out how many times doe it take for mom or dad to get you to do something. Most kids will say three.
One kid, I’ll never forget him, he said, “The first time is sort of a general alert. The second one is she raises the voice a little bit more and a third time, oh, you can see it in her eyes. She means business.” And so we try and kids do not to listen to us. It’s important that you get kids’ attention, that you look them in the eye, that you drop to the knees. If there’s a problem, you need to talk about it and you’re going to speak the truth in love.
I know you’re talking to a two year old or three year old or a four year old, but again, keep in mind once a kid hits 18 months, they know what they’re doing. They engage in what we call purposive behavior. It serves a purpose in their life. It might be just as simple a mantra in the kid’s mind as, “I want things done the way I want things done.”
Remember you’re training up a kid to realize that other people count in life.
That’s why you say to a three year old, “Honey, thank you for sharing that with your little sister.” You know what I’m saying? This is not a one, two, three, here it is. This is an ongoing shaping of the child’s behavior, attitude, as they unfold through the developmental years.
Most of us as adults are not good listeners, and here I am saying that number two behind established authority is to teach kids to listen. Well, we train kids essentially in our society not to listen.
How do we do that?
Well, we do it by telling most kids at least three times when we ask a question. And we say, “Honey, would you do this?” Or it’s time to get ready or turn off the television or pick up your shoes or whatever the command might be. The kids sort of train us to say it three times. I’ve asked kids straight out how many times doe it take for mom or dad to get you to do something. Most kids will say three.
One kid, I’ll never forget him, he said, “The first time is sort of a general alert. The second one is she raises the voice a little bit more and a third time, oh, you can see it in her eyes. She means business.” And so we try and kids not to listen to us and what I’m saying is it’s important that you get kids’ attention, that you look them in the eye, that you drop to the knees. If there’s a problem, you need to talk about it and you’re going to speak the truth in love. I know you’re talking to a two year old or three year old or a four year old, but again, keep in mind once a kid hits 18 months, they know what they’re doing. They engage in what we call purposive behavior. It serves a purpose in their life. It might be just as simple a mantra in the kid’s mind as, “I want things done the way I want things done.”
You’re training up a kid to realize that other people count in life.
That’s why you say to a three year old, “Honey, thank you for sharing that with your little sister.” You know what I’m saying? This is not a one, two, three, here it is. This is an ongoing shaping of the child’s behavior, attitude, as they unfold through the developmental years.
3. LET YOUR YES BE YES AND YOUR NO BE NO.
That reeks of consistency, and by the way, when we talked earlier about establishing authority, it’s really important and I hope it’s just super obvious that mom and dad must be on the same page. If you’re a single parent and listening to us, I would say make sure that you are extremely consistent with how you deal with your kids. And let your yes be yes and your no be no, I think helps number two and that is train kids to listen to you.
I think when they know that when you say no, they’re not going to come by and bug you 14 times. They only come by and bug you 14 times when you waiver. When you say, “No, you are absolutely not doing that.” And then you cave in five hours later and give them permission to go to wherever they wanted to go and give them $20 for spending money to boot.
Think before you engage in that yes or no.
I think a great answer for kids these days, if you’re a parent is, “Honey, let me talk to dad or mom about that. Let me have some time to think about it. And in fact on that one I’d like to pray about it. So if I got back to you tomorrow, would that be good? Could we talk about it again?”
Again, most kids will accept that because you’re being respectful, you’re listening to them, but don’t always feel like you have to pony up that yes or no immediately. Now again, I know kids are hedonistic. My granddaughter’s parents wouldn’t drive her to a fair they had on the other side of town, which was about a 45-minute drive. And both of them have very busy schedules, and it was a Sunday evening, schools the next day, and both of them said no.
Well, what does granddaughter do?
She gets on the phone. She tried to find grandma, but grandma wasn’t available. So she started with grandpa. She would always start with grandma first because grandma’s an easy touch. Grandpa’s not the easy touch that grandma is. And I just told her, I said, “Honey, I wish I could help you out, but honey I really can’t.” And then of course, eventually she got grandma and even grandma, old softhearted turned her down and said, “Honey, next week if you want me to take you someplace, I’d be glad to.”
That’s the immediacy of kids thinking. As a parent, you’ve got to slow that down. You know that. You just can’t cave and try to attend to every need your kid has because what they need is not really a need. It’s what they want. There’s a difference of what you want and what you need. So that’s why God gave us parents.
Some parents are thinking, well what’s wrong with promising a kid something, and give them something to look forward to? Well, there’s a lot of wrong with it for this reason. Is your car going to be working? Is it going to be raining? Does somebody have the flu in the family? I mean, don’t go there. You don’t have to promise kids things. You can always say, “Honey we’re going to take it a day at a time. We’ll see what the weekend brings. Who knows? Maybe we’ll be able to pull that off.” So don’t paint yourself in the corner, is what I’m saying?
Three essential necessities we should have trained in our kids before they are five:
- Establish authority as a parent.
- Train them to listen to you
- Let your yes be yes and your no be no.
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