Are You Your Kid’s Cruise Director?
Now that we are parenting 24/7, it can feel like we are responsible for engaging our kids 24/7.
When my daughter was little, my mother-in-law used to tell me, “Elisabeth, you’re playing with that child too much.” She advised me that I needed a hobby—something to be busy with at home so that my daughter could get on with her own toddler interests without interference from me.
My mother-in-law wasn’t wrong: Every child needs some opportunity to explore and engage in the world themselves without being directed by a parent. My problem was that my hobby, my vocation, really was (and still is) playing with kids. I have no interests in cooking or crafting (and certainly not in cleaning). My patience for gardening is pretty limited, too. Given a choice, I’ll choose playing with the kids every time. And, yet, as soon as she could crawl, my daughter showed me that she wanted to explore the world on her own. She would crawl to the opposite end of the room or right out the back door if it was open.
Similarly, when I got divorced and was heartbroken that I was going to have to share my daughter 50/50 with her dad, a dear friend pointed out to me, “Elisabeth, you’re pretty intense. It might be good for your girl not to have your attention focused on her 24/7.” And it’s true. When was my daughter was in Kindergarten, and I was pushing reading on her, she turned to me one day and said, “Stop doing your experiments on me!” Wow. Now I have no idea where she got that expression but, boy oh boy, did it get me to back off and to let her learning unfold in its own time.
So, parent, consider for a moment, do you rush to entertain your child too quickly and too often?
What if you didn’t feel like you had to be your child’s cruise director?
Actually, I was watching a rerun of The Love Boat (Don’t judge me; this is what Week 8 of Sheltering in Place has brought me to), and there was a scene when the cruise director, Julie, tried to engage a disgruntled guest. She offered him 2-3 suggestions of the fun things you could do on board and when he grumbled at each of them, she smiled sweetly and said, “Well, I’m sure you’ll find something to suit you,” and walked away.
Excellent technique. If you have suggested a couple things your child might do to entertain herself and she is rejecting all your ideas, then nonchalantly turning away and getting back to your own activity—whether that is actual work or just finishing your coffee in peace as you flip through a catalog—will reassure your child of your confidence that she can engage herself without your help.
And if you have chunks of actual work you need to do, that is fine. Even a small child can learn to entertain herself for quite some time.
Perhaps you saw the article in The New York Times called “Turning Your Demanding Child Into a Productive Co-Worker” in which writer Michaeleen Doucleff, who has been writing the last couple of years about different parenting cultures around the world, describes how she persuades her four-year-old daughter to work alongside her doing the work she does.
Doucleff started by reflecting on what she had learned from her research about different approaches to parenting. She recalled a comment from one interview which she quotes in her article:
“But they don’t tell children what to pay attention to, how they should act, and what they should do with an object,” the psychologist Suzanne Gaskins, from Northeastern Illinois University, told me last summer in a Maya village in the Yucatán. “Parents don’t entertain.”
As a result, children become incredibly skilled at the art of solitary absorption and self-generated fun, starting from a young age. “A 1-year-old can be perfectly happy by himself for an hour, doing whatever it is he wants to do,” Gaskins told me. “Adults watch him to make sure he’s safe. But his agenda isn’t changed by someone intervening.”
Doucleff went from this idea to setting the expectation with her daughter, that during writing time, Mommy needs to write. She set up a writing station for her daughter, and she set the timer. At first it was really hard: Her daughter continued to beg for Mom’s interaction, for mom to read to her or to draw a picture for her or to play Zynga. As long as the timer was on (and her daughter was safe), Doucleff ignored the demands. Slowly, the amount set on the timer went up, and Doucleff now reckons that she is getting around four hours of writing a day done while her daughter entertains herself!
My guess is that if it worked for a mom of a four year old (not a very independent age) without any siblings to entertain her, it can work for you.
We have become so programed to use every available moment for our child’s development and enrichment that we forget that autonomy and self-efficacy can only be developed when we leave our children to their own devices. Ironic, isn’t it, that in trying to provide our children all the cognitive development that we can that we are actually interfering with developing two qualities that lead to a child’s self-confidence and internal drive? (No one said parenting was easy!).
In my Middle School Mom’s Facebook group there is a lot of conversation about motivating kids to care about anything other than their electronics. Sheltering in Place has given us a marvelous opportunity to allow children to develop their own interests in their own time. Given that soon what little structure remote learning has provided in your house is going to come to an end with the end of the school year without the transition to summer camps, it seems more than worth it to develop your kids’ independence.
One approach that is working for families is to give their children a list of categories of things they need to engage in before they can be on their devices for pleasure. Categories might include things like 1. Personal hygiene 2. Household contributions 3. Schoolwork 4. Vigorous physical activity 5. Non-electronic personal engagement (re-reading all of Harry Potter, practicing an instrument, baking, gardening, doing crafts, creating a walking meditation on the driveway, building a model, working on a 1000 piece puzzle, etc.). Only when a child has spent an hour or so in each of those categories, may she be on her phone or laptop for video games and communicating with friends.
Yes, I recognize that this plan still leaves many hours a day when a child might be in front of a screen. The hope here is that left alone to explore her own “personal engagement” activities, a child might become so absorbed in the sweater that she is knitting, that she is unwilling to put down her wool in order to free up her hands for her phone.
One final note, if you have been keeping your children engaged 24/7 because you are worried about their academic standing once school does re-open, there is some good evidence from other disasters and countries that not only did children’s test scores not go down, in some cases they went up. Although the article does not speculate why, I have my own guesses: After weeks and weeks of Sheltering in Place, school will move from a “half to” to a “get to”; After parents not knowing how to break learning down in comprehensible steps, students will appreciate their teachers’ skill; After learning on their own how to bake the best chocolate chip cookie ever, students will have confidence in their own discovery process; After trying to do a back flip on the trampoline, failing, and trying again, children will have strengthened their Growth Mindset muscle. Together, these factors will have students ready to take full advantage of school in a way they never have before.
In conclusion, as long as your children are still safe and healthy, you can worry a lot less about directing their every move. It is okay for them to be bored. It is okay for them to figure out how to handle that boredom on their own. It is okay for you to need a break and to take it.
DO YOU NEED SOME SUPPORT WITH THIS?
If the thought of getting your children off of screens so that they can be bored enough to choose something more meaningful is daunting, check out my Your Best Summer Ever Despite COVID-19 webinar. You can sign up for it HERE.