Parenting is hard. There’s no right way to do it, and if you ever hear a parent tell you that they’re NOT winging it at least 80% of the time, that person is almost assuredly lying. Every one of us does our best, tries to find balance, and hopes that our kids turn out to be good people who make the world better. But the only way to know for sure it to wait and see, and by then it’s too late to fix it.
We have a reward system in place in our house. My son is almost six, so he’s starting to learn more responsibility and proper behaviour. We do not have an allowance, and I try hard to not just give in and give him toys/candy/whatever often. So, we have a cup. Just a small, maybe 16 ounce glass cup. We also have a big container of wooden beads. When he does something good, he gets beads. More or less, depending on what he did to earn them. Sometimes it’s something as simple as good use of manners. He gets them for chores, a good comment from his teacher at school, offering to help us out with something, or any multitude of actions. He also loses beads if his behaviour and actions are not acceptable. When he’s rude, or does something that he explicitly knows he should not be doing, he loses the beads.
This is the best system I could come up with where he can concretely see the direct effect of what he does. He gets to decide on a reward for when the cup is full – but it is NOT material things. It’s experiences. This fall, we went to Edaville in Carver, Massachusetts to go to Thomas Land when his cup filled up. All three of us went, we spent the night in a hotel, and even hit the beach after. It was something he’s still talking about a month later, and I hope he will talk about years from now. So we’ve emptied the cup and started again. This time, he’s put pressure on himself. He wants to go on a sleigh ride. Which means he has to fill the cup while there’s still snow on the ground!
We do help him by offering him things that can earn him beads, or reminding him when he’s starting to act up that he’s on his way to losing beads. Do I think this system is perfect? No. Some days, when he’s having a total meltdown, he doesn’t care at all about those beads or what the end game for them is. Do I want him to only see things as a way to get or lose something? No. But as with anything, I hope it creates a habit of thinking before acting. If at six he can realize that something will lose him these beads, then at fourteen or sixty, I hope he can think and realize that what he’s doing or saying is not okay.
In the end, I want to have a child who thinks about his actions responsibly, and is a genuinely good person. With all of the sexual harassment, violence, and hate out there in the world, the only way that we can honestly fight it and make the future beautiful is by instilling the right morals and values into our children. Through love and kindness, our society can slowly heal and mend. As a mother, and a human, I will do anything in my power to not have a child who grows up to think it’s okay to hurt or kill others, or to “grab ‘em by the pussy”.
We are better than this.
Amy Smullen 