It’s not easy being a dad. By observing my darling wife, I have also determined it’s not easy being a mom.
We have five children, and for the last nine+ years have experienced all manner of wonder and woe. When we had our first (Lillian) in 2014, we were such rookies. Everything was a danger. We followed all the rules… even when they contradicted each other (imagine that). We were at such a loss as to how to parent properly that we were willing to do whatever, whenever, however, and at the recommendation of whomever if we thought it sounded remotely reasonable.
Verily I say: it’s no way to live!
Eventually, we had to start trusting our gut. That didn’t really come until recently, and even still, we look to veteran parents whom we admire and aspire to. It might be easy to think we’ve got good systems in place and are a hardy bunch with five kids: let me assure you, we do not and are not.
But we’re trying. That’s why we have embarked on this Great Reset for our home: using our own painful lessons learned coupled with the wisdom of some of our dear friends (like those who have eight and nine kids). Here’s the original list, with the few I’ll be describing today in bold. If you’d like to see the previous posts on this topic, you can find them here (original) and here (rules 1 – 4).
1. Mean what you say; say what you mean.
2. Have rewards, but use them sparingly and emphasize that work itself is a reward.
3. Divorce anger from the act of punishing. And in terms of punishing, make it immediate if at all possible. Do not let bad behavior slide. It will only get worse.
4. Minimize distraction. We don’t have a screen problem; we have an abundance of enjoyable distractions problem, and no clear place for these distractions to exist. Inevitably, they would work their way into the homeschooling area. Then no one gets any work done.
5. More time for play (I promise this doesn’t conflict with #4, and I’ll explain why)
6. Have a reliable schedule
7. Emphasize family unity (no one’s done until everyone’s done; your sins impact others; if one of us is going, we’re all going)
8. Don’t be afraid to take away big privileges and incur some inconvenience for yourself: your child’s eternal soul is worth it.
9. Checks and balances in homeschooling.
10. Speak a lot less.
11. Negative reinforcement is OK most of the time. Fear is a good catalyst when kids are young. They will learn how to do things out of love in time, but early on it’s about safety.
12. Make the house work for you, not you for the house.
More Time for Play
I said that this one doesn’t conflict with number four (Minimizing Distraction), and I’ll attempt to prove it. It’s good to try to make these practical in nature. Trina and I recently attended an excellent (philosophical) talk on raising boys. The problem? The part I just mentioned in parentheses. It wasn’t until the last five minutes when the practical tips came along, and by then we had been there for close to an hour. Great talk nonetheless, but for parents looking to corral boys of a certain age, it missed the mark. Maybe it wasn’t aiming at that particular mark and we went in with the wrong expectation. I digress…
When I read classics about family life (Little House on the Prairie, Heidi, Caddie Woodlawn, the Swallows and Amazons series), I get caught up in the fact that kids often played by themselves but in the presence of their parents. And isn’t that how we adults should behave? God sets us loose upon this Earth, and we are charged with subduing it. Yet He is never far from us. We are playing in this world He has given us, and while we play with our fellow travelers, we do it in the midst of our Father.
It’s easy to forget this. How often do we consider our divine filiation? If I’m lucky, I’ll remember if I’m prompted. If I’m really lucky, something will jog my memory and I’ll dwell on it a bit. For the saints, they lived out that divine filiation. We know they weren’t gloomy people, and that’s precisely because they knew they were sons and daughters of God. It was enough for them.
For our kids, these imperfect but darling little scamps, it should be enough for them to know fully they are our children, but it isn’t. So we go the extra mile. We don’t wait for them to come to us, we instead go to them. Though if they come to us, we should have no inertia.
How does this look? Well, I think it starts with having a fatherly repertoire of games you enjoy playing. That helps. It doesn’t mean to get rid of any game you dislike (or dislike playing with your children), but maybe it means making the ones you like more visible, or bringing them to your kids first before they have a chance to bring something different to you. You cannot go wrong asking your kids to play with you.
So that’s the nature of it – whether it’s board games, baseball, reading, crafting, whatever it is that floats your family’s boat: find a way to incorporate your children.
“But Jonathon,” you say, “I already do this!” Well, good. But are you doing it enough? Or perhaps begrudgingly? Do we speed through playing with our kids? Are we hyper-focused on rules and nuances of the games we play? Do we frequently crush our children in competition – treating the game more as a meeting of adversaries than an opportunity to enjoy their littleness and teach them something fun?
I have done all of those things before. Multiple times, in fact. It’s no fun for anyone.
And then the question becomes, “How often am I playing with my kids?” Take it from a guy who doesn’t do it enough: you can always play more! In my experience, playing with my kids is one of the best ways for them to avoid getting distracted. When I can fill their tanks with quality Dad time, they are more likely to cheerfully approach their school and housework in a cheerful manner. It’s the juvenile equivalent of, “You scratch my back, I scratch yours.”
Have a Reliable Schedule
Admittedly this has been one of the more challenging aspects of the whole endeavor so far.
It’s one thing to have a rough idea of what you’d like for your family from day-to-day, but it’s quite another to curate an efficient schedule for five children aged nine and under. Each one operates by a different clock, so a one-size-fits-all approach simply doesn’t work.
That’s why we have learned to work within a schedule of goals with a couple discrete decision points in the week. For our nine- and seven-year-old, we put together a spreadsheet (based on what another family friend did) of all their assignments for the week, helpful reminders, and due dates/rewards. They know, for instance, that if they want to go to their homeschooling co-op on Friday, they’ll need to finish and correct all of their assignments from Monday – Thursday. When they finish something (say, Math on Tuesday), they’ll hand it in to us. We’ll check it, circle incorrect answers, and hand it back at some point in the day (no rush). They’ll then correct it and return it to us for another (hopefully final) check. Then they go and color their Tuesday math box in with whatever color strikes their fancy at the moment, and that’s one less thing for them to worry about.
Each day they have the following:
– Math (right now just math facts)
– Reading (two hours)
– Writing (either copy work, creative writing, or penmanship/manuscript practice)
– Daily family chores
– Piano practice
– Music Theory
– Outside play
– Optional: Memory work (for which they get ice cream on Saturday if done successfully, which we call Recite Cream).
Saturday is movie night, so it works out nicely that Friday/Saturday assignments must be complete if they’d like to join us for our weekly gorging on popcorn.
This works quite a lot better than the old way. In the past, we had expected assignments to be done on the day, and we (well, I, being the insufferable father) rode the kids hard about it. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. It wasn’t worth the stress, and they didn’t get consistent consequences for failing to perform. In the process of shifting to this new scheme, we’ve even learned that yes, it’s perfectly OK for your homeschool kids to do work after dinner. Just last night, we were helping them wrap up theory and math so they could attend co-op today, and I have to say it was a lot of fun. There’s nothing quite like helping your child understand something, though this might be because I was so hands-off (aside from barking orders) for so long. Being right there with them is far more rewarding.
But what about me time?! you might ask. Well, frankly you elected to give that up when you had kids. There’s a hard truth for you. Even so, to back off on the blunt talk, our kids were still in bed by eight, and my wife and I had a nice date-in with fresh-baked bread, jam, and tea.
We’ve also found that the intraday management of work can be reduced (previously a major source of headaches), and that our kids are learning about managing their time. They already love to read, so we aren’t concerned about them getting that time in. We’ve moved reading time from 2 – 4 downstairs anyway, since we found they were more distracted upstairs in the “library” than downstairs in our midst with a handful of books.
They know that if they don’t get their work in by Thursday at (roughly) 8pm, co-op is a NO GO for them. They also know that playing chicken with Mommy and Daddy’s consequences will also result in a loss for them. I even had my daughter work her math/writing for Thursday on Wednesday night, knowing she wanted to avoid any complications the next day. Great! And that’s without any encouragement from me outside of dangling the consequence a couple times a day: “No work, no co-op.”
(BTW – we also do extra work = rewards, but so far they haven’t tapped into that).
Family Unity: No One’s Done Until Everyone’s Done
How in the world am I supposed to instill family unity? I think, first and foremost, it’s on me as a father to show my children how much I love my wife. That certainly helps.
Beyond that, ensuring our kids have a team mentality when it comes to family events has always been important to us, but like most things was sidelined as we scrambled about trying to get our footing with kids. How many things must a parent think about? Goodness.
But like most things, we were overthinking it. Boiling down our team mentality to a single phrase, we’ve settled on, “Nobody’s done until everyone’s done.”
This covers a multitude of situations – from kitchen patrol (KP) to chores to quiet rest time. The important thing here is for our kids to know that we work as a team, and that skipping out on the post-dinner work to for a 10-minute bathroom break is largely unacceptable. I know what you’re doing, kid!
Don’t want to join in on the work? Then you’ll at least cheer on those still working. In the brief time we’ve done this, though, we’ve founded they often just start helping to move things along faster.
This works (somewhat) for school, too, as we have tried to incorporate a recess in the middle of the day. Someone having a particularly bad attitude when it comes to doing their schoolwork? Well, yes, your only constraint is to get it in by Thursday at 8PM or Saturday at 5pm (for movie night), but we reserve the right to move the goal posts based on behavior. That means your sins may impact others, and recess could be canceled because Junior decided he was going to practice his screamo-band frontman voice instead of working on his math.
And the behavior change as a result? All the well-behaved kids start needling the misbehaving kid for getting out of line. Ideally, the misbehaving kid also sees his siblings missing out on good things because of their behavior and straightens up, but that has happened maybe once… partially. They’re still young. Consider it our way of introducing a little peer pressure into the homeschooling environment. So far, so good.
Big Sacrifices: Your Inconvenience, Their Eternal Soul
Many years ago, my wife and I were listening to a CD on parenting, and the scenario given by the speaker was this: You show up to a cinema with your children, purchase your popcorn, snacks, and drinks, and are making your way into the theatre when poor behavior ensues. What do you do?
How many parents would spend the next 1.5 – 2 hours telling their child to keep quiet, quit complaining, sit down, etc.? How many would offer bribes in exchange for good behavior to save face (while completely undermining their own authority)?
Well, we’ve done it, so don’t feel bad if you’ve done it. I’m sure every parent has done it at some point, but we don’t have to.
This is where the big sacrifice of parenting comes in: the money will never be as important as your child’s eternal soul. So you say, “Look here, kiddo. If you don’t sit quietly and obey, we will leave.” If the defiance continues, you now have to leave (Rule #1: Mean what you say).
That’s hard. When those words leave my mouth, it doesn’t really matter if I meant them or not. I must follow through. Of course there’s going to be the immediate inferno of a child seeing the one thing he wants in the whole wide world being taken away from him, but what would I rather have to endure? That, or years of tyranny once they realize I’m all bluster when it comes to the big threats?
So, yes. It’s inconvenient to tell my daughter she can’t go to co-op this week because of behavior, and now I’ll have to telework so I can keep an eye on her. It’s also inconvenient to bar someone from family movie night, or to leave a family event or potluck early. It’s worth it, and more importantly, it works. The kid starts to understand that Mom and Dad mean business, and testing those waters happens a lot less frequently. That’s our experience at least. I have a hard time envisioning a happy family dynamic when Mom and Dad cave to the kids. They want structure and stability, and we should be the ones to provide it.
If not, who will they turn to instead?
