Apologizing, Softness and Humanity's Web

I've been trying something lately: when I regret an action, no matter how small, I try to apologize to the person who I wronged. This doesn't sound revolutionary, but given how difficult I've found it, I think I haven't done it as much as I should have. And I've found the emotional payoff to be enormous.

For example, a few weeks ago I snapped at the shuttle driver who takes me to work. I won't go into detail, but let me just say that he started it and I one-upped him, including mentioning his supervisor. During the ride, I stewed about his reaction but finally realized that I was more upset about mine. When I got out, I went around to his window and apologized--there was no need for me to speak that way. He said there was no need for me to apologize (which just shows the level of hostility we're all used to dealing with), but since then, we've been able to have pleasant interactions. I left feeling like I'd improved someone's day, instead of adding to the negativity in his world and mine.

Let me be clear that I'm not talking about apologizing for asserting my rights or taking up space. I've also learned that people (especially women like me) end up apologizing instead of saying thank you, thanks to this great illustration. As I'm teaching my children how to interact in the world, and setting limits on how they're allowed to speak to me, I'm  learning to take responsibility for my own behavior. I don't believe that it is ever justified to be mean or even use a rude voice. I'm certainly not saying that I don't still do these things, just that I'm learning to recognize when I do and apologize for it.

Apologizing for yelling at my kids is one thing. But what about if someone is physically attacking me? I would be rude. I would be mean. I would do whatever I needed to get out of the situation. And I doubt I'd apologize. However, I believe it would be better, if possible, to handle the situation calmly and respectfully. One thing that I've learned both from parenting and training in martial arts is that meeting force with force is rarely effective.

Our Grandmaster teaches us to respond to a force in the manner of a trampoline: absorbing, zero-ing out and responding with such softness that the opponent doesn't even register that he is being controlled. This is an ideal that I strive toward, although I won't sacrifice the safety of myself or my family to achieve it.

Short of the threat of physical harm, verbal exchanges offer a training ground for responding with softness. My emotional reaction might be hostile, but it is still possible to respond mindfully. Parenting provides ample opportunity for practice: it is astounding to me how simply repeating back a child's words--acknowledging that I hear what she is saying, what she wants, without saying I'll give it to her--releases the pressure of the interaction to a point where progress can be made. (For more on this, and other techniques that worked shockingly well for us, check out How to Talk So Kids Will Listen by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish). 

I'm attempting to use this in discussions on politics: acknowledge instead of arguing. A mean response to a rude statement will only cause the instigator to build up their defenses. There is no way to teach through, or learn behind, a wall. When the hatches are battened, there is no possibility for communications.

A ten-minute interaction with the shuttle driver may not be a big thing, but the attitude that he and I both took through our day could have affected ten or more people. Their attitudes in turn would have affected the people they encountered: truly an exponential effect.

These kinds of one-on-one connections are what I believe to be humanity's most hopeful feature, so I'm striving to make my contributions as positive as possible.  I invite you to join me...

Scarcity and Incentives

When one of our children has earned enough glass "gems" to fill up her reward jar, she can choose a 'special thing.' There are limited choices: go see a movie in the theater, buy a book at the book store, go to the Butterfly Pavilion or get to have a meal at Noodles and Company. Over the four years we've been using this system, our three kids have all used the first three options.  However, no one has ever chosen the fourth.

Why not? We rarely go to movies, the kids rarely get to purchase anything new and we reserve the Butterfly Pavilion exclusively for these special trips. Going to Noodles and Co for a meal, however, is not a rare event.  Why would the kids waste a once-every-few-months 'special thing' on something they're likely to get every month anyway?

There is a larger truth, here, too. If you use incentives to affect your children's behavior, it is good to start from a base of scarcity. If they get candy every night after dinner, are they going to be motivated by an extra piece? If they get to go to a movie every month, will they be motivated by going again? If they get thirty minutes of screen time every day, is the promise of an 'extra' show going to make a difference? If Grandpa brings a toy whenever he comes to visit and Mom brings one whenever she returns from a business trip, is the promise of a new toy going to motivate the kid? If they get a dollar a day allowance, is a new toy going to offer any incentive over what they can purchase on their own?

Here are a few guidelines we've used concerning incentives:

1. Choose something they want. Sometimes it can be naturally connected to the behavior but it doesn't have to be. You are introducing an external motivation and once you tell them it's connected, it is.
2. Small, repeated incentives are more likely to be effective than one grand item. This seems to have two causes: A) repeating a behavior makes it a habit and B) the parent is more willing to withhold a small reward that the child has a chance to earn again. 
3. Withholding the incentive when the behavior does not meet expectations is as much as part of it as rewarding when it does. If they can get the reward either way, why would they bother to behave?
4. Scarcity breeds opportunity. It is worth the difficulty of restraining them from excessive sweets, toys, movies or whatever in order to use those (which you wish to use) as incentives when you've decided a behavior is truly unacceptable.

The gem jars are a successful system for us (kids now 4 and 8 years old). One of the best parts is that I'm willing to make them take a gem out whenever a rule, no matter how small, is broken. We give three gems a night (one for going to bed without a fuss, one for not waking us up during the night and another for staying in bed until they're supposed to get up) so, if a kid has a nightmare or a leg ache, they only lose one of three. Still getting two gems doesn't feel like a punishment yet the philosophy is reinforced: they only get the gems they earned. 

One other incentive we've used was a reward chart for our 4 year old when she was awake for hours each night. I printed out an excel spreadsheet with 4 rows x 7 columns; at the end of each row was a picture of a piece of the Halloween costume she wanted: Elsa wig, Elsa shoes, Elsa dress and Elsa make-up.  It was about 5 weeks until Halloween when we started, so we could afford to *not* give her some stickers at the beginning (see point 3!). She ended up earning all the rewards and, after a month of practice, gained the capability of turning on her light and reading if she woke in the middle of the night. Half-way through, her sisters decided it wasn't fair that she was going to get a purchased Halloween costume, since we usually make them, and asked for reward charts of their own. In this case, buying a few items was well worth the resulting behavior. But again, if the were accustomed to getting costumes that they asked for, the incentive wouldn't have worked so well.  Scarcity breed opportunity!

Parenting: It ain't easy

I just dropped my kids off at my parents house for an overnight. It is great timing--we had planned to go to my husband's co-worker's  fiftieth birthday party but I'm suffering from a cold and so am going to stay home. The prospect of an evening reading in bed is glorious.

However, before getting home to the comforts of my bed, I had to navigate the who-sleeps-where fight the kids immediately fell into when we arrived at my parents.  There are four beds in their partially finished bedroom, which should easily accommodate three kids but, of course, they all wanted the same one. I was feeling poorly enough that I conducted the interaction mostly from a supine  position on my parents' living room floor. It would have been so nice to escape, but that would have meant my parents had to deal with the fall-out. And, probably, the youngest would have gotten her way simply because she was the most insistent on getting the favorite bed and my parents would have felt bad making her feel bad.

I'm appreciative enough of my parents' babysitting that I don't want them to have to deal with any more negativity than is necessary. And I know the little one's bad attitude about not getting what she wants is a sign that she gets what she wants too much of the time. So it was up to me, no matter how sick I felt, no matter how much I just wanted to leave, to make the decision (random drawing, which the littlest lost) and deal with the consequences.

It got me thinking of something I've learned about parenting, which sounds obvious: it ain't easy.  One of the unseen advantages to having twins as our first kids was that we expected it to be hard. Just because humans have been having babies for thousands of years doesn't mean it is easy to be a parent.

It's often most difficult right at the moment I'm least equipped to deal with it. But I believe those are the moments that count the most. If I took the easy way out (in this case, give the younger one the desired bed), what would she learn? Mom's sick + I throw a fit = I get my way. In the future, when I'm not sick, she'll probably be a good experimentalist and test if throwing a fit alone equals getting her way. So giving in this time will mean more fits to deal with. It might seem logical to say "I'll just deal with it then, when I have more energy" but I believe that giving in once will result in ten more tests: she'll throw ten more fits before she's convinced that it won't give her what she wants.

So, even though it was the last thing I felt like dealing with, standing up to her today is an investment in the future. Her future, obviously, because one of the most important skill a person has is dealing with disappointment. But also in my future: it ain't easy now, but if I stay strong, it will get better.

The other key is taking care of myself so that I have the strength to do what needs to be done. For me, this means daily exercise and predictable times to work on my hobbies. It is admittedly easier with financial resource but there are ways to do it with less: child care swaps with friends/neighbors (the kids call them playdates), gyms like the YMCA that offer two hours of free child care every day to members, and simply trading off with the other parent. Insisting on time for myself is one of the best ways to guarantee my kids will get the best parent I can be at the moments it matters the most.

Favorite books (that I read in 2015)

Although reading is one of my favorite activities, it gets shuffled behind parenting, working, housework, exercise, and now, of course, writing. But I did manage to get through a few books this year. Here are some of my favorites.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Dinosaur Four by Geoff Jones

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

This is from the past but it is one of my favorite parenting books

Siblings Without Rivalry by Adele Faber, Elaine Mazlish

Potty training

I started this blog with the idea of posting fiction & poetry but our experience this month potty training the girls inspired an article about it. Actually two: here's the long version, which I'm considering marketing to some parenting magazine or other.

(It will be obvious to you that I changed the girls' names)

Potty training in one day??!!

With 22-month old twins, we go through a lot of diapers: seventy a week from the cloth-diaper service plus about twenty disposable for nighttime and day trips. Soon after they were born, I read in a parenting book that 18 months was the earliest some children are ready to be toilet trained and this stuck in my head as a goal. Of course, when they reached that age, we didn’t seem to be anywhere near it. However, an extended visit from my sister’s family a few months ago—with her 2 ½ year old, potty-trained daughter—inspired an enthusiasm for the potty that I wanted to capitalize on. We would sit them on the potty seat on our big toilet but they rarely did anything. It seemed to me that they were prime candidates for the ‘One-day’ potty training methods: they were interested but needed practice to understand what their bodies were supposed to do. I wanted to try it before they got too resistant toward doing anything we suggest, a behavior that seems to be creeping in more and more each day.

So we checked out a few books from the library: “Toilet training in less than a day” by Nathin Azrin & Richard Foxx for my husband and I and a “Potty Book for Girls” for the girls. We waited until our summer travels were over and a weekend was free. And then we tried it—unsure if we would magically be free from diapers or ruin everything trying too early.

Saturday morning: We clear the toys from the living room, roll up the rug and stock a shelf with treats: cheerios, gold fish, chocolate bunnies, yellow pear tomatoes, boxes of apple juice, cans of orange soda, sippy cups of herbal tea. Two little potties sit against one wall; we bring out our Camelbacks and the doll-that-pees that the neighbor lent to us.



The girls change into their big-girl panties—of course Rosie picks purple. The doll sits on the potty and doesn’t pee… they give her a bottle and then she does pee! We jump around and celebrate and offer her some juice as a reward but since she doesn’t drink it the girls get it. They rarely get juice and even more rarely from a box so they suck it right down. Repeat a few times before the doll has an accident and has to clean up the mess and practice going potty. The girls like the doll and playing with her. They find the Camelbacks and absorb more liquid. Herbal tea? Of course! Salty snacks? Of course! Are their panties dry? Yep—more treats. Now it’s time for Gemma & Rosie to sit on the potty, but nothing happens. We don’t make them stay the recommended ten minutes: three seems like an eternity.

We try to keep them in constant motion—feeding the doll, watching her pee, always checking that their panties are dry and getting treats. I’m not sure why this is part of the method but it seems like it should be hectic with activity.
In an instant, Gemma is standing in a puddle. Uh oh. Wet panties, we don’t like wet panties. Clean up the mess, practice running to the potty, pulling down your panties, sitting down, standing up, pulling up your panties. We’re supposed to do this ten times but on about the third trial, she pees on the potty. Yay!! Potty party!!! We jump around and cheer and abort the practice rounds. Then Rosie pees on her potty. Yay Rosie! Such a big girl!! Let’s call Grandma and Grandpa! Here’s some soda and a potato chip for being such a big girl! A little parade of chubby babies carrying their pots to the toilet to flush away.




And then all the liquid starts coming out. I think they peed every three minutes for the next three hours. Some of it went in the potty. A lot of it went on the floor. Some on the couch and some on Daddy’s leg. Rosie was having such a hard time getting the panties pulled up over her copious bottom that she started refusing to put them back and just ran around naked. Part of the method is that the child is supposed to do everything for themselves which seems impossible the first day of the training. Getting the panties up and down is very difficult and dumping the little potty into the toilet seemed impossibly dangerous. Not that the floor hadn’t already been hit with a lot of urine!

After Gemma got ‘bit’ by the lid of the potty falling down on the peak of her bottom, she had about an hour of crying and refusing to sit on the potty. But at lunch time (a picnic of nachos on the living room floor) she jumped up and said “have to pee!” and made it to the potty. Sometime during the morning, Rosie did it too. Then they both had accidents.

It was a relief to put on diapers for their nap. During the down time, Daddy slept while I went running to burn off the stress and figure out what to do for the rest of the afternoon. Finally free of the frantic, urine-spouting situation, I realized that the girls had both achieved the goal of the method: to decide for themselves to sit on the potty and produce urine on it. But was this “trained?” It certainly didn’t feel like it to me. We decided to lay off the liquids for the afternoon, bring down the pace and let the girls play naked in the kiddie pool, with the potty chair nearby for anyone who wanted to use it.

And Rosie did. She woke up ready to conquer the potty-training world and, despite two more accidents in the afternoon, used the potty a lot. On Sunday she had three episodes of peeing a little bit, stopping it and making it to the potty to let the rest out. By Monday, she was really doing the entire process by herself, including a poop in the morning that I only knew about when she asked me to wipe her. She would often sit on the potty going but her only accident of the day was while riding in the stroller.

Gemma, on the other hand, didn’t pee in the potty all Saturday afternoon nor on Sunday. She had lots of accidents, including pooping in her pants and not even telling us about it, but wouldn’t produce anything in the potty itself. On Monday, with Daddy back to work, I sent Rosie to the playground with Grandpa while Gemma and I re-created the original training. Except this time I slowed down the pace and also made her sit on the potty for three minutes on, three minutes off, in hopes of getting more pee in the potty. And she did pee in the potty- about 8 times by the end of the day. Concentrating on just one child made it easier for me to see when she had to go (she really does cross her legs) and more attentive to making her go often enough to avoid accidents. But she still always answered ‘no’ when I asked if she need to pee so the only reason she wasn’t wetting her pants was that *I* was watching out for her. This is when they say the parent is potty-trained, not the child.

But by Wednesday, she was answer ‘yes’ when I asked if she had to go… and she finally pooped in the potty. Maybe not coincidentally, Rosie had two poop accidents on Thursday. On Friday I offered lollipops for any pooping in the potty and they each earned one. By Saturday, we weren’t wearing plastic pants in the car anymore and on Sunday we went grocery shopping, to a picnic and then out for dinner—the girls both used the big toilets at each location (sometimes multiple times!) and no one had an accident. They aren’t spontaneously telling us that they need to go to the potty but when we ask, we trust them whether they say they need to go or not.

Of course, we expect accidents will continue for months to come. And I’ve still got my fingers crossed that one of them doesn’t get scared off of it somehow. But we’re cancelling the diaper service tomorrow, and I’ve started to tell people they’re potty trained. And I’ve started to recommend the method, with some caveats.
The major thing to be aware of is just how exhausting the method is. Maybe it is only one day of intensive training but it really was six or seven days before I felt a little more relaxed. When my husband went back to work on Monday I felt the same sort of panic that I did when the girls were newborns and I wasn’t sure how we’d survive the day on our own. Definitely clear your schedule for two days (although sympathetic house guests after the initial phase can provide a welcome distraction). Expect to stay close to the house and be prepared to take a potty outside if you go. I’m still carrying the potty seat and a square baking pan for roadside urgency. If you can get extra help for the following week—preferably babysitting other siblings or sitting in the house while you get some exercise or making dinner while you watch for signs of elimination—your sanity might fare better. And I would strongly recommend separating multiples for the initial training- they are learning so much that first day that they need to concentrate on themselves.

One thing that I hadn’t expected was how much I would bond with the girls during the experience. When Gemma finally peed in her potty again on Monday, I was sitting on the floor in front of her and we pressed our noses together and giggled; I thought I was going to cry with joy that she had actually done it. And still, if I catch her eye when I hear the tinkle, she wrinkles her nose up and laughs, saying “I pee Momma!” I’m so proud of them for achieving what is truly their first accomplishment; watching Rosie pull her pants down with ease and carry the pot carefully to dump, it’s just hard to believe she only learned it a week ago. And it’s hard to believe that these little people, still miniatures, are this one huge step closer to growing up.