Dear Dr. Debbie,
My children (ages 5, 8, and 11) constantly pester me for snacks, messy activities, and rides to a friend’s house when I’m on the phone or otherwise busy.
How can I teach them they can’t always get what they want?
The Easy Answer is No
Dear T.E.A.i.N.,
Yes, “No” is the easy answer. However, the long-term goal of parental guidance is for children to guide themselves and achieve their own goals.
We have several issues to unpack here. An interruption to your next phone call will be much shorter if you spend some time supporting your children’s independence.
1) Controlled access to snacks
There can be windows of time during which anyone can grab well-identified snacks. Since appetites fluctuate with activity and growth spurts, designate food categories and blocks of time such that your children know how and when they can help themselves. For example, generally 30 minutes before a meal the “snack bar” is closed.
That being said, if one of the approved snack items is carrot sticks, it would do no harm, appetite-wise, to deny them. A denser snack, say, a handful of peanuts or a granola bar, would be a high caloric load and would depress the appetite for your well-balanced meal. A granola bar could be a great after-school or after-camp snack, at least an hour or two before dinner, followed by time to expend that caloric energy. If you are consistent about which snacks are always available at which times of the day, and always keep them stocked in the same place, a child needn’t go through you to get one.
When you take time to explain the reasons behind timing and choices, you are helping to establish lifelong nutrition habits.
2) Preparing for messy activities
Could your home’s spaces for certain messy activities include everything needed for clean-up? Materials and clean-up supplies/ equipment are part of setting up a room for such “messy” activities as race tracks, painting, or baking cookies: a bin for the tracks, access to water and everything need for painting (including drying area), and easy-to-reach bowls, hand-mixer, baking sheets, and ingredients for baking.
The more independent a child can be with setting up, carrying out, and cleaning up from a messy activity, the less he’ll need your permission or supervision. Most five-year-olds are capable of learning kitchen safety rules. For example, show her how to carefully plug in and unplug the hand mixer. Establish an age that children are allowed to use the oven without a parent (most can reach the knobs by age eight, but you could delay this depending on maturity level).
Work with your children as they get into new activities to establish safety guidelines and acceptable clean-up procedures. This teaches responsibility.
3) Transportation
There are more independent ways to get to a friend’s house than to bug Mom for a ride. The first step might be to help your children make friends with children whose homes are nearby. Teach pedestrian safety and bike safety to build important life skills for getting around without a car: stop at the stop signs, look both ways before crossing a street, and stay on a sidewalk or bike lane. They should check in with you upon arrival.
Eventually there will be similar rules applied to operating a motor vehicle.
4) Not right now
A short delay in getting your help when it is indeed needed is actually good for brain building. Before you wrap up your phone call, excuse yourself for a moment to direct your child to take some action toward the goal he is seeking. For example, “You get out the (baking sheets, mixing bowl, hand mixer, etc.) and I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”
If there is a chore yet-to-be-completed in your child’s day, this would be an excellent time filler, too, until you are available. “Please get all the Lego pieces picked up before I help you move the coffee table so you can lay out your racetracks.” The logic here (easily seen by an adult but not a child) is that the messy activity requires time. Getting the chore out of the way beforehand assures there is time in the day to enjoy the messy fun. And avoids the dilemma of the child being “too tired” for the chore after the messy fun is done.
It takes emotional control to put off something fun, even for a few minutes. Adults can help children wait for a rewarding activity, and even spend the waiting time taking care of a chore, with consistent guidance and follow through. Research on the effects of helping a child learn how to delay gratification suggests that a child’s ability to hold off getting what he wants is linked to many things WE want for our children: good social adjustment, reduced interpersonal aggression, better academic success, decreased risk of drug use, and higher SAT scores. Delay of gratification skills “that are honed in childhood can be relied on throughout life, including adolescence when academic stress heightens at the same time as the draw to use drugs and alcohol.”
You can’t ALWAYS get what you want, but can you help your children develop the delay of gratification skills that everyone needs.
Dr. Debbie
Write your question to Dr. Debbie! Please include age(s) of your child(ren) and other details about the situation or concern.
Deborah Wood, Ph.D. is a child development specialist and founding director of Chesapeake Children’s Museum, located at 25 Silopanna Road in Annapolis.
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