Things I've been thinking about lately (parenting and otherwise)

I have found absolutely NO time to post at all lately, so I'm taking a break at work to write down a couple of things that have been floating around my head lately:

1. I turned 40 a couple of weeks ago and I feel completely ambivalent about it. One the one hand, I'm not psyched about getting older. If I'm honest, it turns out that quite a bit of my self image is wrapped up in being (or at least appearing) youngish and hip-ish. I'm straddling a line between not wanting to pigeon-hole myself into some vision of what an older woman/mom/scientist/person is like that may be based on some cliched bullshit, while not wanting to look ridiculously out of touch with my actual age. I've been more aware of needing, for example, an "age-appropriate" wardrobe at least for work. On the other hand, fuck you ageist American culture!

2. How should I parent my 4-year old? Linus has been a challenge lately, especially at bed time. He doesn't want to go to bed, no matter how tired he actually is, and so he has a whole bag full of tricks he tries using to postpone the inevitable; just flat-out refusing to go, refusing to get into the bath, refusing to get out, taking 20 minutes to pick out pjs, wanting one more story, wanting to talk about ____, wanting one more hug, wanting a hug from Daddy, or Mommy, whichever one isn't there at the moment, wanting water, wanting to sleep wherever he isn't at the moment, etc. This bedtime thing is really a microcosm of the whole parenting dilemma for me generally. If I choose an authoritative model (e.g. "Go to bed! Because I said so!"), how to enforce it? Because it does require enforcement, and the inevitable, eventual conclusion is to beat your kids. Seriously. If you say, "Do this!" and your kid says, "NO!", then you say, "Then I'll take away X!" and your kid basically says, "I don't care!", you have no where to go but physical punishment when your authority is challenged like that. We don't go that far, but we do get to yelling, and marshaling him around physically, which always ends up with crying, and general upset-edness on both our parts. Plus, it's ineffectual. Yelling and marshaling and punishing does nothing except set him up to be oppositional, ruins the evening, and doesn't stop it from happening again the next night. And, I don't want to raise a bully who deals with conflict by yelling and getting angry. Unfortunately, it tends to be a default response for me because it's what I was raised with.

Alternatively, all of the "gentle discipline" approaches we've tried have also been less than effective. We have a very regular bed time, with a regular routine. We've tried being very rigid and then also very lax. We let him make choices and go with the flow. We've talked at length with him about the whys and hows and what we need to do to have a peaceful, happy, healthy family. All that is great up to the point where he still doesn't want to go to bed.

I just picked up a new book, actually, that I have a lot of hope for. It's called The Kazdin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child. What appeals to me about it is that it is based on some 30 years of research by this guy Kazdin, who's some developmental psych guy at Yale or Princeton or some other Fancy-Pantsery. He's been researching effective discipline for a long time, so everything he says is backed up by data. This is huge for me because, let's face it, there are shitloads of parenting advice out there, and most of it is based on nothing. Anecdotes, personal opinion, "because that's how I was raised and I turned out ok...", etc. And you guys know I'm all about the data. Yeah, your opinion's great and all, but has it been peer-reviewed? What are the confidence intervals on that prediction? I'm half-kidding, but only half. I know that research shows over and over again that punishment doesn't work. It just doesn't, not if you want to actually change behavior and raise moral and ethical kids. It might get you compliance in the very short-term, might, but that's about it. But, it turns out that all of that gentle-discipline-talky-talk also does very little to change behavior. It might be very important in communicating values to your kids, but in terms of actually changing behavior...nada.

I want to raise kids who think for themselves, do the right thing, have empathy and sympathy, but don't flinch when I walk into the room, will turn to me when they have a problem, but who also GO TO FUCKING BED WHEN IT'S BEDTIME, you know? So, Kazdin's data show that essentially you have to reward the behavior you want, and ignore the behavior you don't. If you do this, you will be able to change how your child behaves. He recommends that if there is a specific behavior that you want to change you can set up a reward chart for a short while and effect the change you want. I have to say that I've always been suspicious of reward charts and the like. We haven't gone that far yet, but I will say that in our day-to-day life I have been consciously ignoring behaviors I don't like, and vociferously rewarding ones I do, and it's true that he pretty quickly stops doing what I'm ignoring. It's not like I haven't regularly praised him for good behavior in the past, but I haven't completely ignored bad behavior, and I'm looking for any chance to praise the behavior I do want. I'm thinking a reward chart for the bedtime process may be in our future.