Who should read this chapter? All parents.

Summary: The behavior of our children and the decisions that they make result from what they learn in their lives. Since parents cannot teach children everything about life, it is useful to provide them with simple concepts that can be applied to all their decisions. Even at a young age, children can usually classify actions into good vs. bad, right vs. wrong. The simple rule is to choose the good and the right, while avoiding the bad and the wrong. Consistent praise for making "good and right" decisions reinforces good decision making through their childhood, teen and adult years.

Most decisions in life can be simplified to: good vs. bad, right vs. wrong. Once children understand this concept, they can begin to gain confidence in making decisions on their own. They must determine if doing something is a good idea or a bad idea. We often scold children when they do something wrong. We say things such as, "Stop it" or "Don't do that." This is OK when children are young. Older kids and teens don't appreciate such simple lines. In this regard, they don't like being treated like children. Older kids and teens prefer to make their own decisions. As youngsters get older, it becomes less and less effective to tell them what to do. In fact, teens positively hate this. Teens hate this so much that they will often do the exact opposite of your command (rebellion). It is normal for teens to reject parental commands which are trying to control their lives. Teens need control over their lives. It is normal human behavior for a teen to reject a parental command. Once parents understand this, more effective methods of influencing (not controlling) the decisions made by our children, can be used.

Young children require simple commands. As children get older, our direct control over them diminishes which makes simple commands less effective. When they enter school, they are with parents less often. As children get older, they participate in more extracurricular activities such as sports, music, dance, student government and neighborhood activities. Teens prefer to spend more time with peers and less time with parents. Since we, as parents, are with them less and less, we must be sure that their decision making skills help them to make good choices in life. We will not be there to tell them what to do or to scold them when they do something wrong. It is during the early years when we must teach them the basic principles of making the right decisions.

One way to get them in this mode of thinking is to stress it when they make a poor decision. My 6 year old son threw a rock at another student one day. He told me he did this because he was pushed by the other boy. Unfortunately, this type of tit for tat (getting revenge) type of behavior is instinctive and part of human nature. When I asked him why he needed to seek revenge, he did not know. Youngsters often don't understand why they do certain instinctive acts. The reason is; that's human nature. This is hard for youngsters to understand. Perhaps they don't know why they did the action, but they can decide whether this action was good or bad. I asked my son, "Did throwing the rock make you feel good?" His answer was no. Did you want to hurt him?" After trying to dodge the question, he eventually indicated that he was angry and he did want to hurt the other boy. "What if your rock did hurt the other boy and he got a big cut on his face. Would you feel happy?" He answered no. "Well how would you feel if he got hurt?" He answered that he would feel bad. "If you hurt him, how would his parents feel? He answered that they would feel sad. "Would they also be angry?" Yes. "They would be very angry and they might want to come and hurt you or they might want to come and damage our house or car. Is this good?" No. "Did you know that if you hurt him, mom and dad would have to pay his parents a lot of money, about $1000, to fix the cut on his face?" Of course he did not know this. "Does anything good happen when you throw rocks at people?" He answered no. "Does anything bad happen when you throw rocks at people?" He answered yes. "Tell me some of the bad things that happen when you throw rocks at others." He was able to tell me about a few consequences, then I reminded him of some of the others that he missed. Now comes the very basic question that shapes their future decision making. "Now that you understand these things, is throwing rocks at others a good idea or a bad idea?" He answered that this is a bad idea. "Do we do good things or bad things?" Of course, our children should be taught to do only good things and not to do bad things. To help them learn to make good decisions, we should give them the facts, then we should let them make the decision themselves. The decision that they make should be based on what we have taught them at a very early age; good vs. bad, right vs. wrong.

My 10 year old daughter has a bad habit of pouting. She plays on a volleyball team in a fairly competitive league. We are usually the underdogs since most of the other teams are bigger, older, more experienced and more organized than us. Yet we managed to beat teams that are clearly superior to us. Our girls are told that for us to win in this league, our team has to be supercharged mentally (on fire, psyched up, in high gear, etc.). If we're not in this state, we lose. During a tournament semifinal match (best of three games), we found ourselves down 11-0 in the first game. Several coaching efforts were made to reverse this trend and it wasn't working. We partially caught up, but we still lost the second game 15-8. To prepare them for the second game, they were told that they did really well in almost coming back. If they didn't fall behind 11-0 initially, we probably would have won that game. Perhaps they were too disappointed in their initial performance or perhaps they were just getting tired, but the girls did not respond well. The team had no fire and we fell behind 12-2 in the second game. My daughter was visibly pouting and playing like a slouch.

During the ride home, I asked her why she was pouting and she replied that she didn't know. I asked her if there was any possible benefit to pouting. Since she replied that there was none, I asked her if there is anything bad that results from pouting. She admitted that there are bad things that happen when one pouts. We discussed aspects such as loss of team communication and leadership, extinguishing the team's fire, reducing team discipline and contributing to the demise of the team. Is pouting good or bad? She knows that it is bad. Then why do you pout? It takes insight to answer this question. The answer is; that's human nature. You must understand that you will have a tendency to pout, but since this is obviously a bad idea, you need to overcome human nature and turn off the tendency to pout.

After understanding human nature a little better, I told my daughter that I want to see her demonstrate enthusiasm and leadership to set the team on fire and keep the fire going through the match. During their next tournament, she did this and I was pleased to see this turnaround.

In all likelihood, your children will be exposed to cigarettes, drugs and alcohol in school. Whether it be to carry it, try it, see it or touch it, anything to do with drugs is bad. Give your children examples of this and ask them if this is a good idea or a bad idea. Teaching our children in this way, will help them make the correct decisions about drugs.