How much of life is trial and error?

Recently our staff at the church went through a training on year-end habits and evaluations. One of the lines read:

And the same is true of parenting: your legacy will be defined by the small moments… over time… your long obedience… in the same direction.

The staff spoke honestly about how trial and error, viewing failure through the lens of faithfulness-and learning from our failures-is the difference between victory and defeat.

So it was when we published our newsletter last week with 10 ingredients for helping a strong-willed or defiant child, however lacking the 11th (and surely not final) ingredient-THAT we only discovered after sending the newsletter!

That ingredient being: the power of rewards in correcting and motivating your wild and reckless 8-year old boy…

Some credit here must go to the child counselor who recommended the basic concept but once it was brought to Rylee's attention it was off to the races.

She came up with this grand scheme based on really high quality amazon prizes we knew he would be stoked out of his mind about and all he had to do was earn 10 stars in order to grab his first reward.

Here’s a list of learnings within this latest “intervention:”

1. Agreeing what a star is worth… we couldn’t very well give him a star for every time he responded kindly to our request, “yes mom and dad.” And these prizes were kinda badass, he had to really earn them! But the trick was using long-term habits and disciplines we wanted to see repeated (e.g. school, chores, instant obedience, positive attitude, helpfulness, etc)
2. Show them what their working toward… we realized pretty quickly that it wasn’t enough just to verbally tell him: “they’re big… they’re legit!” We had to show, not tell. And as soon as he saw the complete “big boy” toolkit and the science experiment box, etc that’s when something went off in his head!
3. Amazingly it took 1 week for him to earn his first prize… what started off with disbelief and no motivation turned into some serious hustle. He was responding with more kindness and respect, he was altogether more compliant, at the end of that first day (when he discovered the weightiness of the prize) he had one of the best days on record. The following day he did 2 days of homeschool work in 1 day-without the typical kicking and screaming.

So where do we go from here?

Well you can imagine, but this week of milestone victories ≠ finish line. In the famous words of Kobe Bryant speaking on the team’s mission in the 2009 NBA finals against the Orlando Magic, “job’s not finished.”

In fact, only last night when we were preparing to depart for our monthly date night, he was running around and ignoring our words like a cocaine-induced raccoon. Did we let that ruin our date? No.

Because the other thing we are learning - more on the philosophical level, about ourselves - is the place of powerlessness and acceptance.

It takes a lot of courage and self-control and faith to say, “there is absolutely nothing I can do to bend this child to my will or make him respond, so therefore, I’m letting go.”

And letting go or accepting things -as they are in the moment- is not the same thing as resigning ourselves to failure or quitting. It takes a bold and emotionally healthy parent to come to that place.

And we are getting there… bit by bit… one small moment after another… a bit of obedience… over time… in the same direction.

We’re focused on faithfulness, not intensity.

(By the way, we will shortly get back to other, more nuanced topics on marriage and parenting. We just thought this was too important not to share. We’re a community of parents growing and learning together, so if that’s what matters to you, you’re in the right place!)

Until next time,

Stay in the fight,

-Benjamin & Rylee