Easy expression: serious signal
It’s time to walk out the door with the kids. Then you remember…
“Danny, do you need to go potty?” you ask.
“No,” comes the reply.
But you know better, so you press the point.
“Honey,” you schmooze him. “I really think you need to go potty before we leave.”
But Danny isn’t interested. He pushes back. Stubbornness sets in. A heated verbal exchange follows. But, your logic and superior strength rule the moment.
Understandably, you feel you have won that round. But have you? Could it be that you have ‘won the battle, but may lose the war’?
Here’s the point. In overriding your child’s objections after offering a choice, you have pushed him toward what psychologists call ‘Learned Helplessness’.
It’s a term that comes out of depressions research by psychologists Seligman and Maier of Cornell University in 1967.
Now, if Danny’s potty incident were isolated to that moment, it would be no big deal. However, the fact is that you are teaching Danny that his choices don’t really matter after all. So, he eventually gives in with that familiar term, ‘whatever’, opening the door to clinical depression.
Mind you, it doesn’t mean that he won’t argue or object to his fate. It just means that he realizes he will eventually do what his adult leader wants.
What to do instead?
- Be careful with the questions and choices you offer. In other words, strictly avoid overriding your child’s decisions with your own when he is simply responding to what you have offered.
For example, when it’s time to leave, instead of, “Shall we go now?” if your decision is not negotiable, you simply say, “It’s time to go.” Truth is, sometimes your best role in a child’s development is to be a strong (but kind) leader. - Be committed to the child’s response to your offers or questions. That means that you will patiently support your child in the consequences of the decisions you have offered.
- Be consistent. Always think ahead to the consequences of the choices you offer or the objections you override.
In so doing, you will gradually become less a teacher of ‘learned helplessness’ and more an enabler of strength and confidence.
