Hey Mom and Dad, Pay Attention

My daughter was 4 years old a long time ago. I was talking to my neighbor over the fence in our yard. Rachel came up to me, tugged on my pant leg, and announced, “I need some attention.” Whoa! I stopped my conversation with my neighbor and gave Rachel the attention she asked for.
          Now, wouldn’t it be nice if our children asked for our attention in that manner all of the time. Alas, not so.
          Molly was on her cell phone with the mother of one of 9 yr. old Alexa’s friends. They were just gossiping. Alexa guessed who her mom was talking to and decided that she wanted to talk to her friend as well. She proceeded to paw at her mom, dramatically her to give her the cell phone so she could say “hi.” Molly got mad.
          She asked her neighbor to hold on a sec and turned to her daughter. “If you don’t stop bugging me while I’m on the phone, I will pop you so hard you won’t be able to sit for a week,” she threatened, wagging her finger in Alexa’s face. Alexa stopped, turned dejectedly and shuffled away, whimpering about how mama just doesn’t understand.
          In Teachable Moments: Building Blocks of Christian Parenting, I note that the concept of attention has an absolute quality about it. That is, either positive attention or negative attention will fill the bill. Sadly, positive attention seems to be much harder, longer getting, and less frequent than negative attention. So, kids naturally find negative ways to fill their attentional needs.
          Another visual image I share with readers in chapter four, Children Never Mean What They Say, is this. Imagine that children have 100 parts to them. Whatever type of attention they seek, it will always add up to 100. So, if a child has 12 parts positive attention, by definition she has 88 parts negative attention.
          Now, here’s where you come in as the parent. Whatever part you pay attention to grows. So, if you talk to your daughter about the good choices she is making, the positive parts grow from 12 to 14. By definition, her negative parts shrink from 88 to 86. Conversely, your yelling, discounting, ignoring causes the negative to grow and the positive to shrink.
          Mom and dad, pay attention. Focus on what your child is doing and saying right while ignoring as much as possible what they are saying and doing wrong. Where correction is called for, talk to your child after all has settled down with a prompting comment such as, “Golly, sweetheart, that wasn’t like you. What else is going on? How do you think this might have turned out better? Such questions get your child’s brain moving back in a positive direction. Paying attention to these details will lead to many teachable moments.

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