The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance. Download Chapter One for free at drkenner.com.

Francisco, welcome to the show. You're having problems with your five-year-old?

Yes.

How are you doing today?

Oh, very good. Yes, I have a five-year-old kid.

A son? Daughter?

A son.

A son. Okay.

Well, basically I'm calling you because I want some professional advice, and I want to try to be a better parent for him. I want him to be a better kid around anybody.

And what was that last word? You want—

I want him to be a better kid around any other kids, around any other adults. What's going on here is—I know you have only so much time, and he told me to hurry up and tell you exactly what's going on—

Okay.

I'll take him to the daycare, and he's not respecting adults at all. He thinks it's funny, like no big deal. Like, for example, a lady at the daycare, she told him to pick up some papers. He said, "No." She said, "I'm putting you in time out." He didn't say nothing; he just moved his head like, "Oh well," you know what I mean?

Okay, so he's becoming indifferent. You know, some kids are terrified of adults—like the example, I don't know if you just heard it—but you know, "Okay Dad, I'll do whatever you want," that type of a feel. And other kids just say, "You can yell at me as much as you want, but I'm just gonna laugh at you. You don't bother me."

Kinda, kinda like that. He acts that way if I tell him, "Okay, well, I'm not gonna buy you a toy," or "I'm not gonna take you to the park," or whatever. He's only five years old. I mean, that scares me a lot, because imagine if he's 10 or 13 years old, he'll walk away from me.

So you're worried that you're losing your son, which is very sad. You're worried that—what's your worst fear?

Not really about losing him, yeah. Basically, it's that he doesn't listen to what I tell him to do.

Can you give me a quick example—not something that the daycare lady told him to do—but something in your home, maybe today or yesterday, that you told him to do?

Okay, for example, right now I'm just telling him, "Okay, I'm gonna paint," or, "You're gonna pick up this mess on this table." They have a table where they normally do homework or pictures or whatever.

Okay, how many kids do you have?

I only have two.

Two. And how old is the other one?

My other one is 10 years old. The other one is—yeah, she's listening. I mean, she is completely different from the way he is.

So she's the golden girl, and he's the problem kid?

Yeah, but I think I treat them both the same.

Okay. You would be surprised. Parents feel that they treat all their kids the same, and kids get very different feelings from parents. In fact, there's an exercise in a course that I gave, and there's a book on this course—I mention this book a lot—it's called "How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk." One of the exercises in the book, when I taught it as a course, was to have parents, mom and dad, sitting on the floor. This was a course given with just adults—no kids were there—and then you had several adults leave the room, and each one was to enter the room, and without the parents saying anything, the parents were going to invite the kid, like, "Hey, come on here." Your name's Francisco. Let's say that you were playing the kid. "Hey Francisco, we're putting together a puzzle." And then we would not give you any labels. We wouldn't say you were the slow child; we wouldn't say you were the bratty child; we wouldn't say you were the golden boy. But we would treat you according to one of those labels.

And so, for the bratty, pesty child, we'd say, "Francisco, can't you go play with your toys a little bit?" And you—without us telling you that you were the pest—you would know it, wouldn't you? You know you're under our hair. "Can you go play with the toys? Daddy and I are trying to focus on this puzzle." To the kid who was the golden boy, it's like, "Oh, can you help us put this puzzle together? We're having a lot of problems, and you're really good at solving them." You know, the kid feels very different. So I would recommend that book. You can look on my website; I have it listed there. It's drkenner.com—my website is D-R-K-E-N-N-E-R.com.

Okay, I'm sorry, D-R-K-E—

K-E-N-N-E-R.com.

Well, let me go on a little bit more, because I'd like to give you some more advice. If you try to use negative—if I said to you, "What's something you like to do as a hobby?" What is it?

Myself?

Yeah.

I'm a mechanic, and I like to build some high-performance engines—not as a hobby, but pretty much that's what I do.

You like to build engines. And if I said, "Listen, if you don't help me with the dishes tonight, I'm not gonna let you build any engines. You hear me? Look at me in the eyes, Francisco, when I speak to you. Are you listening to me? I don't want to hear any lip from you. You're not paying attention to me. I'm telling you, you won't be able to build engines." Tell me what your gut response is. How do you feel right now towards me?

I feel great—I mean, I feel a lot of insecurities in me.

It's true. Do you like what I'm saying or not?

Right.

That's basically the truth.

See, that's the main thing. I want to learn how to be a better person, you know, because I know no matter how much I know, it's not enough. It will never be enough.

Let me stop you. Let me pause this for a minute. What I would feel if somebody had that attitude towards me—"You pick up this mess right now, or else you're not going to the park!"—I would be thinking, "I hate my dad," in that moment. I would be thinking, "He's so mean; he's always threatening me." Even if your son remains silent, he's not having very kind thoughts towards you.

Hey, I gotta interrupt this because we've got to pay some bills. 30 seconds—that's it. A very quick ad, and then Ellen will be back.

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If you had a different approach—for example, with the engine, if I said to you, "I know you can't wait to build your engine. Francisco, I would love some help with the dishes. Any way you could carve out maybe 15 minutes and help me with it?" Do you like that better or not? Yeah, you do. So if you said to him, "You know what? It looks so messy, and this looks like a big task. What if we start in one corner and just work through it, honey? Maybe we could even make a game out of it. Any ideas of how to make a game out of the cleanup task?"

To me?

No, I'm saying if you said that to your son. Anyway, this is a messy table. When I have a messy room or a messy homework table, it's hard for me to know even where to begin. So, approach him as a friend. My guess is you wouldn't tell a friend, "You better do this or else," right?

I understand exactly your point.

So, when we use threats or bribes—"Do this, or I won't take you here"—when we use those types of methods, they backfire. Listen, I hope that helps. Thank you so much for your call.

Well, thank you so much.