Page 60 - The Intentional Parent

Some children avoid meeting your expectations of their performance because their own agenda is more important to fulfill than yours. Children, after all, are opportunistic creatures. Consider the child who prefers playing video games and watching television to doing homework. The child might be perfectly capable of doing homework, but simply prefers not to. There might be more rewarding activities to pursue in his or her environment than what you think is important. In this instance, the parents “knows” that ability is there, but motivation is not. The behaviors you might choose to address in your parenting actions might include:
1.Demanding better quality work with better work habits and imposing a short term consequence or restriction until your expectations are met.
2.Eliminating opportunities for distraction over the long term (taking the television and the video game playing station out of a child’s room altogether until long term expectations are met).
These actions and other actions where you place a demand on a child for not meeting your expectations are all quite appropriate, even when they cause your child to fuss, complain or even tantrum. If you stick to your expectations (as long as they are in line with your child’s abilities), more than likely they will be met.
However, your actions should take a different emphasis when your child appears frustrated by the performance based tasks required of him or her. You can usually tell when your child’s performance is suffering from undue frustration because when kids become overly frustrated they become emotionally fragile -- irritable and often self-deprecating (“I am terrible,” “I am stupid,” “I can’t do
The Intentional Parent by Peter J. Favaro, Ph.D. 60