Hellobee

We’ve worked over the years to build a strong relationship of trust and love with the kids. I think that this strong trust has really helped us weather the storms of toddler tantrums and preschooler behavior problems.

I really love this picture of Bee and Charlie from last summer, because you can tell how close they are!

Looking back, there are four main things we’ve done to really build up the trust and love with our kids. (Most of the stories below involve our older son Charlie, because he’s older and so he’s the one that we tested out a lot of these theories on!)

1. Establish that my job is to protect the kids

Charlie loves to climb up on the trees that our local park cuts down after tornadoes and hurricanes! We leave him to his own devices, unless he’s in a really dangerous area and then we spot him.

Right around when he turned two, Charlie started coming out of his room at night and wandering around the apartment.  Naturally I was frustrated, but I was also really concerned about his safety.  So after I put him down and left his room, we’d watch him on the monitor until he fell asleep. If he left the room, I would have to go up to his bedroom and usher him back to bed. It was a constant game of cat and mouse. We even tried locking his door for a few days, which helped a lot, but didn’t completely end his desire to leave his room whenever he woke up at night.

Finally one day, I explained to him why it was so important to me that he stay in his room. I told him that his room is a safe place, and that as long as he stays in his room, that I know that he’s safe.  He didn’t really seem convinced by this, so I upped the stakes and asked him if he knew what my job was. He said no, but I could tell that he was curious. I told him that my job is to protect him, and that the best way that I could do that was to make sure that he stayed in his room. I could see the wheels turning in his head as he thought about what I had just said. For whatever reason, he really loved the idea that my job was to protect him.  And finally, he understood why it was so important to me that he stay in his room where it was safe.

Since then, Charlie has been much more understanding of my various requests of him as his parent. I’ve noticed that he trusts my decisions more, knowing where I’m coming from.  He used to get really frustrated when I would prevent him from doing things that he wanted, like running full speed ahead of me on the sidewalk towards an intersection. I just accepted this as part of parenting, but things have really changed. Now after I tell him to stop running, he’ll say, “I know. It’s your job to protect me. I won’t run.”

The first time he said that to me, I was flabbergasted! But what I’ve found is that he feels a lot more secure knowing that Bee and I consider protecting him our job.  And it’s also given him a much deeper understanding of why we say and do many of the things that we have to do as his parents.

What’s my job? To protect my kids. We both know it and now that he’s getting older, he has a job too. To protect his little sister.

2. Make small promises and keep them

We all make little promises to the kids over the course of the day, and then promptly forgot about them.  “If you stay in your stroller, when you get home you can have a video.”

Often when kids are younger, they will forget about your promise. That makes for an easy win: you get all the benefits of a bribe without actually having to dole it out!

After a while though, I realized that I was missing out on an opportunity to build trust with the kids. Here I was promising to do something and then not following up on it!  That wasn’t the sort of example we wanted to set for the kids. So I started reminding the kids of the little promises that I had made and that they had forgotten about.

“Remember when I said earlier that if you sat quietly in your stroller all the way home, then you could watch a video?  Well you did a great job listening, and I wanted to make sure to keep my promise. So you can watch a short video now… and I wanted to let you know that I noticed that you’ve really been listening well lately and I’m proud of you.”

Now the kids understand that promises – even small ones – are a big deal and that I will always follow through on a promise that I make.  This has really strengthened the trust in our relationship, and helped make them better listeners to boot.

I’ve also noticed that knowing I will have to follow through on my small promises means that I am less quick to offer a bribe. Note: following through on promises applies equally to bribes and to threats! If you threaten a consequence and are ignored, it’s important that you follow through on the threat as well. I think consistency is really important on this stuff, and builds trust in the long run.

3. Pinky Promise

For a while, I noticed that Charlie was fairly quick to make promises that he didn’t really plan to keep. As my parents told me growing up, “Talk is cheap!”

So to up the stakes, we instituted a new policy of pinky promises. If Charlie promises to do something, then I get down to his eye level and say very seriously, “Is that a pinky promise?” When he says yes, then we lock pinkies and he states his promise; something like, “I pinky promise that I will pick up the blocks when I’m done playing.” After he’s made his promise, then I remind him that a pinky promise can not be broken.

Later on, if he doesn’t do what he promised, I get back down to his eye level and remind him that he made a pinky promise and that he has to follow through. He knows that pinky promises are serious business! He takes promises a lot more seriously now, and has been much better about following through on promises without a reminder.

Olive is in her 2’s, but I recently taught her what a pinky promise is and she loves them! I hope that over time, she embraces pinky promises as much as her brother.

4. Be Stingy with Promises

I learned the hard way that Charlie views everything I say as a promise, even when it’s not!

For example, the other day I was thinking that we hadn’t had much alone time, just the two of us. Usually, the whole family hangs out together – which is wonderful, but I’ve been trying to get some alone time with each kid at least once or twice a month.

So to get things started, I caught Charlie’s attention and asked him to hang out:

Me: “Would you like to go on a walk and get some coffee, just the two of us?”
Charlie: “Yes, let’s go get ice cream!”
Me: “Ok, we can get a small ice cream.”

We went to get ice cream and had a great time! But then later, he said I had lied to him.

Charlie: “You promised me we could get coffee, but then you broke your promise!! You lied!”
Me: “…”

I’ve been noticing that lately, he’s been having trouble understanding a choice and a promise. As a result, for now I’ve learned to never lead with a specific promise of any kind – like going to get coffee. Now I’ll say something more like, “I’d love to spend some time together and walk around the neighborhood, just the two of us. Where do you want to go?”

It’s more open-ended, which can be dangerous… but usually he just wants to go to the local coffee place or to the ice cream store. Or to the backyard to dig. So we’ll do that, until he has a better grasp of how choices work. Either way though, it’s been paying off to limit the number of things I say that might be seen as a promise!

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I’m really happy with the current level of trust we have with our kids! It’s helped us deal with a lot of the thorny behavior issues that cropped up when Charlie hit his “threenager” years!

It’s been a bit trickier building trust with our daughter (she’s 2 1/2), as she’s not as verbal… so we’ve actually come up with a bunch of ways to build closeness with your kids when they’re younger. I’ll write about that in my next post.

How do you build trust with your little ones?