So I’m sitting here this morning, The Mrs. out of town and The Boy and I getting ready to head to the water park, when he starts getting antsy. He’s ready to go (as am I, to be honest — I’m a water park freak) and having a hard time controlling his excitement, when I continue to test a little theory I have.
You see, we parents often forget the rules ourselves, something The Boy reminded me a few weeks ago.
We were at Costco when we headed down the breakfast aisle Valley of Breakfast — that cavernous quarter-mile featuring ten pound bags of cereal and cases of cereal bars — and witnessed a mom with three boys in various states of spaz.
Her littlest one was relentlessly pleading for some Crunchberries when she said, “It’d be nice if you said ‘Please’ once in a while!” Her middle one was standing in the cart demanding some Cinnamon Toast Crunch, while the older one was doing wind sprints to the end of the aisle and back.
She caved to the youngest (as we all have at times), chucked the Crunchberries with a berry-crushing thud into her cart, and swooped him and the track star into the square foot of space left among the flats of can goods and month’s worth of boxed dinners. All the while she ordered them about with a tepid confidence born out of not enough sleep and too much Starbuck’s.
We passed with a look of understanding and pity, remembering why we only have one.
But as she continued down the aisle with the Triumvirate of Chaos, The Boy looked at me and said, “She should have said ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you.’ Those are the magic words.”
I replied, “Yes. Yes she should.”
It was then I decided that, instead of acting like some Daddy Despot, I’d use The Magic Words as much as humanly possible. It wouldn’t mean our home would suddenly become some socialist paradise where The Boy gets equal say–we let him make some decisions (what to wear, options for snacks, etc.), but I really don’t feel like eating Goldfish crackers for every meal, staying up until midnight, and skipping work every day to watch Higglytown Heroes. Instead, it would mean instead of ordering and demanding, I’d ask nice.
And I’ve got to say, folks: it works. Very, very well.
It was proven again about ten minutes ago when The Boy was on the edge of a meltdown. I just said, very calmly, “Please be patient, buddy. We’ll be goin’ soon. And that just means we’ve got more time to play around here!”
When he calmed down (5 second later, tops), I said, “Thank you for calmin’ down, buddy. And thank you for tryin’ so hard to be patient.”
He’s now being a super-duper angel and reminding how just how patient and good he’s being.
Granted, this doesn’t work all the time, but it works enough to make it well worth the effort. And it does take an effort–after spending the past year or so raising my voice and expecting him to jump every time I ask, asking nice helps me remain calm and reminds me that he will, more often than not, comply if I just wait a few more seconds.
So try it for a while and see what happens. Hell, even if you don’t have kids, try it at work, the store, with a bill collector–wherever. Some people may think you’re nuts, others won’t notice, and a few may even reciprocate.
Regardless, you may be surprised at how much of a difference it makes.
Daddyology 
