35（英）What children should or should not know about adult matters

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你好。 Himalaya’s subscribers.This is Dr. Jane Nelsen with the honor to share more positive disciplinetools with you. Today, we will be discussing what children should or should notknow about adult matters. The answer of course depends on the adult matters. Wewill discuss which ones are beneficial for children to know about, and whichones are too much for them to handle. The first thing you should know is thatchildren already know much more about adult matters than you think they do,just because of the energy you create.

Children are very good at reading energy. They know when you are angry andthey know when you are happy. One clue is your tone of voice. This is why thetone of voice tool is an important positive discipline tool. It can be veryconfusing to children if you say everything is fine, but your tone of voicelets them know loud and clear that everything is not fine. The other clue isthe look on your face, as one child said to her mother, if you aren’t angry,why are your lips so tight?

It's not a good idea to tell children the details of all your problems, butit is good idea to tell them the truth about your feelings. You could say I'mfeeling sad or mad. So I'm going to take some positive time out for myselfuntil I can feel better, and can figure out some solutions. One adult matterthat you should not share with your children is arguments between husband andwife. During our workshop on positive discipline for keeping the joy inrelationships, we do an experiential activity where three people role playchildren who sit in the middle of the floor while three couples fight over aballoon.

The balloon represents a challenge that the parents are fighting about,yelling at each other as one parent tries to pop the balloon and the otherparent tries to protect it. After about sixty seconds, we ask the observers toknow what they noticed. They noticed how the parents completely forgot aboutthe children and don’t notice how scared they are. Sometimes some of the roleplayers, even our start crying because it brings up memories of how terriblethey felt when they were young children and their parents would fight.

We then ask people who are role playing the children, what they werelearning about themselves and about relationships. They share that they believethey don't even matter. And that relationships are not respectful and loving.This is not a healthy model for your children. Hopefully you will use thepositive discipline tools in your marriage to be loving and respectful and tofocus on solutions. Now let's talk about some adult matters that can beappropriate for children to know about.

It could be very helpful for children to learn what it takes to earn moneyand to run a household. This doesn't mean you have to tell them all thedetails, but it can be very helpful to share a budget of how much money isavailable. And that there is a limit. Children need to know that money doesn’tgrow on trees. Let them know what steps you have to take to earn a living, suchas studying hard in school, or to learn special skills. Help them what theywould like to do someday and what steps they need to do to accomplish theirgoals.

Giving children allowance is a positive discipline tool. It is helpful togive children allowance to teach them how to budget their money to buy thethings they need, and to save for the things they want in the future. Childrenappreciate the things they want much more when they save their money to helpwith purchase. And sometimes they don’t really want it if they know they haveto save for it. When children have allowance, it is important that you don’tgive them more if they spend all their allowance too soon. They can learn theconsequences of not saving enough to last a whole week. Of course as they getolder, they can ask for a raise in their allowance if they can make good casefor why they need more.

It can also be helpful to have children be more aware of the chores thatneed to be done to run a home smoothly. Money matters, and chores can becombined to teach valuable life lessons. For example, in one of our familymeetings, the kids have been complain about doing their chores, so we made alist of all the things daddy did and all the things mommy did and very fewthings that kids were asked to do.

They were surprised to see how long our lists were and how short theirlists were. We jokingly asked if they would like to trade. Of course theydidn't want to, but they stopped complaining so much about what they were askedto do. Then we discussed money by sharing how much money it took to pay so manyof the household bills, including the money for food, clothing, utilities andtransportation. This discovered the positive discipline tools of both jobs andallowances. The children could see why it made sense for them to do chores andwhy they needed to spend their allowance wisely.

During family meetings, we also discussed vacations by first sharing howmuch money was available to spend. Then everyone could participate inbrainstorming about what we could do that would be fun and respectful toeveryone. It was very helpful when we had a family meeting to talk about a bigvacation to Hawaii. We parents made a big list of all the things that ruinedvacations for us, such as when they fought with each other，when theycomplained that they were bored. And when they ask for more money than theirallowance, and when they didn't want to go to nice restaurants.

Mark said, what about a list of things that ruin vacations for kids? Thatwas fair. Their list included driving too long without breaks, eating in fancyrestaurants, and telling them how they can't spend their allowance money. Thenwe use the tool of focusing on solutions to solve these problems. We decidedthat we would let the kids have hamburgers and then spend time by themselveswhen we went to nicer restaurants, we would not tell them how to spend theirallowance, and we wouldn't give them anymore when their allowance was gone. Wewould all take turns deciding which activities to do each day. So everyone didsome things they wanted to do, and we all not complain when doing what theothers wanted to do.

If any of these agreements were broken, we would sit down on the sand andhave another family meetings to solve the problem. It turned out to be a veryenjoyable vacation. Regarding adult matters, we have discussed several positivediscipline tools when sharing what adult matters are appropriate and which onesto avoid. Number one, tone of voice. Remember that your tone of voice conveys abig message than what you say.

Number two, sharing the truth about your feelings. Children can read theenergy of your feelings. So it better to share your feelings honestly. It canbe as simply as saying I am anger right now, I will give back to you later. Number three, positive time out for you, as well as your children. Modelingself regulation is the best way to teach self regulation to you children. It isokay to let them know when you need some time to calm down.

So important is number four, modeling respectful behavior. We can’t expect childrento be respectful when we are not. Number five, focusing on solutions. Numbersix, family meetings, which is one of the best ways to focus on solutions.Number seven, jobs to have children learn the importance of contribution. Sothey learn the balance of both love and responsibility. Number eight,allowances, to help them learn money management.

Now let’s talk about sex. This is an adult matter that definitely shouldnot be shared with children. I don’t mean sex education. children need to havethe talk where babies come from. If you talk about reproduction in very simpleterms when children around 3 or 4, it’s not such a big deal to them. As theyget older, you could be more expressive with information. If you wait muchlonger, they will have already heard from missing information about sex formtheir friends. Still, children should not see sexual behavior between theirparents. They should see affection such as hugs and kisses and they shouldreceive loves, hugs and kisses. Children should not be allowed to havesmartphones, tablets, or any kind of screens in their bedroom. When you can’tcontrol what they are watching, they could be viewing many adult matters thatare not appropriate.

There is another adult matter that has huge impact on your children. It iswhen parents disagree about how to discipline their children. It is typicalthat opposite attract, one parent may be too firm without being kind, the otherparent maybe too kind without being firm. This is an adult matter that youshould not discuss in front of the children. It would be best if you listen tothis part case together. So you can come close to having similar parentingstyle. However, if it is not possible, I suggest that you avoid trying tocorrect your spouse in front of your children. Have facing your children thatthey are clever enough to know how to change their behavior depending on whichparent they are with. This actually give them an opportunity to know how to getalong with different kinds of people.

Especially, if I list you are teaching your children the kinds of qualitiesand life skills they need to be good problem solvers，If you areproviding them with good balance of love and responsibility. Then they will have the healthy self-esteem and resilienceto handle just about anything. In this lesson you have learned that you can usesome adult matters to provide teachable moments for your children through reallife experiences, to learn about respect for relationships and respectfulcommunication, budgeting, contributing and focusing on solutions that meet theneeds of everyone. In the next lesson, I will discuss the issue of parentingboys and girls differently.