By Hal E. Runkel, LMFT

Ever feel like you’ve blown it? You’ve faced a critical test (with your kids this morning, for instance), you had every desire to respond in the right way, do the right thing, and you do the very thing you swore you’d never do again. You blew up at your kids, or caved in, or just checked out, and now you feel like you’ve blown another opportunity to make some progress in those relationships. You just blew it.

Please forgive the sports metaphor, but Brad Lidge knows how you feel. Lidge is the “closer” for the Houston Astros, my favorite baseball team. As closer, he is called upon to finish the game. His team has the lead with one inning to go, and it’s his job to get the last three outs and claim victory. In dramatic wording, this feat is called “saving” the game.

So what happens if he doesn’t get the save? What’s that called? You guessed it: a “blown” save. What a job, huh? Out there on the world’s stage, out there for the world to see and judge, Lidge and other closers like him can “save” the game. Or they can “blow” it.

Well, two nights ago, Lidge got his chance. Thanks to a late-inning homerun, the Astros came to the ninth inning with a two-run lead over the St. Louis Cardinals. The Astros simply needed three outs to win the game, win the series, and move on to the World Series for the first time in their existence. He got the first two outs easily, and he quickly rang up two strikes on the last batter. The crowd began to lather up with 45 years of pent-up frustration and hope. The First Couple of Astros fans, George and Barbara Bush, stood up with eager anticipation just behind home plate. This was a chance to ease all the pain and make up for past mistakes, and set in motion a new pattern, and new standard of excellence.

A base hit, a walk, and a towering three-run homer later, however, and the Cardinals had a miraculous comeback to bring the series back to St. Louis. And Brad Lidge had nothing but the worst blown save of his career. Ask him and he’ll tell you: he absolutely blew it. In front of God and everybody, he blew it.

Maybe you can feel his pain. You probably know what it’s like to blow it. Like this morning. With your kids. And it hurts. It hurts knowing you could have done better. It hurts knowing how many people were depending on you to do it better. It hurts knowing you’ve blown a moment that you can never re- create, never get back.

In this section of our newsletter, we have Hal answer a direct question asked by one of our ScreamFree Parents. Today's question comes from a stay-at-home mom looking for a reward system to help motivate her kids toward better behavior

Dear Hal,
I am trying to have a ScreamFree life. I am trying to be consistent with my 8- and 7-year-olds. I also have a 10-month-old. The key word is "trying". I would love some ideas on a chart for chores, behavior, etc. I can somewhat come up with a chore, behavior chart, but have a hard time with rewards. I am a stay-at-home mom and I can't always reward with money. I would love any advice.
Thanks, Jen

Dear Jen,
Thanks so much for the question. I definitely hear and understand the desire for an effective charting/reward system, one designed to improve my kids' behavior. This desire usually comes strongest when we start to intentionally become ScreamFree, start to focus more on ourselves, and yet still get frustrated with continuing behavior problems.

There have been times during my own parenting journey when I have explored and then implemented different reward systems, with my refrigerator bearing the spreadsheet marks to prove it.

The difficulty with such reward systems is twofold-- they don't work, and they lead us down a path of future failure.

They don't work because apart from some possible short-term changes, such reward systems are only as effective as the parents' ability to constantly keep up with and monitor their kids' behavior, and constantly keep upgrading the rewards. This constant monitoring and upgrading usually leaves the parents just as exhausted as they were before implementing the system, and leaves the kids behaving well only when monitoring and upgrading are close at hand.

And this leads to future failure because it only exacerbates the very patterns that are leading to problems in the first place--the parents are too involved with, orbiting too much around the kids and their behavior. This creates a dynamic of purely external motivation in the kids' lives, and they begin to act only out of fear Dad is watching or expectation that Dad is paying.

And they never grow their own inner motivation.

Alfie Kohn, in his recent book Unconditional Parenting, shows extensive research (and logic) into the failure of reward systems. I highly recommend it, as a companion to ScreamFree Parenting, because we parents need alternative ways of thinking.

So what's an alternative to reward systems? Continuing to focus less on your child's behavior and more on your own. If you want to create a behavior chart, make one for yourself, and learn to congratulate yourself on how well you respond to your kids.

Your kids are going to continue to present challenges, especially as you grow as a parent, because they want to see you continue to grow. They want to respect you, depend on you, be inspired by you.

And that's the only way we can really influence their behavior. By inspiring them to respect us by showing how much we respect them. By inspiring them to make choices and learn from consequences by highlighting those choices, respecting their ability to choose, and refusing to tell them what to do all the time.

Always remember that you are not the boss of them. They are the boss of themselves, and they've got choices to make. The reward they are seeking is not ever something you can provide. The reward they're really seeking is the same we're all seeking, self- respect and self-confidence.

Seek that for yourself, in every situation with your kids, and you'll be amazed at what happens in them.

And remember to take care,

Hal

Do you have a Parenting question for Hal, the author and creator of ScreamFree Parenting? Contact Us Directly. We will answer a limited number of questions in upcoming newsletters.

Please note that we cannot answer all questions, so we encourage you to present your questions or parenting issues in the ScreamFree Parenting Forum. Here you can interact with other parents on the ScreamFree Journey and share your questions and successes. Visit the ScreamFree Parenting Forum today and discuss parenting issues with parents all over the country.