Teaching Your Kids Piano? Which Books to Use (and How Piano Should Really Be Taught)

This is part of my piano teaching series. It's really important to read each post in order!

Intro: Discusses what the overall goals should be for music lessons

Part 1 (this post): Explains the principles of how piano should be taught to achieve those overall goals

Part 2: Draws upon those principles to list the specific skills that need to be emphasized from the start

Part 3: A compilation of additional insights to make their learning effective and fun

Part 4: Shows how it's all implemented by detailing my lesson structure

Before we had kids, we decided to make a rule that they all need to take piano lessons until they attain a certain level of proficiency. After that, they will continue to be required to take music lessons of some sort, but they can switch to whatever instrument they want. The problem is, piano lessons are crazy expensive! We can't afford them right now (thanks medical residency #indenturedservitude). But, I play the piano . . . and I like to teach . . . and that's how this whole teaching-my-kids-piano thing fell into my lap. [Update 4/1/2020: Looking back, I am so grateful for this, because I believe they're now getting better musical training than they could have gotten anywhere else, and I'm learning a ton as well!]

I soon realized, though, that I have no idea what books to use! Which ones will be the most effective and enjoyable for my lucky future students? Here's what I learned after way too many hours of study and research. May it save someone a little time one day when they have to go through this same process.

WHAT IS A PIANO METHOD?
First, for beginner students, you should probably get a "piano method," which is a collection of piano books all written by the same author(s) and designed to take a new piano student sequentially through all the basics of what they need to learn. You could instead use random books and make up your own method, but a formal method makes it easy because it organizes and sequences the lessons for you AND it gives your child an easy way to track their progress, which is critical for sustaining motivation ("I've finished the first of four levels! I'm actually accomplishing something!").

HOW TO CHOOSE A PIANO METHOD
So which of the tons of methods should you choose? When I read reviews or asked people myself, I was overwhelmed with information. The ocean of opinions basically boils down to this: piano teachers are pretty much pleased with any method that has fun music, is sequenced logically, and does a reasonably good job with how it goes about explaining things; they will rave about any method that additionally focuses on "comprehensive musicianship" (integrating other skills like ear training, improv, theory, composition, and so forth). When only considering those criteria, most of today's popular methods seem pretty equal, so just choose any of the popular method books that are catered to your child's age and Bob's your uncle, right?

Wrong. There's much more to it than that.

THE MOST IMPORTANT SKILL A PIANO METHOD SHOULD TEACH
When I started thinking harder about what I wanted my children to get out of lessons, I thought about all the people in the world who took thousands of dollars' worth of piano lessons as kids and now have nothing to show for it. Why? I explain why in my intro post to this series, and you should read that first if you haven't. Basically, they were not taught in a way that achieved any fluency in the language of music.

Fluency in the language of music involves a lot of skills that I won't rehash here, but I would argue that the most important one is the ability to read music fluently. That's the skill that will have the biggest impact on whether childhood piano lessons lead to lifelong piano playing or not. Think about it with me for a second. Without a really high music reading level, tackling any new intermediate to advanced song (i.e., pretty much every song they would want to play) requires way too much practice time and effort for them. They won't be able to sight read Christmas sing-alongs at a Christmas party, or accompany a congregation or soloist without way-in-advance notice. They won't be able to just sit down and play beautiful-sounding music for catharsis, or be a keyboardist for a band. Instead, the only songs they will play for the rest of their lives will be the few they memorized for recitals decades ago.

I want to emphasize this: A student's level of music reading is the number one thing that determines how much piano playing will become a part of their future life.

And even if your dream is for your child to become more than just a piano hobbyist (say, a professional pianist), music-reading-focused training will maximize their chances of ending up there as well. (But maybe you should fork out the dough to get a professional teacher . . . who teaches the stuff explained in this series, which is unfortunately a rare find.)

Therefore, regardless of the goals you have for your child's piano lessons, if you understand what goes into high-level music reading, you can start to separate out the best methods from the rest because you know which playing habits they should be fostering from the start. Here are the core skills (in no particular order) that determine someone's music reading ability and, therefore, are the most important skills for a young pianist to learn:

1. Intervallic note reading: Finding their next note based on its distance from the last one

This is faster than individual note identification, and they should be able to rely on this skill for reading most notes in a song--not that this means they shouldn't be lightning fast at individual note identification as well! But a good piano method will provide lots of practice--often in the form of transposition activities--targeted at helping them recognize all different kinds of intervals so they will effortlessly read notes this way.

2. Chunking: Recognizing groups/configurations of notes rather than just seeing individual notes (this is akin to reading word by word rather than letter by letter)

This requires a firm grasp of theory so they can understand music (i.e., see the chords in the music rather than just seeing a bunch of random notes). The theory taught should directly relate to the songs they will be playing that week so they can see it in action, otherwise they'll probably get in the habit of thinking of theory as a separate thing and will never see it in the songs they are playing.

Additionally (and this may be a shock to you), they also need experience playing in all the key signatures pretty early on (a "multi-key" method), which will help them start to recognize how different key signatures' note groups/configurations look on the staff and feel in their hands. If they get used to seeing the note groups/configurations in the music for only a select number of key signatures, they will only be able to chunk well in those key signatures, so the number of songs they'll eventually be able to sight read fluently will be limited significantly. Playing in every key from the start like this will help them to "be" in a key when they're playing in that key; the chords, the white and black notes used, and everything will feel natural to them. Piano methods that start out almost exclusively in C major, plus an occasional G major or F major, perpetuate the myth that songs with more sharps or flats are harder, when really it's just that they don't have experience being/thinking in different keys like that.

Improvisation activities are also super helpful to get them to start seeing the chords in the music they're playing. For example, giving them songs that don't have all the notes written in and requiring them to add those notes in themselves. This gets them to start chunking because it forces them to recognize the chords the song is using so they can know which notes will fit.

3. Predictive fingering: Basing their fingering on the notes they're playing now and the notes they'll be playing next

Predictive fingering is mostly developed via technique activities that help their fingers automatically know the right places to go; but, again, they need to be doing technique activities in all key signatures, or else playing in that unpracticed key will feel foreign to their fingers. The idea is to have their level of technique always be a little ahead of their playing ability so they can focus on all the other challenges inherent in reading music without also having to worry about the technical challenges.

The other aspect of predictive fingering is seeing beforehand the upcoming fingering challenges and adjusting their fingering accordingly. This happens when they're looking ahead in the music, which they can only do well when they keep their eyes on the music rather than looking down at the keyboard all the time (explained next). It also comes from them doing a pre-read routine before they read any song (discussed more in Part 2).

4. Location awareness: Always knowing exactly where their hands are on the keyboard and being able to find the next notes without EVER looking down

The only way to develop this location awareness is to play with their fingers amongst the black keys; the pattern of black key groupings will always tell them exactly where they are. Without this skill, they are left relying solely on their memory of where their hand was last placed, which is ineffective because everyone forgets so quickly on account of thinking about so many other things while they're trying to read music! And, even in those times when they do happen to remember where their hands are, they still have no means of jumping to semi-distant keys without looking down.

Piano methods that start out only in the key of C (plus an occasional song in F or G) facilitate the bad habit of playing on the ends of the keys because they're not requiring students to use any black keys, and teachers aren't always around during practice time to correct this, so this is another reason to choose a multi-key method. When location awareness is trained into a beginner pianist from the start, they will be feeling where their hands are automatically from pretty early on. You know they're doing well at this skill when you can tell them to stop playing and name the key a certain finger is on, and they'll be able to do it immediately without looking.

Location awareness facilitates much more fluent sight reading because they can keep their eyes focused on absorbing all the musical symbols on the page and looking ahead in the music rather than constantly interrupting that focus by glancing (even peripherally) at the keyboard.

Sidenote: I want to mention "position playing" here as well because it's a hotly debated teaching strategy, and it's used by many piano methods. Position playing is when the student plants their hands in one place on the keyboard and never has to move them from that base position for the whole song. I understand why methods use this technique. They're trying to get students to be able to play nice-sounding songs right from the get-go so they enjoy playing piano right from the start. They're also trying to implement the super-important principle of teaching one skill at a time (first learn to play notes you see written on a staff, then move on to more complex skills like moving your hands to different places on the keyboard). It also helps build intervallic note-reading skills early on. But the downside is that they really aren't truly reading music yet. You can tell because if they get even one note wrong, the rest of the song will be wrong because they're basing their intervals off the wrong note. All in all, position playing does seem to have its place very early on for the reasons mentioned above, but it should be transitioned away from pretty soon after they've gotten those initial skills down.

5. Music reading practice: No matter how good they are at those other skills, this is what will make the biggest difference in sight-reading skill level

This one is super important! All those other things I've talked about up to this point are pre-requisites, but this is the one that mostly determines their eventual reading skill level (assuming they're doing the other ones right).

And here is the greatest tragedy of modern piano teaching: Almost every piano method out there is designed in a way that the student gets assigned a few songs, and then they are required to play those songs over and over, day after day, week after week, until they can play them well. Only then do they get to try reading new songs.

An effective piano method should have new reading material (new songs to read/play) in every practice session. That is what the student needs to help pull all the other sight-reading skills together and hone them.

I will explain this further.

Any time a pianist plays a song, they could be playing it at one of four levels.

Category 0 - noise:  It's so bad that it doesn't even count as music.

Category 1 - passable: Not great, but at least you can tell what the song should sound like.

Category 2 - proficient: Sounding pretty great, but there will still be a fair number of mistakes.

Category 3 - performance level: They're owning it.

The first couple times you ever play a song, it is new reading material. And if you come back to it at least a day later and play it another couple times, it probably remains unfamiliar enough that it could still be considered new reading material. Any more play-throughs above that, and it's too familiar to be considered new reading material.

If a student is playing new reading material at a Category 0, it's just way too difficult, and they're not learning anything. If they're playing new reading material at a Category 1 or 2, it's in the sweet spot, and they are pushing their reading skills forward. And if they're playing new reading material at a Category 3, it's too easy for their reading skills to be improving, but hopefully they are focusing on playing it ultra musically, so they're instead improving their ability to play musically.

And what's happening when a song has been played through enough times that it can no longer be considered new reading material? Any time spent playing that song is improving your skill at playing that specific song. It's a song-specific benefit, not transferable to any other songs (essentially memorizing the tricky parts and how it feels in your fingers).

Spending time improving your ability to play a specific song isn't just wasted time. There are many reasons we would spend extra time on a song to push it up to a Category 2 or 3:

• To gain experience with the most effective methods of learning a song by rote
• It's a song that you really love and just want to be able to play really well
• The song uses a specific style or technique that you want to get better at playing
• You're going to perform it somewhere
• It's one of those "standard repertoire" songs that every pianist should know

Now let me summarize and make the point I've been leading up to with all that explanation in this section. An effective piano method should have a large majority of a student's practice time be dedicated to playing new reading material that is the right difficulty level for them (Category 1 or 2). Every minute spent pushing their reading skills forward like this is saving future hours trying to learn songs by rote (the sharpening the saw analogy applies here). It's also good for them to spend a little time regularly playing songs that are easy for them so they can improve their ability to play musically. And it's even ok for them to occasionally spend extra time on a song pushing it up to a Category 2 or 3, but only if there is a very specific reason for doing so (see those reasons listed above).

One thing that will allow a student to effectively play new reading material at a Category 1 or 2 is if they have already learned all the underlying theory, rhythms, harmonic patterns, fingering, chords, etc. that are used in the song. If that has been done, instead of being distracted trying to figure out completely new musical challenges at the same time they're trying to practice their music reading, they will be able to focus specifically on putting together all the skills they've learned to read music fluently. Again, it's that principle of teaching one skill at a time as much as possible. Adding simple skill to simple skill eventually culminates into masterful playing.

One last point. You probably don't remember learning to read English, but it's initially exhausting; so much effort is required for every word. It's the same with music reading--every bar requires a great deal of effort. For this reason, a good piano method will keep its new reading material short. This not only minimizes fatigue, but it also enables students to read a greater variety of songs.

BAD PIANO METHODS ARE CAUSING KIDS TO QUIT
It should be clear by now that most methods get a lot of things wrong, particularly in their extreme over-emphasis of learning songs by rote. This wastes so much time, and it also takes the fun out of playing music.

My experience taking piano lessons growing up was that by the time I was finally playing a song well enough to sound good, I had already played it through so many times that I didn't even enjoy hearing it anymore. The satisfaction of making beautiful music was mostly lacking in my early piano lesson days. And when I did pass a song off, each new song assignment felt like the beginning of yet another long uphill slog to learn the darn thing. It's no wonder so many kids get tired of piano after a year or two and quit! I'm sure most kids would give up on learning to read English too if we taught it that way.

THE PERFECT PIANO METHOD
Of all the things explained above, many of them can be integrated into any piano method, so they shouldn't impact much the selection of a method. But there are a few things that would be hard for any teacher to add in if they're not built into the method already:

• Experience (in the form of songs and other practice activities) with all the key signatures right from the start (i.e., a "multi-key" piano method)
• A specific focus on providing new reading material for every practice session
• Preparation for playing each week's new reading material by teaching all the requisite things (theory, rhythms, chords, technique, etc.) separately first, which will allow them to focus on reading the music
• Improvisation opportunities that use only the material they have learned up to that point
• Early transition away from position playing

At a minimum, a method I choose needs all of those. And it would be even better if it has other desirables integrated as well, such as composition activities, aural skill-developing activities, explanations of music history, and training on how different styles should be played.

CONCLUSION

Think how easy it is to plant a student's hands on the white keys of a piano, "teach" them to play a bunch of kitschy tunes (all in the key of C, of course), and then declare that they're making great progress. That's not what I want for my children. I want deliberate, sound, permanent piano training. I want them to become fluent in the language of music so they can have the playing of music be an important part of their entire lives.

If a student is taught using the principles described above, their apparent progress will be slower because they initially won't be learning (wasting time on) as many difficult songs to impress their friends and extended family members. Going back to the sharpening-the-saw analogy, teaching piano in this way means they'll be spending the majority of their time sharpening their saw, so the number of trees they are cutting down will intially be few. But once that saw is crazy super sharp, they'll be able to cut down a tree so fast and easily any time, anywhere, their whole life.

You may be wondering if I found any piano methods that look good. The only one I found (although I haven't looked at all of them!) that meets all those core requirements plus many of the optional ones is the Robert Pace Piano Method. Never heard of it, right? I hadn't either. It's not widely used. It certainly has a cult following among teachers who use it (and former students who have been trained in it), but I think it's not "popular" because (1) it's not heavily marketed, (2) it's seen as dated (not new and flashy (Robert Pace believed the music should speak for itself without trying to draw kids in with pictures), (3) teachers believe it requires special training to use (there are Robert Pace teacher training workshops--a byproduct of having a cult following), and (4) some teachers think they'd have to teach it in groups (Robert Pace also wrote a lot about the benefits of teaching in various-sized groups).

So, we'll see how it goes. Let me know if any other good methods are out there. And check out Part 2 for the summary list of skills I have been focusing on with my kids to apply all this stuff.

[Addition 10/18/2020: When you get them through all the basic levels of a piano method, I see that as completing their grade school musical education. They can now be a lifelong functioning member of the music community! And now they have the option of adding more instruments to their skillset, the learning of which should go fairly quickly, and/or they can continue on with their initial instrument into the undergraduate level of musical education. The goals of undergraduate-level musical education are (1) pushing their fluency in music ever higher, (2) improving their instrument-specific technique, (3) acquiring their instrument's standard repertoire. and (4) beginning to shift from being an undifferentiated musician to a differentiated/specialized musician in whatever area of music is most interesting to them by starting to further develop the skills most needed in that area. This would be a good time for them to find a music teacher specialized in that area, and at this point the teaching methods are not quite so paramount because they already have the foundational musical framework into which they will be able to fit the new things that they learn.]

Other Tips for Helping Kids to Eat Right

In my last post, I discussed the main principles you need to follow to prevent or fix picky eating. Here are some other things we’ve discovered along the way that help them learn good food habits.

You need to model a good food relationship. If you are binging and snacking and trying various diets and complaining of being hungry and being preoccupied with your body image, your kids will notice and assume that’s a normal and acceptable way to live. They will pick up those habits, and their risk of having an eating disorder (or, at a minimum, a bad relationship with food) will be much, much higher. It’s a struggle in life you can prevent for them by following for yourself the principles outlined in the last post.

It's an ongoing effort. You have to stick to the principles in the last post every day, consistently, for life. It’s a lifestyle, not a parenting trend. If you slack, your kids will slide with you, and then you’ll have to all start over establishing good habits after you finally realize what a stressor food has become again. Living with discipline all the time is much easier.

Try doing a vegetable course first. For most meals, we start by putting only the veggies on the table, and that’s all we initially dish up for them. We don’t force them to eat all of the veggies before they can have anything else (I think that would turn them off from veggies), but we wait a while before giving them the rest of the meal. This actually helps them eat more vegetables most of the time!

The bad habit of not eating dinner. If they get into a habit of regularly not eating more than their one required bite for dinner because they “don’t like it yet” and just choose to be hungry until breakfast, that may mean they’re missing out on the majority of their veggies for the day. Because we’re really nice parents, we have, on occasion, put their dinner plate in the fridge and then heated that up for them in the morning for breakfast. Amazingly, they usually eat it really well, and it’s very effective at curbing that one-bite-for-dinner habit.

There should be no such thing as "kid food." There's probably something to that whole idea that little palettes are more sensitive or something, but feeding kids "kid food" (instead of what the adults are eating) is losing out on opportunities to help them start to learn to like new, amazing, delicious food. Plus, kid food never ends up being very healthful. Our kids ate everything we ate while we lived in Thailand, and it was initially hard at times, but they came to love so many amazing Thai foods! Even now, our 4-year-old says her favorite food is khao soi, which she initially would refuse to eat (other than the one required bite, of course).

Sitting down together for meals. All these things I’m talking about work much better if you have everyone sitting down and eating together. Not only does it help you track and enforce the good eating habits more easily, but mealtime becomes a looked-forward-to time when the whole family is together interacting. To help kids stay at the table, our rule is that if you get off your chair, that means you're done, so they know to just sit and eat until their tummies are full; they can’t get away with running off to play and then coming back for more later.

Because all kids are different, there is a great variability in how well kids will respond to these tactics. Some will have a hard go of it, but your patient consistency will win out in the end.

Picky Eater? It's the Parents' Fault

Sometimes I hear parents complain about how picky their kids are, and I want to say, "It's your own darn fault--you've trained them that way!" (Sorry.) You, too, are guilty if you do any of the following:

·         If your child doesn't like a meal, you let them get away with eating something else instead

·         You avoid giving your child certain foods because you know they will refuse (and then eat something else--see above)

·         When your child complains of being hungry (which happens regularly), you give them a snack

·         You sometimes say no to a snack, but your child somehow ends up eating before the next scheduled meal anyway

Teaching kids not to be picky is so easy if you can just learn how to avoid interfering with the natural consequences* that come from being a picky eater. Here are the three principles that, if understood and followed religiously, will cure the vast majority of picky eating.

Principle 1: Kids will eat food they don't like before they will starve

If a child refuses to eat a meal you put before them, this is what you do: Explain to them that, if they don't eat, they'll be hungry until the next meal, and then CARRY THROUGH WITH THAT PROMISE, ALWAYS (think of la cadre). If, at the next meal, they again refuse to eat the meal you put before them, no worries. Just explain again that they'll be hungry until the next meal. You can keep going like this, and I promise you that you can't lose--you have 1000s of years of evolutionary physiology on your side. Your child will eventually be driven by hunger to eat food they don't like, and they will not even become malnourished in the meantime. This is not harsh--it’s good parenting.

Kathy thinks that, with the littles who are too young to understand these explanations, you can be a little bit lenient (maybe a very small healthful extra snack before the next meal sometimes if they’re super hungry and cranky from not eating the prior meal), but I believe that even the littles figure out the pattern themselves soon enough if they experience hunger after not eating their meals. You’ll have to decide for yourself on that one.

By the way, this doesn’t mean you should never feed them snacks. One small, healthful snack a day at a scheduled time (maybe in between lunch and dinner) is probably a good thing, but be careful--don’t give them a bigger snack just because they didn’t eat much of their last meal (again, that would be interfering with the natural consequence of not eating a meal).

Principle 2: Food preferences are not fixed

My favorite story that illustrates this is about a food critic who decided that disliking certain foods was unfair of him, so for a whole year he ate nothing but all the foods he disliked the most. By the end of that year, many of those foods had become his favorite foods, and he liked nearly all the rest of them. I've had the same experience with many foods (tomatoes, olives, fermented soybeans). In our house, if someone doesn't like a food, we say they don’t like it YET, which helps ingrain this principle. Kids often have to try a food more than 10 times before they start to appreciate it!

Consider also that they may be reacting to the texture or appearance, not just the flavor. So, let them try various foods that incorporate that same flavor/texture/appearance that they’re balking at, and eventually they’ll start to like it. The key to this, though, is that they have to try at least one bite of everything you put before them, every time! Force the one bite into them if you have to; it's that important. Our kids are not allowed to leave the table until they've eaten at least 1 bite of everything, and we don't push for anything more (as explained above). Same goes for spicy foods, but please do it by degrees lest you completely traumatize them.

Principle 3: You can trust your body to know how much to eat

Kids are, on the whole, really great about eating until their tummies are full. Some days, this may be very little. Other days, it may be more than you. Either way, don't worry about it! Again, 1000s of years of evolutionary physiology. But, many parents kill their child’s natural ability of knowing when to stop eating by requiring them to eat all the food on their plate. The last bite is not the magic bite. Please don’t turn eating into a goal-directed empty-your-plate process for your child, because then eating is disconnected from fullness/satiation, which opens the door to all sorts of eating disorders. Trust that, if you’re putting well-balanced meals in front of your child, they will eat the right amount and be healthy.

If you follow these three principles religiously, not only will you have healthier, happier, less-picky children, but food will cease to be a stressor in your home. Next post, I will share some other tips and tricks we’ve discovered along the way.

* Natural consequences: The negative/positive consequences that automatically come after a bad/good decision. They are inherent in the decision. For example, if you don't eat your dinner, you'll be hungry. The other kind of consequences is artificial consequences, which are extra things that the parents do to a child when they deem the natural consequences of a decision (good or bad) to be too weak or too delayed to sufficiently motivate the child to make the right decision.

Traveling with Little Kids: How to Stay Sane and Enjoy the Adventure

After our months-long adventures around the world and across the country, I was surprised at the number of people who asked for advice about traveling with kids. “How did you do it?” “What tips do you have?” “How do you survive the airplane rides?” I think some people were expecting a list of fabulous activities that kept their children enthralled for hours on end or something of the sort. But when you are without running water and your room is swarming with giant ants and your four hungry and over-tired kids are screaming as the ants crawl up their legs and you don’t have any food…a list of activities isn’t very useful. What REALLY helped in managing the hard stuff about travel with kids was our pre-trip mental preparation. We spent some time thinking about how we were going to handle our kids and deciding on strategies and mindsets for ourselves BEFORE we left on our trip. And it helped. A ton.

Here are four guidelines we tried to follow:

1. Manage Your Expectations. Things may go wrong, schedules may be messed up, kids will miss naps, they may vomit or poop all over the airplane, they may fall on their face, it will be hot, you won’t have food when you’re hungry, you may not have electricity or water, it will be hard. If you recognize that things may be a holy mess, then you typically feel quite pleased with how well everything shakes out! And you don't stress out when the trials do come. Somehow it helped so much to expect hard things and then just enjoy the adventure!

2. Keep Calm. Once you know that things may be crazy, decide that when all hell is breaking loose, you will be the rock for your kids to cling to. Travel is disorienting for kids already, but if mom (or dad) is stressed out, they feel it even more—and act out even more! Think about yourself and what will help you remain calm during the chaos ahead of you. For me, it was about laughing at the craziness and recognizing that I could let my regular schedules and control go temporarily—and that we’d all be okay in the end.  

3. Relax on the Discipline. Yes of course you must help your kids be respectful, but maintaining a calm and loving parenting style during travel is really important. They need to feel loved and secure during the multitude of changes. Teach with kindness and let the little things go, recognizing that they are dealing with a lot of stress too.

4. Keep Your Kids in the Loop. Tell them what the plans are, when and where you are going, what you'll do there, how you expect them to act. Our kids behave much better when they know what to expect throughout the day and days to come. And most kids are pretty amazing at rising to the high expectations placed upon them.

These four things really helped us maintain sanity and happiness as the parents of four little girls (ages 6, 4, 3, 1) during months of living out of suitcases and in different hotels every day or two without consistent schedules, sleep, food, or anything “normal” in a foreign country. I hope they help someone else too. Now go have an adventure!

Getting Kids to Do What You Want, Part 2

Recap: In Part 1, I talked about the initial steps to persuade a child to do what you want--the idea was basically to ask them to make a good decision and explain why. And then to do that again. And again. And again, forever.

In Part 2, I'm going to talk about the options parents have to try to add some additional motivation for a child to make a good decision.

But first, I need to explain a super-important concept: natural consequences. Every good decision has, inseparably attached to it, good consequences. And bad decisions have inevitable bad consequences. These are the "natural consequences" of a decision. For example, going to bed early helps you feel good the next day, and going to bed late makes you feel like junk the next day. I talked about this in Part 1, but I didn't provide the term. Now you know.

One last thing about natural consequences: Your job is to help your child understand them! Talk about them before a decision. Talk about them after a decision (to help her link up her consequences with the decisions she made). Ultimately, your child will have to make decisions based on these natural consequences when you're not there to boss her around anymore, so talk about them! And, to the extent possible, minimize the artificial consequences (rewards/punishments) you give your child so she can get lots of practice making decisions based on their natural consequences while you're still around to help her process them.

Now, there are plenty of situations when you'll still decide to add artificial consequences (especially when children are too young to understand the natural consequences of a given decision), so here are your main options:

Punishments

Taking away privileges: The classic grounding, taking away toys, sending to their room, etc. This can be effective if your child actually cares about the privilege you're taking away.

The "stern voice": You know the voice, the one you hear far too often when you see parents interacting with their kids in public. This is many parents' default any time their child is even remotely out of line, and I hate it. How would you like someone to talk to you like that all the time? But, I confess, there may be appropriate times to pull this one out. But never in frustration and always in a controlled, purposeful expression of sternness.

Spanking: Controversial, yes. Evidence suggests it's totally fine in some circumstances. All I know is that it should never be done in frustration. And it should probably be preceded by a warning, such as, "If you [make this decision], you will get a spanking."

Regardless of which of these punishments you use at various times, the most important part of any of them is what you do immediately after: "[Show] forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy." You'll notice how hard this is to do if you're ever punishing in anger or frustration.

Rewards

Bribing: This is almost universally a bad option. The child learns to do good things for the artificial benefit you added to the deal rather than for the positive natural consequences that follow a good action.

Sporadic, unexpected rewards: This is an after-the-fact reward, so it won't help them change a bad behavior to a good one, but it will positively reinforce good behaviors. And since it's unexpected, it doesn't have the same effect as a bribe.

Praise: This also is an after-the-fact reward, but it's the most important and also the most frequently forgotten one! Why are we so good at telling our kids what they did wrong and so bad at telling them what they did right? They're growing up in this vacuum of knowing what not to do but not being sure what to do. The awesome feeling of someone recognizing you for doing a good thing can be one of the best motivators to continue on that path of good decisions.

Conclusion

This all seems like a lot to remember, but it boils down to this: Disciplining a child should be done "only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; by kindness, and pure knowledge." And don't forget to apologize when you make a mistake. They'll forgive you. Over. And over. And over.

Getting Kids to Do What You Want, Part 1

We woke up one morning recently to our girls moving all their beds into one room. That's really cute of them, so we left it. But the result is that bedtime has become . . . an ordeal. They just can't find the little-girl willpower within themselves to ignore their sisters and go to sleep. Our various attempts to get them to sleep have got me thinking about how we can get kids to do what we want.

First, there are two crucial things to remember:

1. You cannot actually force kids to go to sleep (or do anything, for that matter). All you can do is persuade.
2. Frustration is always wrong in parenting. So, if you're frustrated, you're doing it wrong. For me, frustration usually means I'm annoyed at myself for not knowing the best way to persuade them.

Okay, so how do you persuade a child to make a good decision?

Step 1: Kindly ask them to do what you want and then teach them why you're asking them to do it. It shouldn't be, "Go clean your room!" Instead, it should be something like, "Will you please clean your room? We want our house to be clean because that helps us have a good feeling in our home." The why part is so often forgotten, but it's crucial! Kids need to learn that good decisions are good because they bring good consequences. And only when a child finally is able to link her consequences with her choices will she start to have the foresight to make decisions with consequences in mind. This may be the most important life skill of all!

Step 2: Repeat Step 1 over and over. Don't expect them to get it in the first 10 (or 20!) times because often they won't. And that's okay--they're kids!

But what if, after repeating Step 1 countless times, your child still not doing what you want?

Step 3: It's decision time. You've got two options: (a) do nothing (other than continue to repeat Step 1 over and over) or (b) add consequences (punishments and/or rewards). I'll talk about punishments and rewards in Part 2, but right now I have some acclaim for the "do nothing" option.

Choosing to do nothing requires saintly patience. It also requires sagacity to ensure it's not perceived by the child as you being powerless/free to be walked all over (don't forget la cadre). But hear me out: I know lots of adults who were hellions as kids, the kind of kids on whom none of the sundry parenting tactics worked, but those hellions still grew up, gained insight, and became awesome people. So maybe we all just need to chill out a bit and remember that as long as we show love to our children and teach them what's right (by word and example), they'll grow out of it. Eventually.