This section is a companion to the preceding one. While that one described philosophies and concepts, here we get into the nitty-gritty of actual, day-to-day strategies I used in parenting my kids. Some were more successful than others, but I think overall they helped keep us safe and (usually) sane. Again, may they serve as a resource for coming up with your own parenting toolkit.

Contracts

Several years ago, a parent friend told me that her kid’s behavior on a certain issue wasn’t improving, no matter how many tricks she tried. So she finally, reluctantly, resorted to having the kid sign a behavior contract. She felt really guilty about this—to her, a contract seemed so legalistic and formal that it didn’t really belong in a family situation.

I’m glad my kids weren’t in the room when she told me this. They would have fallen out of their chairs laughing. If contracts make a family too legalistic, we should have set up a shingle outside our door declaring ourselves “Sadusky, Sadusky, and Sadusky, Esq.” pretty much from day one.

For as long as I can remember, the kids and I set up contracts for just about everything:

* Behavior in general—“I agree to clean my room once per week.” “I agree not to hide the gummy bear vitamins by dropping them behind the stove.”*
* Behavior when they are together—“We agree that when we can’t agree about what to watch on TV, we will try these things to resolve the problem. ‘Bash my brother on the head with the remote’ is not one of the options.”
* Behavior when they are apart—“We agree that when one of us is not home, the other one will not go into that person’s room to look through his journal, scribble on his notebook, or take his socks.”**
* And then there was, of course, probably the most common contract between kids and parents in the twenty-first century: the one regulating cell phone use and texting. We went through many versions of these—at one point, it seemed like one kid or another was signing a new contract every six months. As well behaved as my kids are in general, with regard to their phones, they always seemed to find new and creative ways to cross the line that I hadn’t thought of yet when I came up with the contract terms. Sort of the way hackers are always one step ahead of anti-malware solutions.

(*Yes, that was a real contract based on a real situation. I’ll let you guess which kid that was. Think cucumbers.)
(** Actually, it was my socks that were getting taken. Mr. Cucumber again.)

I won’t even go into the one about the online porn . . .

The first part of a contract is, of course, the “I will not do this” part. The second part is the consequence: “I agree that if I [do/don’t do the behavior mentioned in the contract], I will [give Daddy a quarter/give up my phone for a week/write ten nice things I can do for my brother, and then do them].”

At least in our case, I found contracts to be quite effective for managing behaviors. I made the kids read the contract aloud to me, so they knew exactly what they were (literally) signing up for. They always had the opportunity to request changes before signing—maybe a different consequence, or slightly different terms—and we negotiated something we were both comfortable with. The best part was, if and when they broke a rule, all I needed to do was to pull out the contract and remind them what it said. No muss, no fuss.

This might be stretching a point, but I think it’s possible that contracts have even more value when you’re getting kids who are at least partway up the path to the age of reason (assuming we still consider that age to be somewhere between eight and thirteen, and not when reason really kicks in closer to thirty-five). Contracts seem to strike a good balance between recognizing that your kid is already a formed person, whom you respect enough to give some say in how you and they manage behaviors, and letting the kid know that you’re setting up clear boundaries and limits (i.e., structure, i.e., safety, stability, home).

I tell my kids that in ten or twenty years or so, they can come back and let me know all of the things they’re mad about from our time together. I’ll keep you posted whether contracts make the list, but I won’t be at all surprised if they don’t. And will be even less surprised if I hear about the contracts my kids are setting up with their own.

Goals

There are certain things I think I got better at as the kids got older— and that I wish I had practiced more when they were younger. One of these was defining the boys’ behavior in terms of goals. Rather than getting into judgments based on right and wrong, it helped when the focus was on “Where do you want to be?” followed by “Are these behaviors or choices helping you get there, or getting in the way?”

As with most things parent, putting this wise-mind approach into practice was easier said than done. As with most things parent, it involved juggling a number of factors.

Factor number one is separating the kid’s goals from my goals for him. I certainly think it’s fine to have goals for your kid (mine generally involve them making enough money to fund my retirement), but these aren’t a great place to start for forming a kid-centric goals-based approach to behavior. Somehow, it just doesn’t carry quite as much punch to say, “Here’s what I think is right for you. Are your choices helping you achieve what I want?” Keeping the focus on what they describe as their own goals is key—and this requires a lot of listening, gentle probing, and clarifying questions. (Not to mention keeping your mouth shut when they throw out goals that you find unrealistic, improper, or outright ridiculous.)

Sometimes, helping your kid get clarity on his or her own goals is one of the greatest gifts you can give. And if you have a kid who’s like Mark was when he was younger, helping your kid get clarity on his or her goals is both a necessity and a full-time job. If “I don’t know” were an actual goal, Mark would have been the most accomplished ten-year-old in the history of the human species.

Now that you’ve done a great job letting your kids educate you about their goals, factor number two is helping them gauge their behavior and choices in terms of achieving these goals. To oversimplify, any choice can help, hinder, or be neutral with respect to achieving a given goal. Helping the kids understand this is another great gift. The complicating factor here: As the smart grown-up, you often have a better sense of the types of choices that will help bring about a desired goal. For example, when Daveon went through the period where he was sure he would someday be a Major League Baseball All-Star, it occurred to me—but clearly not to him—that once in a while he should pick up a bat.

In situations like these, once again we enter balance territory, where you want to offer useful information without taking over ownership of the process. I don’t have any magical wisdom here—sometimes I throw out, “I have some thoughts about some things that might be helpful in your situation. I can share them if you like, or not.” I often get a yes, though more often as the boys get older, a no. Which is fine for the most part. Usually. Which leads me to . . .

Factor number three: All of this kid ownership is fine and good and healthy—but the reality is, for almost every single one of your kids’ goals, you as parent will be making a substantial commitment of time, money, other resource, or any combination of the above. This is important, because it gives you the right—and, I would argue, the obligation—to say, “I’m happy to work along with your process. At the same time, I expect to see some level of effort and/or outcome. If your way of doing things isn’t producing this effort or outcome, I reserve the right to step in in a more decision-making way.” (I don’t actually talk to my kids like this. It’s more like: “Look. If you want to keep taking sax lessons, you need to practice. If you don’t want to practice, lessons are done. Your call.” But you get the point.)

I remember one particular goals-and-how-to-reach-them experience clearly. At about age sixteen, Mark had reached an advanced enough skating level that he realistically needed to devote more time and energy on the ice and in related activities if he hoped to stay competitive. This in turn meant cutting down on social activities, watching what he ate, and so on.

So: goals. Do you want to complete in a national championship? Do you want to have a normal high school experience? Do you want to juggle both and let the chips fall where they lie? And the accompanying choices: whether to have the extra cupcake, take the extra stretch class, go to the party, do a quick workout each night at home, and on and on.

By continually asking these questions and guiding through the options (did I mention Mark needs a lot of help sorting through goals and priorities?), I hoped and believed that Mark could take ownership of and feel pride in his decisions and outcomes.

Which can be whatever he wants. As long as it involves checks made out to Dad.

Time-Ins and Tantrums

In this section, I proudly share two of the more successful behavior strategies I used over the years. One I learned from parents far more experienced and wiser than me. I’m pretty sure I made the other one up.*

(*If we know each other, and you read the second one and think, “You didn’t make that up. You got it from me,” don’t take it personally. I have a lousy memory. Also, please don’t sue me.)

The strategy I learned from my betters is the time-in. This is a variation of the famous time-out, or, as those of us of a certain age might remember it, “Go to your room.” (Or, as Dennis the Menace remembers it, “Go sit in the corner.”) For those of you raised by peaceniks or spankers, the timeout concept is simple: If you’re jumping on the couch or teasing the dog or hitting your sister, you might get a warning or two to stop. If you keep jumping/teasing/hitting anyway, you take a time-out. This usually involves going to your room, or the corner, or a separate room and sitting in a designated space for a designated time: one minute, five minutes, the rest of the day. For kids of a certain age, sitting for five minutes feels like the rest of their life, so parents need to gauge accordingly.

Both during my fost-adopt trainings and in dealing with a few child therapists, the recommendation was instead for a “time-in.” A time-in works exactly the same as a time-out, except instead of sending the kid out to another room, you have him or her sit in the room with you. The theory makes sense: Foster/adoptive kids usually suffer from a sense of abandonment, so you don’t want to do anything that creates a feeling of isolation. You need to work extra hard to communicate, “There is a consequence for ripping Snakey’s eyes out when I told you to leave your brother’s stuffed animals alone. And, I’m still here, I still love you, and we’re still together.”

Plus, what could be more effective than having your kid continue to see his sibling(s) or friend(s) continue to play—in plain sight—while he needs to sit in a chair?

Not to mention: In an era where every kid has his or her own phone or tablet, a game console, and a TV, “Go to your room” is about as harsh a consequence as “Go spend a weekend in Vegas.” Not exactly fear-inducing.

Meanwhile, the strategy I will claim to have invented: the structured tantrum. I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but bear with me.

Being a big believer in the let-it-all-out approach to dealing with feelings—in another life, I was probably good friends with Yoko Ono—I am all about tantrums. Also crying, moaning, sobbing, laughing hysterically, and other outbursts. I believe they are good for the soul.* The only problem is, unlike those other forms of expressions, tantrums can break things. And hurt people.

(*As a diehard cold fish, I rarely-to-never do any of these things. I just believe in their benefits.)

So we had a tantrum rule: If you get really mad, have a tantrum. Go all out—make the neighbors worry for our safety.

But do it in your room. Ideally, on your bed. Where punching, kicking, and throwing are involved, limit them to soft things: pillows, mattresses, covers. Within those soft constraints, the sky’s the limit. It’s much easier to replace a pillowcase than a shattered vase, not to mention your brother’s head.

Given everything you’ve read so far, you might not be surprised to hear which of my kids was the tantrum-thrower. (Hint: I used to encourage Daveon to throw more tantrums, which is pretty weird on one level, but makes more sense if you think about it in terms of trying to get a heady person a bit outside of his head.)

For Mark, the structured tantrum approach worked surprisingly well. When he would start to get steamed about—well, he used to get steamed about a lot of things—the cue “If you want to throw a tantrum, hit the bed” was successful almost all of the time.* And he would inevitably feel better after getting it all out—the whole point of a tantrum, after all. So it was a win for all of us: him, his feelings, the vases, and his brother’s bones.

(*As tantrum-throwers go, he was a pro. If they had competitions, he would have at least as many medals as he does now for skating.)

Evidence

When it comes to confirming whether your kids did—or didn’t do— something, parenting strategies fall along a spectrum ranging from constant vigilance at one end to a 100-percent honor system at the other. (That one often turns out better in theory than in practice.)

One approach that I found simple and effective in bridging the gap between these extremes was asking for evidence.

For example: For many years, the kids got a small allowance—a practice that, for whatever reason, tapered off as they moved into teenhood, a period when you’d think they’d want some more money in their pockets. To get your allowance, you had to do your jobs—just like in the real world. These jobs included weekly room cleaning, twice-a-week dishes . . . and daily bed-making. In our world, bed-making did not involve hospital corners, properly turned covers, or fluffed pillows (and no chocolates, for that matter). Basically, if I peeked into the room and the bed covers looked roughly flat—or, as I liked to put it, if the Queen came by to visit and I wasn’t embarrassed if she took a tour of the bedrooms—that counted.

At a certain point, there were some ongoing issues with Mark and the making of the bed. It went something like this: Most weeks I didn’t check on the beds or the rooms. (I tried to avoid opening my kids’ doors as often as possible—it was usually an extremely terrifying experience.) Week after week, he would happily claim allowance. And yet, on that third or fourth week, when I got my nerve up and actually took a look in, his covers were invariably in a heap, or on the floor, or both—often in the exact same position they had been in the last time I had checked, three or four weeks prior.

This indicated that maybe, just maybe, Mark was claiming allowance under false pretenses.

I had a couple of choices here. One was to become daily-room-checker. Um, no thanks. Instead, we did the next best thing. Every day, Mark would take a picture of his room, showing his flat-enough bedding. For obvious reasons, we made sure that the camera had the setting turned on to show the date of the photo. This became Mark’s way of providing evidence that he was indeed doing his jobs, and we carried it on until, you know, the camera battery died or I forgot, or some such.

Other examples of where evidence came in handy: If I was going to be out and I wanted to make sure the kids were home by a certain time, I’d have them call me—from the home phone. Luckily, their voices aren’t remotely alike, so I didn’t have to worry about one impersonating the other (at least, not successfully). I’m sure there’s some way they could have called from their cells (while out doing illicit, illegal, and probably dangerous things) and have it come up on my display as the home phone. But quite honestly, if they were that slick, them making curfew would be the least of my problems.*

(*They weren’t that slick.)

We also did the wet toothbrush trick—which is a little silly, how hard is it to wet a toothbrush?—and the “Let me see your clean hands” trick, and a few other of the classics. Reverse evidence also came in handy: If we kissed goodnight and your breath could have caused a car accident in San Francisco across the bridge, that made it pretty clear you didn’t brush your teeth. And to the inevitable, “But I did!” there was always the safe stock answer, “Great. Now do it again.”

If either or both of my kids become a detective, judge, attorney, or even just a jury member, I think they will be pretty good at their job. Where analyzing evidence is concerned, they’ve had plenty of practice. Just as in those occupations, for parents, gathering evidence is a great way to avoid he-said/he-said tug-of-wars.

Spanking

If you’re a committed spanker—or if, by contrast, the thought of any kind of physical punishment raises your hackles—you might want to skip this section. The first group will find it too wimpy, while the second will probably start staging protests on my lawn. Which is a long introduction to admitting that, for better or worse:

I have, indeed, spanked my kids.

One of the most—maybe the most—inviolable rules of the fost-adopt training was: As a foster parent, no corporal punishment. Period. This was “We’re not joking, we’ll have Child Protective Services come and take them away” serious. Not that I minded. Being a hippie pacifist at heart, I always figured that logical and compassionate reward and consequence systems would take care of most behavioral problems. (Also, my father was a belt man. And you know what? None of my sisters nor I put that on the list of things we recall fondly about Dad.) So for our first year together—when my kids were still technically in foster care—we made use of a variety of nonphysical behavior strategies, many of them described elsewhere in this book. Like most things, these strategies worked pretty well most of the time, except when they didn’t. By the time we finalized the adoption in court that November—at which point all foster-related restrictions were off—I had gotten so used to no-spank parenting that it didn’t enter the picture for a very long time.

Until it did. You would think I would have a clear memory of the monstrous crime, the tremendous calamity, that caused me to put my son over my knee and connect palm to rear.

You would be wrong. I have no idea which action, or even which kid, caused the first move into physical territory. I do remember they must have been at least eight and ten, maybe even nine and eleven, which means we had been together at least three years by that time. As I pointed out to them, these were ridiculous ages for them to start getting spankings, since that was around the time most kids stopped getting them.

Never let it be said that my kids aren’t sometimes a step or two behind their peers.

In any case, here’s what I do remember about spankings. One, they lasted for a period of two or three years—maybe a bit longer for Mark—and the total number for both kids combined can’t be more than a dozen. So, for what it’s worth, the house didn’t turn into a regular smack factory.

Two, spanking was always a second-line response. It usually looked like this: Kid does something. Dad responds with consequence/ lecture/etc. Kid gets mouthy and belligerent. Dad tells kid to simmer down. Kid does not respond in kind. Dad warns kid that the options now are (a) go along with the original consequence or lecture, quietly, or (b) if the belligerence or mouthiness continues, get a spanking. And on those dozen or so occasions over those few years, option (b) occasionally won out. And Dad and his hand responded in kind. (And in case you’re wondering: No, in practice, this didn’t play out anywhere near as calm as it sounds on the page. And while most of the spankings were of the sharp-but-controlled variety, there were at least one or two where … let’s just say, the kids have probably forgotten all about them, but I still feel guilty and embarrassed.)

Three: The majority of spankings went to Mark. This is where Daveon’s headiness came to his assistance. When he started spiraling, he (usually) was still able to process the (a)/(b) options and come up with a solution that worked to his advantage. Mark, who is much more of a gut-level player, generally has no such filter. When the spiral starts, it just keeps on keeping on. I often felt like spanking Mark was equivalent to those scenes in the movies where person A starts to get hysterical, person B gives person A a sharp slap across the cheek, and person A, now fully calm, says, “Thanks, I needed that.”

Believe it or not, Mark has never thanked me for spanking him. On the other hand, it certainly did calm him down. One therapist, while not exactly condoning the practice, did say that for some kids, that kind of physical response can cut through and break things down in a way that words or other behaviors don’t. So there’s that.

I’m not trying to justify the spanking years, which—to the great relief of my hand, my kids, and their butts—ended quite a while ago. But it would feel like keeping secrets if I didn’t come clean about this piece of our family puzzle.

Next Chapter: Small Stuff