Apathy - It's not just for kids!

I love Dr. Ray Guarendi! I have heard him speak and one of his best topics is concerning kids and their talent for apathy in the face of parental discipline. Apathy is one of those things that drives a parent insane - you try to discipline the little one and he just doesn't seem to care!

I struggle with staying calm in the face of misbehavior because I get so emotionally involved in the situation. So today I was determined to be calm - and Brennan was going to give me a test in this area (for those of you who know my children personally, I'll bet you are as surprised as I was that it was Brennan today and not Nicholas!). In order to keep calm, I gave him instructions to clean and then LEFT THE ROOM... this was the key. And it worked. I would have sworn that it wouldn't because every time I went in the room Brennan was playing, not working. But each time I just put him back to his task and left, which freed up my morning to play Go Fish with Nicholas and push Philip and Jonathan on the swings. Those 3 boys and I had a lovely morning...

Brennan finally finished his work about 12:30 and I was not stressed. Most surprisingly, neither was Brennan. We then went outside and played this afternoon while the others napped.

I knew that apathy worked well on parents, but who would have guessed that it would work equally well on children!