Chapter 4: Start Doing What Does

A WORD TO THE WISE

The end result of offering others your very best is power, style and elegance.

Countdown to success

From interviewing hundreds of successful parents, we have developed "The Ten WIN-WIN Rules of Success." We know that they work. We know they will work for you. And now the moment you've all been waiting for... the envelope, please.

1. Stop doing what doesn't work.

2. Remember at all times that parenting is an act.

3. Take care of yourself first.

4. Change yourself first.

5. Keep change slow and secret.

6. Be creative with your parenting act.

7. Remember that choice is always better than no choice. The people with the most choices control their environment and get more of what they want.

8. Take advantage of Third Person Parenting. Allow everyone to save face.

9. Change the language you use to get the results you want.

10. Lighten up!

The first three rules have already been covered. If you did nothing but follow those three rules, you would notice an unbelievable transformation in your family. But why be merely wonderful when you can be extraordinary? When you ice the cake with rules 4 through 10, you will have other parents beating down your door to find out what makes your family so successful. Now that you are a WIN-WIN parent yourself, we're sure you won't mind sharing with them.

Change You, Change Them

When we know that the cause of something is in ourselves, and that we are one of the few things in this universe that we have the right and the ability to change, we begin to get a sense of the choices we really do have, a feeling of being in charge—of our lives, of our future, of our dreams.

— John-Roger and Peter McWilliams

It makes sense to us that if you keep on doing what you've always been doing, you will keep on getting what you've always been getting. It doesn't take Confucius to figure that one out. The most logical thing to do when you keep running up against a wall is to go around it, over it, or dig under it. In other words, do something different. Difference requires change: a scary word for some people, but the only thing we know of that will assure you of getting the results you want.

Quite often we encounter parents who say to us righteously: "Why should I have to change? I'm the parent. I'm the adult. My children should be the ones to change." These parents dig their well-worn heels into the ground and stand firm in the belief that they are right. They may be right, but it doesn't mean they are going to get what they want from their children. You can think you are right when you don't pay your taxes because you feel the government is ripping off the little guy. You're still going to jail. You can have the satisfaction of knowing you were right all the way to the penitentiary in the prison van, and you can continue knowing you were right while you're tooling leather key chains for the prison gift shop. The point is, being right only gets you what it gets you, and if that's not getting you what you want, then it is imperative you change your act.

It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance.

— Thomas Huxley

As the adult in the family, you have one hundred percent responsibility for the outcomes you want. You are in charge of running the show. Just as you are responsible for your children's health, shelter, clothing and education, you are likewise responsible for making the changes that are necessary to cause your whole family to win.

When you change your behavior to reach your desired outcomes, you and your children will benefit in several ways:

1. You will demonstrate to your children that you are flexible, that there is more than one way to solve a problem.

2. You will demonstrate to them how easily problems are solved through creativity.

3. You will avoid unnecessary bad feelings and frustration on both sides.

4. You will teach your children the power of using their minds, instead depending on the uncertainty of emotions, when solving problems.

5. You will demonstrate to your children that problems are more easily solved and decisions are easily made in an atmosphere of calm, as opposed to an atmosphere of stress, anger, frustration, hostility and confusion.

6. You will teach your children that problems don't need to be viewed as problems at all, but merely as challenges to be met.

7. You will get what you want, with the satisfaction of knowing you got it without having to blow a gasket, and that you were smart enough to accomplish this in a way that left everyone feeling good.

8. When you consistently practice WIN-WIN parenting, you will accomplish all of the above in a manner that leads your children to believe that they solved the problem themselves.

This last point is an important one. You know as well as we do that everybody wants to save face. This is especially true of children, because they have not yet learned how to bow out gracefully from a bad situation, even one that they themselves have created. As adults, hopefully, most of us have acquired the ability (through countless years of putting our feet in our mouths), to admit when we have made a serious gaffe. But children have not yet acquired this skill. The best way for them to learn it is by watching you. It is from you that they will learn that it is not as painful as one might think to take credit for a blunder where credit is due. But at this stage in their lives, it is a concept that is difficult for them to understand. Many children will continue to act recalcitrant and obstinate, even when the situation has long since ceased warranting it, because they are trying to save face. And so, even when they know they have crossed the line, and at this point may actually feel repentant inside, they will continue their negative behavior because they are not yet mature enough to find a solution — to untangle the mess that's unfolding before them, especially when you, as the parent, are adding to their distress. For example, if your child is throwing a fit for more dessert in front of company, and you start criticizing her for being a big fat baby and tell her at this point you wouldn't give her dessert even if she plowed the entire north forty, it is safe to assume that she is not going to just let it drop with a polite, "You know best, daddy. I'm sorry I was so impudent." The only natural recourse children feel when backed into a corner (and that's exactly how they feel), is to save face, to show bravado and obstinacy. In reality, they're practically begging for you to give them an out. They want you to solve their problem. This goes for eighteen-year-olds as well as two-year-olds. Nobody likes to feel bad. Everyone would like a chance to turn a bad situation around and have everyone concerned feel better. It is your responsibility as the adult, as the parent, to make sure that this happens. When you act smarter than your kids, when you use the resources and experience you have as a mature adult, you can surely think of solutions that will cause everyone to win: you get what you want, and you give them the credit for being "smart" enough to solve problems. Everybody's happy. Everybody wins.

However, when parents refuse to change, refuse to bend, then they are demonstrating to their children that there is only one way to solve a problem, and if that way doesn't work, the problem will remain unsolved forever. This will not only affect them in the way they parent their own children (your grandchildren), but will cut a swath across every area of their lives: their relationships with friends, their education, their effectiveness on the job, and their relationships with their spouses. People become depressed, frustrated, and feel backed against a wall and hopeless when they are stunted by lack of choice, by the limits of having only one way of doing things.

Can you imagine if Watson and Crick, who discovered how the model of DNA worked, had said after their first attempt, "Well, we tried it one way and that didn't work, so there must be nothing to this DNA thing after all." Or what if Wilbur had said to Orville, "Come on, bro', we're never going to get this experiment off the ground. We've put in our eight, let's call it a night." We can only surmise that history would have been radically altered.

If you are one of the Doubting Thomases who thinks you will never be able to change, we'd like you to think about a quote by Henry Ford:

If you think you can do a thing, or you think you can't, you're right.

When you, like the captain of the Titanic, refuse to man the lifeboats because you are sure the grand dame is unsinkable, when you refuse to change because you know you are right, then we sincerely hope that you are prepared to go down with your ship. The smartest captains know they should always have an alternative battle plan and the smartest parents know that there is more than one way to get what they want.

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