When I was small, sometimes I'd clean my room unprompted. I'd be proud, but my balloon would pop if my mom asked me to pick up before I was finished, or before I had a chance to announce to her that it was already done. (The other deflating response was, "Oh, since you've done that already, please help me fold the laundry!")
Even today, sometimes I have a juvenile response internally when I'm in the middle of planning something but then someone specifically asks me to do it. After all, it is a shift in control.
It isn't surprising that my kids are the same way to the nth degree. When I ask them to do something, the knee-jerk reaction from the boys is, "I know!" or "I'm doing it!" because of course they want the credit for not needing the instruction. Or, the reaction is flat-out refusal. ["No, i don't want to do soccer anymore (since you suggested it.)" "No, I don't want that type of pizza (only because you thought I'd like it.)"]
For both boys, actions and decisions must be on their own terms.
Of course as parents, my husband and I have to be creative to "shape" those terms. It is an old preschool-parenting trick that directed choices feign control ("Which do you choose: the red shirt or the blue shirt?") But school-aged kids don't fall for such simple ploys.
Aside from a few crafty suggestions, most of the time pure patience is the only answer. Little suggestions here and there without a hard-nosed nag might just push 'em in the right direction.
Well, today my oldest decided to go back to golf lessons after a two-year hiatus.
In the interim, I had made it clear that if he wanted, I'd be perfectly willing to pay for lessons and bring him to the course. I didn't push, but here and there as we'd pass the course on the way to somewhere else, I'd remark, "Hmm, remember when you really loved playing golf?" After all, he had been pretty good in his young age, and seemed to really enjoy it. His mathematics-loving mind enjoyed the physics behind it. Plus, it gave him something about which to be proud since nobody else in the family has any sort of golf-related skill.
Meanwhile, his younger brother is so engrossed in gymnastics that it concerns me that my firstborn doesn't also have something to call his own. He had a very negative soccer experience two years ago, so quit both soccer and golf after that to take a break from all organized sports. I've wanted to encourage him to try again because he's missing things that he once loved, but finding the balance between being supportive and being pushy is difficult.
I can't really claim victory, because it was by chance that he and his brother decided to rescue their clubs from the shed to start hitting balls around the backyard once the rain stopped. Then they rediscovered the various wii golf games. And then my oldest saw a golf store that he hasn't been in for years - "Remember that place!?" he asked me excitedly, as if we don't pass it at least once or twice a week.
And then yesterday as we passed the course, he reminisced about how fun golf is. "Well, you could start taking lessons again..." I gingerly suggested, worried I might pop his enthusiasm bubble. But he agreed. I asked him again to be sure I hadn't misheard him. "Yes, yes I want to go back!" he told me.
I'm happy he's going back to golf. But I won't celebrate too hard, since that will just scare him away again.
