AI Parenting Advice?

Earlier today I had the pleasure of leading a parenting workshop at the invitation of The Parent Venture . Our topic today was "Helping Your Kid Build Good Habits", and parents had many fantastic and thought-provoking questions for us to work through. After the workshop, a parent emailed me another question. I'm posting the (de-identified) question below, along with my answer - AND the fake podcast/talk-show/discussion that Google generated off of it .

It's pretty neat. I'm putting aside the fact they don't pronounce my name correctly. Almost nobody does.

Some things are a little off from what I actually wrote, but not by much, and it came it some REALLY fun, colorful expressions like "The Bermuda Triangle That Is a Teenager's Messy Room", which the robo-hosts later referred to as "The final frontier that even seasoned negotiators approach with care". What do you think? Is the fake podcast conversation a value add, or would it be better to only publish the original text?

Fake Podcast

Fake Podcast: The Bermuda Triangle That Is a Teenager's Room

#parenting #negotiations #habits #routines #ai #podcast #parentingforhumans

Source Text

Hi Dr. Magen,

My son is 13 years old, an 8th grader. He has not been cleaning or arranging things in his room and putting his clothing all over the place at home and I have told him not to do that for the past 4 years, but it has not changed. I made a rule to wash his hands after coming back from outside and arranging his clothes, but it has not been changed at all.

Regarding rewards for teenage boys, it could be more like playing games or spending screen time, but I don’t want to add more screen time for rewarding and maybe cut screen time a little but I’d like to have more practical solutions for him to arrange things and not mess around and clean his room instead of giving reward or cutting his pleasant time if possible.

Two weeks ago, I noticed his clothing and socks and bags were placed on the floor all over the place and I warned him that I would put put his clothing and socks and bags where left on the floor on the recycle bin, and actually I did it. He was so mad and it seemed it worked for one day, but it has not been changed at all and we just had a huge fight. Since it has been this for so long, I felt so frustrated why he has not been changed at all and he is surrounded by messy stuff and putting his clothes all over the place.

Thank you in advance.

Regards,

Frustrated Mom

Dear Frustrated Mom,

It sounds tough. What you're asking your son to do is so reasonable, but he refuses to do it, and this is a battle that has been going on for years. It also sounds like you'd really rather avoid the arguing and the fighting - it's never fun to get into a big fight with someone you care about so much, especially if it's because you're both so frustrated with each other.

If I understand correctly, there are two main things you would like to change:

1) For your son to put his bag and clothes in their proper place when he gets home

2) For your son to keep his room cleaner and more organized

Is this right? I'm going to keep replying with this in mind, but please tell me if I'm misunderstanding.

The first goal has to do with respecting shared spaces.

The second goal has to do with staying personally clean and organized.

I suggest tackling them one at a time, rather than trying to change both behaviors at once. And I would suggest starting with whatever you think will be easier to change, so you can build together a momentum of collaborating successfully, so you feel like you are working well together.

?My guess is that it will be easier for your son to accept the importance of respecting shared spaces. If that's the case, then this is the place to start, and completely ignore his messy room for now. After you make progress with his being able to respect shared places, you can move on to trying to get him to clean/organize his room.

As I mentioned in the workshop about helping our kids build good habits, I'm a big believer in aligning with our kids regarding the goal we are trying to achieve, and then aligning with them about the method (or the habit we are helping them build), and how the habit/behavior will help them achieve the goal we agreed on. In particular, we want to agree on the "trigger" (the place/time/event that gets them to start the new behavior we are working on).

I think the first step would be to sit down together, when everyone is more or less in a good place and not in a rush. In this conversation, you can say very honestly: "I don't want us to fight and argue. I'm sure you don't want me to nag you. I love you and I want you to be happy, now and in the future. Do you have a sense of why I think it's important that we keep shared spaces organized? Do you think it's okay for us to just leave our clothes and bags everywhere" And then to see what he says.?

I encourage you to approach this conversation from a place of curiosity, as much as you can, and not from a place of lecturing or shaming. Pretend you're not even someone who is living in the house; imagine that you are a friendly and inquisitive scientist who is trying to understand how this person, your son, is thinking. The conversation can be very interesting. Maybe your son will say that it's OK for everybody to leave their things all over the place. If that happens, you can continue engaging and ask things like "is there ever a time when people need to pick up their things? Or do they just stay there forever? Whose job is it to clean up or organize?" And if he says it's your job, you can ask about this as well: "Why is this the mother's job? What if there are other things that I want to do with my time?"

Once your son is done expressing himself, you can also share your viewpoint. You can talk about what's unpleasant about it for you - maybe the way it looks, or smells, or limits your ability to move around, or feels unsafe, or anything like that. You can ask if it would be okay for you to leave your clothes in his room, or to fill up the car (which is a shared space) with your clothes and bags, etc.

You can also ask him if there are things that you do that bother him and that he wishes you did differently. This can really change the tone of the conversation and turn it into more of a "we care about each other and are learning how to live together better" conversation, rather than a "you live in my house and these are my rules" kind of conversation.

This can be a very enlightening conversation for everyone involved. It's very possible he just never thought about it deeply beyond the level of "it's convenient for me and it's not a problem and she's just nagging me about it for no reason."

If you can come to an agreement that it makes sense to leave shared spaces organized, you can then work on aligning regarding a method. For example, maybe as soon as he comes in (trigger) he can go straight to his room to put down his bag, jacket, etc., then go wash his hands. This COULD mean that his room will seem messier to you at the beginning. That's okay. Organizing his room is the next habit to work on. For now, you are working on how to enter home and leave the shared spaces organized.

If he agrees to do this, you will need to help him remember initially, because he will literally forget - he already has a habit of coming home and dropping his things everywhere, so he needs to learn a new routine for "entering home." It's okay for you to remind him, as soon as he enters. When he does put his stuff in his room, THANK HIM for keeping the agreement. Maybe even give him a special treat, or go by his preference next time you have a small difference of opinions (when you want Thai food but he wants pizza) and say: "Because you've been so great and respectful about taking things to your room, I'm going to go with your preference here."

Once he has had a few days of doing this consistently, you can try not reminding him for one day and see what happens. If he slips back to his old routine, remind him again. If he remembers on his own and takes his things to his room, PRAISE HIM for remembering.

You can even agree together, in advance, on a special prize he gets if he puts his things in his room for one day (to help him start the habit) and for a whole consecutive week (to help him solidify the habit).

Once this new routine feels solidified, you can apply the same principals to help him create routines for organizing his room. I would start with a similar conversation (this time celebrating the new routine of respecting shared spaces, then talking about his room), and then aligning on a goal of having his room be more clean and organized. If you can reach alignment there, I'd suggest starting with a very small task for him, something that he feels he could do easily - for example, picking up one shirt and putting it in the laundry hamper. Literally one shirt. Maybe this is something he does every Saturday before coming to breakfast. If that goes well (and he acknowledges one shirt is so easy that it's almost silly to stop at one shirt), you can agree to increase it to two shirts, and then very gradually slowly increase it to organizing his room.

How does all this sound? What do you think? If this is something you try, I would really love to hear how that went.

Best wishes,

- Eran