Cui Bono

No, not Sonny and Cher’s lesser known relative. Cui Bono is Latin for “who benefits?” Whose interests are served? Throughout your children’s development, keeping this query uppermost in your mind in your every interaction with them will make your kids more likely to grow up to be content, fulfilled, and self actualized. As a result you, the loving parent, will be less likely to want to put a fork in your eye.

The following endlessly repetitive examples will drive this critical point deep into your heart. (Yes, there is probably a better metaphor that doesn’t evoke images of Vlad the Impaler. No, I can’t think of it just now.) Are you correcting your child’s behavior to make your child happy or to make yourself happy? To be fair, I will give examples of both when it is in your child’s interest for you to insist on a behavior as well as examples when you should probably back off.

1) Potty training: Yes. Insist on it. Everyone benefits. Remember when you thought the penny was never going to drop? The parent of an older child assured you that your child “won’t walk down the aisle in diapers”? They were right. I am going to come right out and say that the Anti-Potty Training Lobby gets no support from me.

2) Choice of College Major: Studying literature rather than accounting or accounting rather than literature. Not so much. If you are an accountant, imagine being forced to read Moby Dick In Latin. All day. Conversely, if you love books, consider what it would be like to look constantly at balance sheets and then find the square root. Encouraging your kids to have a bite of the baked talapia is one thing. Forcing raw eels down their throats is another. Let them choose what they want to study. Stated another way: let them be who they are.

3) Marriage: Should you allow your daughter to marry Lee whom she prefers rather than Robin,the one you think will be better for her? Look, I don’t like Lee any more than you do. If you must know, he still owes me $200 and, maybe I shouldn’t bring this up just now, but I’m still not exactly comfortable with what happened to my mom’s silver teapot that has been missing ever since the last time he was over here for Thanksgiving. Just the same, SHE seems to love him. Walk away.

4) Dieting: If your love for your wife allows you to encourage her to lose weight because of your concern for her cardiovascular well being, you are less likely to spend the rest of your life sleeping on the couch than if you want her to shed a few pounds so that you wasn’t be embarrassed at the company pick-nick. Similarly, love and concern over your child’s healthy eating habits are easier to sell than raving about whether or not she’ll ever get a date because she makes a beeping noise when she backs up. Did it ever occur to you that maybe she doesn’t WANT to date? Can you live with that? Because I take her at her word. Why can’t you believer her?

Even a stray dog knows whether it has been tripped over or kicked.

Nobody wants to be controlled.

As contradictory as it sounds, the more choices you allow your children to make for themselves when they’re younger, the more likely they are to make the choices that you would like them to make subsequently. Sure you can force them to study accounting and marry Robin (believe me, he’s no prize either), but ultimately all they’re going to learn is, well, force. For modeling–the most powerful teaching tool of all–to work, you have to love your kids for who they are rather than for what they do. Your kids are kinda pre-programmed to like you. The cherry on top is recusing yourself from telling them what to do each and every solitary moment of the day year in year out on and on into infinity.

London’s longest-running musical, “The Fantasticks, “had over 17,000 performances. Neither “Les Mis” nor “Phantom” each with 11,000 performances, comes close. Could part of “The Fantastics” enduring popularity have been because it expressed this truth as follows?

Why did the kids pour jam on the cat?
Raspberry jam all over the cat?
Why should the kids do something like that,
When all that we said was no?

In summary: Let the kids make decisions–good and bad–when they’re young to avoid subsequent sticky felines.