Adam brought up the subject by saying that he is very careful not to say negative things about commercials in front of her, because commercials are good, and allow us to watch and listen to all of this programming for free. My response was that I found that disingenuous, because, although it may be true that commercials are not evil (as anti-man, primitive-worshiping morons claim) it can still be true that one can be annoyed by them, or find them distracting, or any number of other valid complaints. I told him that I didn’t think he should be trying to teach her this kind of “moral lesson” by faking his true response, and that she would learn the abstract issues later.

But then Adam corrected me (and I probably should have known better than to think what I did). He said that he would not put on an act for her to “protect” her from bad ideas, but that what he was doing by not disparaging commercials was checking his own reactions to them. He thinks that a disdain for commercials is really an out-of-context emotion – a dropping of the whole context of the good that commercials represent, while focusing on some narrow moment of irritation.

Thus corrected, I still disagreed with him that irritation at commercials was necessarily an out-of-context emotion. But I no longer felt that he was doing anything wrong in regard to Sam, even though he would be acting differently than I would be.

Thinking about the implications of this, I generalized and came up with this formulation: if you feel that you should alter your “natural” behavior in front of your child, there is an easy way to check whether that feeling is valid – if you are doing it as an act of self-improvement, for your own sake, it is probably valid; if you are doing it to teach a lesson, or primarily for the child’s sake, it is probably an error.

That’s an example of selfish parenting. It’s also an example of the real way in which “having children makes us better people.” It’s not because we have to sacrifice, repress, compromise, give up, and suffer, all in the name of some warped version of love. (The idea that this would make one a better person is enough to make my head explode.) It’s because children help us to see ourselves objectively. Hopefully we are already morally ambitious, and recognize the benefits of self-improvement. But it’s not always so easy to see the ways in which we can improve. When you have children, you see yourself through their eyes. Innocent, honest, trusting eyes – the clearest mirror you will ever have. And valuing that mirror is selfish parenting, too.

Sammy recently moved from diapers at night to pull-ups.  When she takes off the pull-up to use the bathroom, she turns it inside out and she doesn’t know how to right it, so she calls us. She has learned from this!  Now, every single night, the first thing she does after we leave her room is she uses the bathroom. Then we need to return to turn her pull-up right-side-out.  Then she demands to be tucked in again. This can all be very time-consuming.

Since we know that the whole going-to-the-bathroom thing is a ploy, we started refusing to tuck her back in, but she raised bloody hell.  (There is no way we’re going to discourage her from using the bathroom, so the tuck-in is really the issue!)  Finally, I gave her a choice: if she wanted to be tucked in a second time – fine.  But she would not get her usual “5 minutes” of talk-time the next night (that is probably her favorite element of her bedtime routine, except for reading books.)  I explained to her that I am not willing to spend an hour on bedtime, so if she wants two tuck-ins, she has to give up something else.  She agreed with this plan.

So far she has chosen to be tucked in twice every night.  But that’s not really a problem – it’s just a new bedtime routine.  She hates not getting her five minutes, but I know she understands the issue because she doesn’t push it.  If she makes bedtime go on any longer, then we’ll remove other parts of her routine like singing songs or even reading books.  I have confidence that eventually, the highest values will win out.  And whatever they are, that’s fine with me.

I didn’t intend it to be so, but I think this is a great lesson for Sammy on delayed gratification, using logical consequences.  If she wants the special five minutes of talking before bed the next night, all she has to do is stay in bed after the first tuck-in tonight.  I don’t think I’ve yet seen Sammy choose a greater good at a later time in any area of her life, but I can see her considering the tuck-in issue.  I think she is ripe for this.

But I didn’t think about that when I considered the problem.  Really, I just focused on what the real problem with two tuck-ins was – for me.  I wasn’t  interested in a power struggle, but I also didn’t want this delaying tactic to grow and grow.  I want to put her to bed and go read my book!  This solution seemed to solve both our problems.  And in the process, this great potential lesson has come about.  Yay for selfish parenting!

Thank you, Jenn, for pulling out these gems and republishing them.  I always think of parenting as one area where people are very screwed up by the idea of sacrifice and duty, so to see this kind of display of pure moral goodness from so many people made me cheer with delight!

Speaking of Rational Jenn, did you know that she and Kelly Elmore now have a parenting podcast and new blog called Cultivating the Virtues?  I’m listening to their second podcast and I’m finding it to be very enjoyable, and I expect to get a lot of great parenting advice from it.  Kelly and Jenn are just fun to listen to!  They play really well as a team and you can tell that they are enjoying the discussion.  I’m loving the “situation of the week” segment because hearing “war stories” from Objectivist parents is so incredibly valuable.  This week, Kelly explained how she handled a situation where her daughter couldn’t find a shoe she wanted to wear, but they needed to leave the house for Kelly’s own selfish reasons.  What struck me about the story was that, in deciding whether to let her daughter find the shoe or to leave, and in deciding what to do and say and ask, Kelly didn’t think in terms of permissiveness or strictness at all.  The real issue became Kelly’s effort at understanding what her daughter really needed and wanted, in a much larger sense that wanting to wear a particular shoe.  And she did it while still drawing a firm line and remaining selfish.  The podcast format seems to be really good for this kind of storytelling and I look forward to more more more!  You can listen or subscribe through their blog.

He set it up, and, voila!  Sammy now gets her own yogurt and cheese whenever she wants it.  In fact, she loves serving yogurt for two.  She’ll get the two containers of yogurt and place them at our respective places at the table, then she will get 2 napkins from the shelf she can reach, and 2 spoons from her low cabinet.  Then she asks, WOULD YOU LIKE HAVE YOGURT WITH ME, MOMMY? 

We plan on putting more food in the fridge for her, but yogurt is her main refrigerated snack.  We do have a small pitcher of milk in there (you can buy the pitcher from For Small Hands for $7.50), but she hasn’t had the guts to try it herself yet.  Once she does, she’ll be able to get her own cereal for breakfast.  And that will bring me one step closer to my selfish goal of having her be totally self-sufficient in the morning.  Interesting how my selfish goals seem to coincide with what is best for her, isn’t it?

Adam and I have never managed to do this.  We’ve been out alone together here and there since Sam came along, but never as a regular part of our lives.  We have a good excuse though: all that moving around.

The kind of sitters you can find on sittercity.com or through the local college charge $20/hour plus tip.  That means that just the babysitting for a quick dinner-date costs about $50-60.  Add a movie and you’re talking about $100 or more.  We don’t have that kind of money to throw around.  We have not lived in one place long enough to make local friends to share babysitters with, we have no family nearby, and we’ve never had time to tap into the local teenage pool of sitters, who are considerably cheaper.  Well, the last part has changed.  We have a few teenagers living within walking distance.  We’re using one tonight for the first time, and she only charges $9/hour.  I offered her $10, but with a no-tip policy.  The best part is that her parents live directly across the street, so if she is uncertain about something but hesitates to call us or make a decision, she’ll certainly go straight to them for advice.  Of course, I still made sure she had real sitting experience and checked her references.

Let the date nights begin!