Consistently Parenting Your Different Children

It is time for the Babywise Friendly Blog Network week! This week, we are all posting something about personalities. Today, I am talking about how you parent consistently in your home when your children are all different.

Children are all unique. They respond to different things differently. How can you respect and respond to those different needs while still being consistent in your home as a parent? How do we enforce rules and expectations appropriately across personality and even age differences without our children forming a mutiny? How can we be consistent while still responding to the unique needs of each child?

Know Your Child

Each of your children will have unique needs. All children have different personalities, preferences, and tolerances. Some will need more time with people. Some will need less. Some will love doing outside activities; others will be overwhelmed being gone from home more than a couple of nights a week. Some will need more sleep than others. Some will absolutely need food after X number of hours. Some are quite, some are loud. Everyone has natural strengths and weaknesses. All of these things impact the way a child acts in the home.

Children will also have natural trends based on birth order and love languages. Some children are just harder than others. I love the thought of some children being like parenting 101 while others are 505. Some just plain help you earn that parenting PhD. This can be just because of how you mesh with that child, while others are just more spirited and tenacious. 

Know Yourself

Just like your child will have things that make her harder or easier, you will have things about you that will make you a harder or easier parent. You might be naturally impatient. You might be a control freak. You might be extremely free-spirited. 

Get to know yourself. Take personality quizzes to help you understand what makes you tic. My personal favorite is Please Understand Me II: Temperament, Character, Intelligence. Analyze your experiences in life. Ask yourself why you do certain things or why certain things frustrate you. Deal with things as needed so you can parent your child, not your childhood. You also want to parent what is actually happening and not what you imagine your worst fears to be.

Know your limits. Know when you need to take a step back and have a five minute break. Know if you need to take 10 minutes to think before you respond to a situation or if you can rationally handle hard circumstances. Know what circumstances lead you to be either lazy in your parenting or over-reactive in your parenting. 

Know Your Parent/Child Dynamics

Different parent/child dynamics result in different relationships. A parent who is an oldest child will be the hardest on their own oldest child. A parent will be even harder on the child if the child is the same gender as the parent. Understand your tenancies as a parent and guard against being unfair toward a child. 

Recognize what you have in common with your child. We are often the hardest and most critical of traits we see in our children that remind us of things we don't like about ourselves. Don't take your own distaste for yourself out on your child, who really just learned or inherited it from you. 

Teach the Difference of Fair vs. Equal

I have written on fair vs. equal in the past. I think it is such a crucial thing for you to understand as a parent and for your child to understand as a human. It is not appropriate for your 4 year old to have the same freedoms as your 7 year old. Will this make your 4 year old quite upset? Definitely. Does that mean you give in and allow those freedoms? Definitely not. 

It isn't even appropriate for your 4 year old to have the exact same freedoms as your 7 year old had when he was 4. Same age, but a different person. The current 4 year old might need more or fewer freedoms. Maybe the number won't necessarily be different, but what is allowed will be different. 

Children are different from each other. Your children are no more the same people as you are to your siblings or spouse. You are different. They area different. Some will be more athletic than others and be able to have some physical freedom earlier. For example, one child might be coordinated enough to handle certain freedoms on the playground earlier than other children would. 

This same concept can be applied to many things. A child who is naturally more trustworthy might be allowed to stay up reading in bed for 10 minutes at a younger age than other children. A child who is very responsible might be given a watch at a younger age than a sibling who does not care for his things. 

Equal is not appropriate. Fair is appropriate. Fair means it is right for that individual child.

This idea works not only in freedoms, but in discipline, too. More on that below.

Have House Rules

You will no doubt have rules in your home that apply to everyone who is capable of following the rules. You will want standard rules that do apply to all children. You will want to start as you mean to go on.

The way many of those rules are followed will likely shift depending on age and ability, however. For example, you might have a rule that so much food is eaten at the table or there is no dessert. You will likely require different amounts for different children. The rules are the same for all, but the exact execution varies based on the individual. 

Have Appropriate Consequences

This is where things can get very hairy. Consequences should be appropriate for each child. A common trend is for parents to be more strict with an oldest child and very lax with a youngest child. Really try to have your consequences appropriate for each child individually without being too extreme in any direction. 

Consequences should fit the crime, but also the person. One child might be devastated to lose a privilege like TV time, while another will just say, "Eh, oh well." If learning doesn't take place, discipline didn't happen. Your consequences should teach and motivate the child to not do it again.

The key here is to be fair in your consequences. Being unequal really irritates children. When an older child complains about a younger child having more lax rules and consequences, you can go back to fair vs. equal and point out the many freedoms the older child has that the younger doesn't. With increased privilege comes increased responsibility. I always find it effective to let the older child know that I am perfectly happy to move to equality among children, starting with napping schedules. None of the older children are interested in picking up the baby's sleep schedule, so they decide it is okay to be treated differently after all. 

Teach Empathy

Help teach your child the skill of striving to understand life from the perspective of another person. This will help you when your child is upset by the unjust practice of different siblings being responded to differently. 

Conclusion

Parents often think the best way to make sure no child is bitter is to try to treat everyone the exact same. This is not best for the children. Help your child to understand that you are parenting out of love and doing what is best for each person as an individual. It is your job to take care of your child and teach him what is right and what is wrong. It will take practice, but put an honest effort into parenting each child in the way that child needs to be parented. 

See Also:

• Parenting All Birth Orders
• Parenting First Borns and Oldest Children
• Parenting the Middle Child
• Parenting the Baby of the Family
• Identifying Primary Love Language

• Raising Difficult Children

Fair vs. Equal

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Many years ago, when Brayden was still very young, I had a conversation with a dear friend of mine that stuck with me and had a strong impact on my parenting. It was simple, really. She was talking about her siblings (she has a lot) and them wanting everything to be "fair." She said, "Life isn't even-steven."

Maybe it was the rhyme or the fact that I hadn't thought deeply about the idea of "even-steven" before, or just my new job as a mom and my way of analyzing pretty much everything, but I really thought about that a whole lot. 

Since that conversation, I have analyzed the idea of "fair" as it is commonly used and the idea of equal. We often hear the phrase, "Life isn't fair." It is true--life often is not fair. Unfair things happen. And perhaps to compensate for the unfairness life can offer, or the desire to avoid conflict within our home, many of us find ourselves doing everything we can to make life "fair" for our children within our home.

But it isn't fair.

What we are doing is trying to make life equal. Which, in reality, isn't fair.

According to my Oxford Dictionary (on a side note, don't talk to me about Webster--I am all about Oxford), "fair" means "in accordance with the rules or standards; legitimate...just or appropriate in the circumstances." "Equal" means "being the same in quantity, size, degree, or value."

To make life equal for our children, we might get them the same Christmas presents so they don't fight over a toy or get jealous of each other. We might give them all the same bedtime. We might allow younger children to watch shows that are above their level, or prevent older children from watching shows at their level because it isn't appropriate for the younger children. There are many ways we take life and try to make it all equal for our children.

But that isn't fair.

It isn't fair to either child to make bedtime at the same time for everyone if one child needs an earlier or later bedtime than another. It isn't fair to deny privilege to an older child because the younger child would complain, or to give a younger child a privilege she is not ready to take on. It might be equal, but it is not fair.

Now, of course, life is not lived in a vacuum. Sometimes, in order to protect our younger child from seeing a show that is too mature for her, we have to tell our older child she can't watch that show right now. Sometimes our younger children are exposed to things at an earlier age than ideal just because she has older siblings. I like the part of the definition of fair that says, "just or appropriate in the circumstances." Circumstances change and are unique at all times. We have to be able to judge according to circumstance what is appropriate. 

Let me give you an example. We recently read the first Harry Potter book with Kaitlyn. We told her that once she had finished the book, she could watch the first movie. The trick was to find a time when she could watch it. We do not think it is appropriate for McKenna to see the movie yet, so it had to be watched without McKenna. 

One day, McKenna was taking a nap, and Kaitlyn was able to watch the movie during the nap. The movie, however, is quite long, and McKenna was awake before the movie was over. Rather than making Kaitlyn turn the movie off or letting McKenna watch the movie, I took McKenna to another room and had her stay with me while Kaitlyn finished the movie. I told McKenna she was not old enough to watch the movie yet, and she didn't complain about it at all. 

That worked for our circumstances. Our home is set up in a way that it was possible to do so. Some people might live in a set-up that would require the movie to be turned off for now once the younger child is awake. You have to judge according to your own circumstance. 

Demanding things to be "equal" and striving for it is not unique to children--adults demand equality, too, even when equality is completely unfair. It is so potent in our society, so it is no wonder that it creeps into our families. People who believe in fairness rather than just equality are people who are willing to put in the time and effort required to attain certain things in life. Sure, life isn't always fair. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. It is impossible for me to consider this topic without including my religious beliefs (or any topic really), and I believe in the end justice and mercy will be completely satisfied (think of the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew 5..."Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the Earth."). 

It is an easy trap to fall into--trying to make all things equal among our children. As you navigate parenting, I would encourage you to take a step back and really consider "fair" vs. "equal." Your children will complain with "That's not fair!" I have shared before, but when my children complain about things not being fair (and they do), I tell them it is fair, but if they want equal we can make sure that happens. I then list the things they will get to do so things are equal (like, Brayden can take a two hour nap each day if he wants to be equal with McKenna). Just last night, Brayden complained because my mom bought a stuffed animal for Kaitlyn and a stuffed animal for McKenna that day. Despite the fact that Brayden is not interested in stuffed animals, he complained about it. My husband reminded him of all of the many times Brayden had gone golfing with my dad and the girls haven't gone. We explained that it took money to do that, and if he would like things to be equal, we could have him stop golfing until his sisters had caught up dollar for dollar. He decided it wasn't so "unfair" after all.

I really hope my children can grow to be happy for other people in what they have and content enough with their own lives that instead of crying out "unfair!" they can be happy for others and happy for themselves. To attain that, it will take more than simply outlining the denotation of the words "fair" and "equal." A whole lot more. But I think it is a small first step.