Improvising Fatherhood: Make a positive choice
In improv we learn that usually the most successful choice you can make onstage is a positive one. If you are in a scene and your scene partner gives you terrible news, it is easy to then react in a negative manner. Some would even say this is the correct response because you are then being more truthful. Truth in comedy is important, indeed. But who says you HAVE to react negatively to bad news? Imagine a scene where the boss character comes in and fires you. A natural reaction would be to argue about it, or maybe cry, or go on a pantomimed office shooting spree. But what if instead of taking a negative approach to this news, you said, “Great!” First of all that would probably catch your scene partner off guard, putting him on his toes, which could lead to something totally unexpected. Even more so, taking this positive approach opens up a whole world of possibilities. “I’m fired? Awesome! Now I can pursue my life’s dream of being the world’s most premiere Bee-Keeper!” That’s just one of the millions of possibilities, but if you ask me, that is DEFINITELY the best possible response. So write that down for the next time you are improvising a scene about getting fired. The point is, staying positive in improv almost always leads to better results than taking the negative route. I am discovering that this holds true in parenting as well. Recently Chandler has made some major upgrades to his mobility. When you set him down he takes a moment to lock onto a target and then starts barreling towards it. On the way he’ll acquire a new target and change course. He’s like a heat seeking missile with ADD. His constant desire to be on the move coupled with his fledgling motor skills has really increased his potential for having “ouchies.” When a child gets hurt there are two main ways a parent can deal with it. Most parents end up on one end of the spectrum or the other. On one side you have the doting parent who rushes to their child’s aid the moment they witness the accident. They pick the kid up and do everything in their power to soothe their baby. The other end of the spectrum is where I sit. Whenever Chandler falls down or bumps his head, I don’t rush to see if he is okay. I don’t kiss it to make it better. Instead, I cheer. The difference in the result you get is astounding. When a parent rushes to their child’s aid their faces will often display fear or worry. Our children are extremely receptive to this. Every time we do it, we are training them to believe that what just happened is worth crying about. After a while, they won’t need your help to know when to cry. In fact, they’ll start making up their own minds about when it’s an appropriate time to cry and usually this results in a child who cries more often than not. So what I’m doing is training Chandler in the opposite direction. Every time he falls down I go, “Yay! Good Job!” I make sure to have the most excited and happy face I can. If the fall looked particularly rough I’ll pick him up right away but I’ll make sure to turn him so he can see my face as I cheer him on. The result is pretty amazing. Most of the time he is not hurt at all and seeing that I am so excited he realizes it was no big deal and goes on about his business. For the times that he actually is stunned or even in pain, he still looks to me to see what he should do. As I cheer him on he’ll give me this confused look as if to say, “Wait, are you sure? Because I’m pretty sure that hurt. Can I get a second opinion?” But I won’t give in. I’ll cheer even harder and smile even bigger. Then his confused little quivering lip will convert into a smile and suddenly he’s on the move again. The beauty of this is he is learning that a little bump in the head is not something that needs to slow him down. This will do wonders to turn him into a fearless little warrior who will leap head first into challenges. Last night my wife was telling me about how Chandler had fallen pretty hard twice while I was at work but that both times he just got up and kept going. I told her, “My training is working!” She just shook her head at me. Even though my wife is seeing the results in real time, she still doesn’t believe in my methods. She’s on the other end of the spectrum. I of course learned this style of parenting from my parents. I grew up in a very sports oriented family and so bumps and bruises were par for the course. As I continued to grow up my father had a rule that I vividly remember him telling my sister and I. He would say, “Don’t say ouch.” The idea behind this was that we, like most kids, would say ‘ouch’ for everything. Usually we weren’t hurt at all, but for some reason we felt the need to voice the fact that what just happened was potentially painful. And so my father trained us not to. If it really and truly hurt then we’d be in tears and that was okay. But if it wasn’t actually that painful, there was no need for us to say ‘ouch.’ This was an amazingly simple method for making my sister and I tough kids. I took this rule as a challenge and tried to never voice my pain in any situation. I could have had my arm cut off and instead of crying out in pain I’d ask my dad where the staple gun was. I plan on passing this method along to Chandler, but if I ever see him looking for our staple gun I’ll be sure to check on him.
