The Selfish Child by Judy Lyden

Some children are selfish; it's a personality trait. It begins with a little thing called "lazy." It's the same question as which came first the chicken or the egg. Truth is - the chicken. But with the selfish- lazy debate, these side by side unruly disorders are very fluid. Sometimes you get the lazy first, and then sometimes you get the selfish first. Either way, the teeter totter is an unlovely balance!

I know about lazy because as a kid I was always accused of being lazy. It was a title I carried throughout my life growing up, so I had plenty of time to think about lazy. Quite frankly, I have always wondered what "they" meant as I analyze walking two miles every morning down island roads, and then dodging waves breaking over the sea wall to keep as dry as I could in the uniform I had ironed myself. I walked the length of the peninsula, crossed the railroad tracks and the highway, and then stood waiting for my ride to school with no breakfast. Is this actual laziness? When you are seven, eight, nine and ten, and you do this every day once uphill and once down, and at the end of the day, four or five days out of seven, nobody is home to receive you but a note to say make your own dinner; I think someone is lazy, and it isn't the child.

My beautifully dressed mother was always so concerned about my school work. I wonder if it was because she was off playing while I was struggling to keep up all by myself. Past hurts? Not at all. All these things in my life helped to make me a hater of lazy, a hard worker, a problem solver, and develop a good eye for parents who put on a show.

What I've come to know is that lazy means "I won't do it." Lazy is the ego centric thumbing the nose at the world and saying, "You can't make me do it no matter what you do."

Lazy is extremely self-centered. Lazy allows the world to work around you, to do it for you while you play. Lazy is always short sighted, short willed, short brained, and short on everything simply because lazy begins and ends with self - an underdeveloped, dull and grasping self.

So when confronted with a lazy child, what do we do? Lazy is something we recognize after the fact - when it has been allowed for a long enough period the child becomes comfortable with it. But lazy still carries the stigma of guilt. Every thinking human knows what he or she should do and will feel the pangs of guilt when caught not doing it. But playing on guilt creates a battle in a domain where lazy is residing. No lazy person is going to allow someone to guilt them into work without a huge struggle.

Best thing to do with a lazy child is quietly present what you need, want, or expect in as few words as possible and then have a ginormous crushing repercussion happen when they don't do what is expected. Here are some examples:

A little boy was lazy every morning about dressing. One morning his mother told him what she expected and he relaxed back watching his cartoons. She scooped him up as is and brought him kicking and screaming to school with one foot of his pajamas dangling off his skivvied body. Needless to say, he never did it again. He was dressed before leaving his bedroom for the rest of the school year.

A mother was always yelling about picking up the mess before dinner because her lazy children were always reluctant to get started. It was too big a job, to hard, to much to handle. They didn't know where to start...so the mother told them what she expected quietly, and then when the mess was still a mess, the mother sat down with the father to eat dinner. "My place isn't set," said one selfish lazy child standing at his chair, and the mother replied, "You didn't clean up your mess. When you do, you can eat."

I can't tell you how many times I said, "I'm going to the store. If you want to come, be ready in five minutes. When they weren't ready, they didn't go. It was that simple.

One of the biggest lazy makers is TV and that includes video games, movies and anything that is watched. Not turning TV on in the morning makes for a much more productive morning. Not allowing TV to be turned on in the evening with the exception of the news makes for a much more productive evening. No child HAS to watch TV or play video games. It's not like breathing, eating or taking a bath. It's an extra.

But lazy never needs to be the cause for yelling or punishment. Lazy should always punish the self very nicely. If laundry is not put where it belongs, then the child has no clean laundry. If the toys are not put away properly, then there is no "next." If a child is not ready for bed at his prescribed time, then he goes as is. The lights are turned off at 8:00 p.m. no matter what. If a child does not comply with morning routine, then he goes to school as is. If he refuses to do his homework, he suffers in the classroom until he does. These are child tasks, not parent tasks. Lazy cannot be cured by the parents picking up the slack. Lazy can only be cured with consequences.

Letting a child feel the consequences of his behavior is the quickest route to learning that hard work and relying on self is the name of the growing up game.

Next week - talking to the lazy child.