As I raise my kids, I often consider how to say “no” less. I want to ensure that my kids have the right amount of guidance and discipline, yet I want them to explore, be curious, and to solve problems. This necessarily means that they will be a little messy, a little loud, and let’s face it, a little annoying. They should be that way! I want them full of life. On my end of things, I want to say “no” when I mean it, and I want to mean it as little as possible. I need assistance in this, and what I can use for assistance is my family’s surrounding environment.
I feel our surrounding environment, the parts we can shape, is an under-considered tool for behavior change. We are at the whim of unconscious processes, and our environment plays a significant role in triggering them. I think our energy is much better spent attempting to work on the front-end (the environment) rather than attempting to brute force change on the back-end (after these processes have been triggered). In this way, our surrounding environment can be thought of as a track to gently glide us into desired behaviors, or at least not guide us into undesired behaviors. Likewise, this consideration of environment can help mold my kids’ behavior in a way that there is little need for me to say no, coerce, or yell (the paragon of patience I am not). If I want to be patient, then it’s a great idea to craft an environment that minimizes the requirement for me to expend energy to be patient.
Crafting the environment also asks much more of the parents than the children, which is as it should be. It asks you to be honest. It asks for thought up front. If you are fighting with your toddler about having their 98th cookie of the day, maybe you need to ask yourself why you have those cookies at all, or why you get to snack on them all day but deny your toddler the same freedom. Environment-crafting is mutually beneficial.
A well-crafted environment allows for light boundaries, which is pleasant for both a growing, constantly learning child as well as for the parents raising that child. It offsets some of the work to the environment itself, lightening the parental load and freeing the kids up to be, well, kids.