Dessert First??

I have noticed that if Turtle is preoccupied with a reward, she can't focus on the activity at hand. For example, she loves chocolate and if she knows chocolate is for dessert, she has a hard time eating dinner because she is so eager for dessert. So, I have tried giving her the chocolate before dinner and SHOCK she eats her dinner quite nicely after she gets her dessert. Now she knows what it's all about.

We saw this on our vacation to San Diego recently. She had her eye on a blue killer whale at Sea World and wanted it badly. I kept asking her to look around at all the gift shops and make sure she didn't want a dolphin or sea  turtle because she was only allowed one. She became very surly and ill-tempered. So, what did I do? Most parents would simply tell their child that they now didn't get a souvenir at all because of this terrible attitude and who would blame them. My husband was struggling with my idea because her behavior certainly did not warrant any kind of reward. But I'm an outside the box thinker and bought her the blue killer whale at the beginning of the day - bad attitude and all. She instantly settled down and was a joy the rest of the day. She enjoyed the whale show, the dolphin show, lunch with Shamu, and the shark encounter. All because she got her whale at the beginning and didn't have to investigate all the gift shops because she already knew what she wanted.

It's a bit of a parenting paradox: reward your child before they earn it. But it works with mine. If Turtle can understand the reward beforehand then she knows what she is working towards. It's very backwards, but for Turtle it works like a charm in almost every instance. I've tried it quite a few times with meals, souvenirs, some favorite activity (such as phone time). She has an old iPhone 3 that we converted to a Touch. We allow her 30 minutes of phone time every other day. If we wait and give her the phone a half an hour before bedtime, all she can think about is when she gets her phone time. So we give it to her shortly after dinner and then she plays beautifully the rest of the evening and uses her imagination and comes up with creative self-play.

This is so unconventional and I haven't read a single parenting book or article suggesting that you do it this way. However, I think it is a great thing to test and see if your child responds to it. Do they patiently await their reward, or do they get impatient, testy and surly? I'm probably setting her up for failure in the future because I don't make her wait, but I think what I'm really doing is helping her understand that the reward is worth working towards and being patient in the future. With dessert, in particular, once she knows what it is, the next night, she eats dinner first without a second thought and then digs into dessert once she is done with dinner.

Turtle really needs to know what the future holds or she becomes uncomfortable and can retreat into her shell. This is one way to keep her informed and out of her shell. It's almost like arming her with the information for the future.

Let the parenting lectures begin on why I shouldn't do it this way ...