On Sundays… How can we best relax and enjoy the holidays with our children? Preoccupation with our own projects can destroy together times, so it’s important to set a firm, early cut-off date for adult-only projects. That way, if you haven’t finished constructing that wreath one week before the children get out of school, you’ll know it’s time to just quit and ride the tide.
On Mondays… If we can take time at bedtime to encourage kids to process the events of their day, it will pay off long term in building strong bonds of relationship and communication. “What was the best thing that happened today?” is a good bedtime question.
On Tuesdays… What are the values you hope to instill in your children during the holidays? If you keep asking your children, “What do you want for Christmas?” children will think that Getting Stuff is what is most important to the holiday. Spending time on the question, “What would make a good gift for your sister, or your grandpa, etc.” emphasizes the joy of thoughtful giving to others.
On Wednesdays… Are your kids requesting pets for Christmas? Children often start begging for a kitten or puppy when they are too young to understand the responsibility of caring for one. A good solution is to start them out with smaller animals that are easier to care for, like hamsters or rats.
On Thursdays… What is the right gift for a particular child? Answering a few questions can help us figure it out. What is your child’s special interests or talents? Is it right for this child’s age and stage of development? Does it require supervision? A thoughtful, age-appropriate gift is better for a child than asking, “What do you want?”
On Fridays…How are you encouraging your children to retell the Christmas or Hannukah story in your own special family way? Some kids like to plan and re-enact a short drama. Others enjoy “publishing” a family version of the story. Parents can divide the story into segments, give each child one or more segments to illustrate, write in the story line and then scan or photocopy the children’s work for grandparents and cousins.
On Saturdays… We all want children with good manners, but that takes more than just wanting on our part. The Christmas season is a great time to encourage kids to brainstorm good ways to thank people for gifts, like writing a thank you note before they use the gift or sending a text message with a photo of themselves with the gift.
While driving through a nearby Texas village recently, I noticed several children digging in a vacant lot. The soil in that neighborhood was so sandy that any vacant lot was just a giant sandbox with creosote bushes growing in it. The kids were obviously having a wonderful time. All they needed besides the sand to stay busy and happy all day, I think, was a bucket of water and a few old containers to make molds and cook Sand Stew.
During this holiday gift-giving season, it helps to remember that the best toys and play materials stand up to hard use and keep a child interested even when his interests change.
The best toys are open ended, which means that they can be used again and again in a variety of ways. A molded plastic castle, for example, is less open ended than a set of blocks because, unlike the blocks, the castle always stays the same shape. Blocks not only can be used to form a castle, but can also change into a skyscraper, a zoo, or a road system.
Here are a few simple, open ended toys and play materials that have kept children happily occupied for generations:
A sandbox can be plain or fancy. A well-constructed box with seats is nice, but a plastic swimming pool works, too.
A set of big blocks in a must. These can be expensive, though. You can make your own for less by sawing a couple of two-by-fours into 4, 8, and 12-inch lengths, then sanding them well.
Sturdy cars, trucks, and trains that run on kid power with personalized sound effects are more open ended than the battery driven kind.
Dolls. Buy dress up dolls for school age children and huggable dolls for any age.
Flannel board and flannel graph figures. Half a yard of flannel or felt tacked to the wall or a board or draped over a sofa back gives kids a fine flannel background. Shapes cut from different colored pieces of felt will adhere to the flannel board. More complicated, individualized figures can be made with interfacing from a fabric store. Draw a figure on plain paper, place the interfacing over it, trace the outline, and cut it out. Color it with paints or markers. (Or better yet, let older siblings do it for the younger ones.)
Building sets such as Legos, Brio-Mec, Tinkertoys and Lincoln Logs are worth budgeting for.
Stuffed animals make great playmates and childhood comforters. Avoid products that don’t wash easily or that have small parts that a child might detach and swallow or poke into an ear or nose.
Puppets range in price from reasonable to ridiculous. You can make your own from scraps. Google “easy homemade puppets” online for lots of ideas and directions.
Modeling clay or play dough can be kept on hand and used over and over. To make play dough at home, mix 1 cup water, 1 cup flour, ½ cup salt, 2 tablespoons cream of tartar, 2 tablespoons baby oil, and a few drops of food coloring in a saucepan. Stir on medium heat until the dough leaves the sides of the pan. Knead on a floured board and keep in a sealed Ziplock bag when not in use. (For more sculpting recipes, subscribe to this blog to receive Glorious Glop: save money and delight your kids with homemade art supplies, untidy science experiments, and other messy fun activities )
Art materials: crayons, markers, scissors, glue sticks, glue, paste, colored sidewalk chalk, watercolors, colored pencils (older children will enjoy fine, soft-leaded pencils like Berol Prismacolor), poster paint, paste, construction paper, drawing paper, tracing paper…the possibilities are endless. Coloring books with pre-drawn pictures are fine for a wait at the doctor’s office, but children need the open ended materials for projects at home.
Blackboard and chalk or white board and dry erase markers are important for kids because their small motor muscles are still developing. Writing big helps them. Buy a blackboard or make your own. I bought blackboard paint from a paint store and painted a door in our children’s rooms to give them giant blackboards. You can buy white board and dry erase markers in an office supply department. Or you can buy white board in 4 x 8 foot panels in a hardware store, and then cut and frame it to the size you prefer.
Plastic figures of animals and people can provide hours of imaginative play time. Choose figures that reflect the values you want your children to hold.
My dad sang around the house a lot, and our family used to sing on car trips. One of the songs Dad used to jokingly sing to Mom was an oldie, first recorded in 1926, called “Gimme a Little Kiss” about a boy trying to convince a girl to kiss him. I always thought it was funny and cute.
Years later, though, when I had a teenage daughter, it struck me that behind the fun, this song is actually a nice study in some classic manipulative techniques. Both women and men use these tactics. Sometimes people are unaware, or only dimly aware, of what they are doing – except that, if they’re honest, they’ll admit they’re trying to overcome the other person’s resistance in order to get their own way. People also use these tactics to weasel out of their legitimate responsibilities.
Here’s the song:
(1) Gimme a little kiss, will ya huh?
(2) What are you gonna miss, will ya huh?
(3) Gosh oh gee, why do you refuse?
(4) I can’t see what ya gotta lose.
(5) Oh, gimme a little squeeze, will ya huh?
(6) Why do you wanna make me blue?
(7) I wouldn’t say a word if I were asking for the world,
(8) But what’s a little kiss between a fellow and his girl?
(9) Oh, gimme a little kiss, will ya huh?
(10) And I’ll give it right back to you!
And here are some of the tactics:
(1) Gimme a little kiss, will ya huh? (2) What are you going to miss, will ya huh?
Here, the message is: “What I’m asking for is minor.” And the implied message is, “What I want is so trivial that if you don’t give it to me, you’re being unreasonable.”
Underneath many of the lines of this song are implied accusations.
(3) Gosh oh gee, why do you refuse?
(4) I can’t see what ya gotta lose, oh
These two lines are a mild form of the message, “I feel terrible, and it’s all your fault,” which this guy is really going to sock home hard in line 6. Other implications: “You’re being unreasonable. You’re being unfair to me.”
These are accusations designed to make you feel guilty.
Until you become tuned in to these messages, they slip past your conscious mind and push your guilty button so that you react by doing what the other person wants before you even know that you absorbed an accusation. From a spiritual warfare point of view, these are the Accuser’s fiery arrows, designed to make you react and drop your defenses.
A manipulator will minimize his request (or demand).
In lines 2 & 4 (What are you going to miss…? I can’t see what you’re gonna lose…) the boy is minimizing his request saying or implying, “What I want isn’t very much…it’s nothing really,” while at the same time the tactics he uses indicate that what he wants is vital to his happiness. (He’ll repeat this double-message tactic in lines 7 & 8)
A manipulator will push, push, push. He will not respect your “no.”
(5) Gimme a little squeeze, will ya huh?
Same request, slightly different words. He wants intimate physical contact, and he won’t take no for an answer. He will nag, he will persist, he will wear this girl down by keeping after her.
And he uses self-pity to dump blame on his beloved.
(6) Why do you wanna make me blue?
Now the guy is really feeling sorry for himself. (“Poor pitiful me…”) The messages underneath are:
“You’re so mean” (only a mean person would want to make someone else feel as bad as you’re making me feel)
“Now see what you did?”
“It’s all your fault.”
The guy is saying, “Poor Me. I feel really, really bad. And you are the one responsible for making me feel this way.” This is a classic, manipulative (and effective) 1-2-3 punch of self-pity plus blame plus pushing off responsibility for one’s behavior onto someone else.
This works best on people who are sensitive, compassionate and conscientious. It twists the truth and uses people’s good intentions against them.
A manipulator uses double messages.
(7) I wouldn’t say a word if I was askin’ for the world,
(8) But what’s a little kiss between a fella and his girl?
In words this guy is saying, “I’m not asking for something big. What I want is really unimportant.” But his actions – his persistence, his use of blame and manipulation through guilt – give the contradictory message: “This is terribly important. You must give it to me because my whole happiness depends on this.”
So which is it? Important or unimportant?
(9) Gimme a little kiss, will ya huh?
More persistence, more nagging.
(10) And I’ll give it right back to you!
If nothing else works, he’ll use wit and charm.
********?
Here are clues to help you recognize when you may be being manipulated:
when you’re with the other person, you start feeling defensive and guilty
you find yourself saying yes when you want to say no
you feel torn in two by your yes
you feel like punishing the other person (sending them on a guilt trip or something) for your yes
you feel guilty when you think about saying no, so you say yes, even though your reasons for saying no haven’t changed
you feel guilty after saying no, so you give in and say yes; you’re not sure your reasons for saying no have changed; you’re just saying yes in reaction to feeling guilty
When you’re feeling guilty after an encounter with someone (or you’re feeling uneasy and defensive), you need to figure out what’s going on. Maybe this is true guilt, and maybe not. True guilt goes away after confession, God’s forgiveness, and, if appropriate, making amends.
If the encounter was manipulative, you’re probably feeling guilty because you’ve absorbed a hidden accusation.
You need to figure out what those underlying accusations were in order to untangle true or false guilt.
For example, go back, look at the words of the song, and see if you can find these hidden accusations embedded in the lines:
You’re mean
It’s all your fault.
My bad feelings are your responsibility
Poor, pitiful me.
It’s up to you to make me happy…
It’s up to you to solve my problem…
You’re unfair. I ask for so little, and you won’t give it to me.
Now see what you did.
You’re to blame.
You just want to….(fill in the blank: spoil my fun, make me sad, make me mad, etc. etc.)
You’re most apt to get trapped by manipulative accusations if you believe some of the common Lies That Trap. For example:
Lies That Trap
I’m responsible for the way he (she) feels
I’m responsible for his (her) moods.
It’s my responsibility to solve his (her) problems.
I’m only worthwhile when he (she) approves of me.
Truth That Frees
I’m responsible to behave in a kind, loving manner (but not responsible to achieve a certain response from someone else as a result of my behavior)
I’m responsible to speak the truth in love whether he (she) accepts my words or not.
I’m responsible for my own actions and attitudes and he’s (she’s) responsible for his (hers).
My value comes from Jesus, who gave His life for me. My value does not come from having the approval of other people.
You will begin to be able to recognize the messages when you allow the Holy Spirit to train you to notice the underlying assumptions of Lies That Trap, and when you ask the Lord to teach you to recognize hidden accusations by thinking through your reactions in past encounters.
You’ll be able to think more and react less.
Keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, as the writer of Hebrews told us to do (chapter 12), also helps to set us free from false accusations. For example, if you’re feeling guilty about saying no to a loved one, you can look at Jesus, who sets our standard. Did He ever say no to a loved one? Did He ever disappoint His loved ones? Did He ever do things they disapproved of?
He certainly did. Jesus was sinless, yet he disappointed his loved ones. Therefore, disappointing your loved ones isn’t automatically a sin, something you rightly feel guilty about.
Why did Jesus say no? Or disappoint? Or cause disapproval?
What were His principles, His standards in those situations? Learn from Him.
Of course, all of us are guilty at one time or another of trying to manipulate other people into giving us our own way. Men manipulate women – and other men. Women manipulate men – and other women. We don’t need to be any particular gender to be a manipulator. But we do need to be aware of our own sinful tendency to send these kinds of accusing messages to one another when we want our way.
Jesus, again, is our standard.
He did not manipulate people. He helped them define their choices. Then He respected their clear choices. He did confront people about their sin, which may have produced guilt feelings. But He did this, not to get His own way, but to point out obstacles in the way of their relationships to God and man. We must do the same.
Jesus gave no double messages, saying one thing and doing another. When He said yes, He meant yes. When He said no, that meant no. We must also say yes when we mean yes and no when we mean no, then live out our stance with integrity. We need to respect each other’s no’s and yes’s, learning which issues are negotiable and which are not.
In our flesh, we are worldly and self absorbed.
Our unthinking, automatic response is to try to make people do it our way. Our unthinking, automatic drive is to seek our significance and self worth through ourselves (by making ourselves the center) or other people (by making another person the center) instead of through God.
Paul the apostle taught that we must not be conformed to the pattern of the world (our unthinking inclination) but instead be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Our automatic responses must be retrained, and that is done through this process of learning to look to Jesus to help us recognize and turn away from false assumptions and false messages.
Lies and accusations are intertwined with what St. Paul called spiritual warfare
People refer to “Satan” as a proper name, but actually, in the original language of the Bible, he is referred to as the satan, a common noun. “The satan” means “the accuser.”
When you recognize an implied accusation, it can be helpful to speak it out loud – not in an accusatory way, but thoughtfully. Mirror the message like this: “So….what I’m hearing you say is ‘You spoil all my fun.’” Then leave it there. Articulating an implied accusation in a matter-of-fact manner brings it out into the open, where it loses the power of ambush and is forced to face up to truth/reality.
Resource: Variations of “Gimme a Little Kiss” on YouTube:
“Gimme a Little Kiss” is part of a collection of stories describing and explaining the use of the spiritual weapons that the apostle Paul listed in Ephesians 6:10-20. This story describes using the Belt of Truth and the Shield of Faith to recognize and stand firm during a stealth attack using false accusations. To read the introductory story, enter its title “Family Conflict, Family Struggles” into the Search Bar. To find other stories in the series enter “reflections on spiritual warfare” into the Search Bar.
Note: Copyright date to Gimme a Little Kiss is January 6, 1926 so it went into the public domain January 1, 2022
For all the generations seeking God together
Stories to draw people into God’s presence – written for adults but with older children in mind.
Parenting & homeschooling insights from a grandma’s perspective.
Activities for all ages to seek God’s presence by engaging with the Bible in simple, natural ways at home.
On Sundays… How can we best relax and enjoy the holidays with our children? Preoccupation with our own projects can destroy together times, so it’s important to set a firm, early cut-off date for adult-only projects. That way, if you haven’t finished constructing that wreath one week before the children get out of school, you’ll know it’s time to just quit and ride the tide.
On Mondays… If we can take time at bedtime to encourage kids to process the events of their day, it will pay off long term in building strong bonds of relationship and communication. “What was the best thing that happened today?” is a good bedtime question.
On Tuesdays… What are the values you hope to instill in your children during the holidays? If you keep asking your children, “What do you want for Christmas?” children will think that Getting Stuff is what is most important to the holiday. Spending time on the question, “What would make a good gift for your sister, or your grandpa, etc.” emphasizes the joy of thoughtful giving to others.
On Wednesdays… Are your kids requesting pets for Christmas? Children often start begging for a kitten or puppy when they are too young to understand the responsibility of caring for one. A good solution is to start them out with smaller animals that are easier to care for, like hamsters or rats.
On Thursdays… What is the right gift for a particular child? Answering a few questions can help us figure it out. What is your child’s special interests or talents? Is it right for this child’s age and stage of development? Does it require supervision? A thoughtful, age-appropriate gift is better for a child than asking, “What do you want?”
On Fridays…How are you encouraging your children to retell the Christmas or Hannukah story in your own special family way? Some kids like to plan and re-enact a short drama. Others enjoy “publishing” a family version of the story. Parents can divide the story into segments, give each child one or more segments to illustrate, write in the story line and then scan or photocopy the children’s work for grandparents and cousins.
On Saturdays… We all want children with good manners, but that takes more than just wanting on our part. The Christmas season is a great time to encourage kids to brainstorm good ways to thank people for gifts, like writing a thank you note before they use the gift or sending a text message with a photo of themselves with the gift.
© 2022 Becky Cerling Powers – Use with attribution only - www.beckypowers.com
For more parenting insights from Becky Cerling Powers see her book Sticky Fingers, Sticky Minds: quick reads for helping kids thrive