Lesson Five: You’ve Got to Have a Plan

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Chapter 2

Expectations

“You can't base your life on other people's expectations.”
—Stevie Wonder

“A master can tell you what he expects of you. A teacher, though, awakens your own expectations.”
—Patricia Neal

One of the most-common causes of parental anguish is unfulfilled expectations. I am sure that you have heard parents vent their frustration because their child was not living up to the parents' expectations.

Expectations are normal, but they can also be the source of pain and disappointment for parents. The problem is that most parents do not realize the following: Expectations have to do with only the parents; they have nothing to do with the child.

Expectations are parents’ sole property. Remember that parents cannot control the behavior of their children. While it is fine to expect your child to be home at a given hour, you have no control over that child meeting your expectation.

However, when an expectation is explained to a child, and the child agrees to try to meet it, then that expectation then becomes an agreement and plan of action.
Let’s go back to the football analogy. Imagine it is just before game time, and the team is in the locker room. The coach tells the team, “I expect you to win today. I expect you to run plays that surprise the opposition. I expect you to anticipate their defense. I expect you to run where they least expect it. I expect you to score again and again. And I expect you to stop the other team from scoring.”

What has the coach accomplished? He has definitely communicated his expectations to the team, but he has done nothing about coaching his team how to go about meeting those expectations. Nor has the coach gotten his team to buy into his desires and commit to working to fulfill his expectations.

Having expectations and relying upon them can be very frustrating. For instance, a parent might have the following expectations: “I expect my child to be friendly and generous to her playmates”; “I expect my son to drive extra carefully when he has his friends in the car”; “I expect my child to come directly home after the school bus drops her off”; or “I expect my child to use good sense and refuse drugs if they are offered to him.”

There is nothing wrong with having expectations, just so long as (1) you do not assume that your child knows what your expectations are, and (2) you do not assume that your child will agree to meeting your expectations.

When you expect your child to behave in a certain way, you may assume that your child is ready and willing to cooperate, but is he or she? If you have a certain expectation, and your child doesn’t meet that expectation, you might feel as though your trust has been betrayed. But if in reality your child did not know and agree to the expected behavior, then you have no reason to feel disappointed in his or her performance.

The way to avoid the frustration of unfulfilled expectations is to communicate your standards and limits to children, by planning positive consequences for behavior that meets your standards and, most important, by gaining children’s agreement.

You might ask, “What is wrong with having high expectations for my child’s behavior?” The answer is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with having high expectations, if you realize that just having the expectations is no guarantee that your child will strive to meet them.

Children are not mind readers. Many parents have expectations and assume that children know what they are. Then, when children do not meet these expectations, parents feel unhappy and disappointed, react emotionally, and punish the child.

For instance, consider the following situation. A child has been on the telephone for twenty-five minutes. The parent is waiting for an important call about work but hasn't told the child about it. Nevertheless, the parent expects the child to be considerate of others who may want to use the telephone, and expects the child to keep the call to a reasonable length. The parent waits patiently for a while, then starts getting anxious, then starts counting the minutes, then starts to think, “How inconsiderate of her to tie up the telephone for all of this time.” Then, when the child finally hangs up, the parent grabs the receiver and says something like, “Well, it is about time. There are other people in this house who might need the telephone.” The parent is upset because her expectation (unstated and unknown by the child) was not fulfilled.

Unfulfilled expectations are a very common cause of parent-child confrontations. The parents are emotionally upset and hurt because their children have disappointed them and failed to live up to their expectations. Children are emotionally upset because they are being unfairly accused of intentionally breaking a commitment they never agreed to.

This all goes back to the coaching analogy. If you expect your team to score and win, you have to have a game plan, teach the plan to the team, make sure they understand it, and get them to agree to it. You can have a terrific plan and you can explain it skillfully and thoroughly, but without the team’s agreement, your expectations are likely to go unfulfilled.

Now you might ask, “If having expectations about my child’s behavior is not enough, what do I need to do?” The answer is that you need to establish positive boundaries, and that is the subject of this next chapter.

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