Here is a very easy inexpensive way to win over your child. It is called:
The Thoughtful Gift
Did you ever receive a small gift from someone you were close to when you were not
expecting it? How did it make you feel? Happy? Closer to the other person?
Here the idea is to give something small on an occasional basis to say to your child, “I love you,” or “I was thinking of you.” When you do this you send an extremely powerful message to your child.
I have a friend whose family employed the Thoughtful Gift and it became a family institution. Whenever someone wanted to tell another family member, “you are important to me” that person would do so by giving the other an Andes mint. Thus, she would get a mint from her brother. Her brother would get one from her mother. Her father would give her mother. Well, you get the idea. It was a very simple gift. It was small, it wasn’t expensive, and everybody liked it. It doesn’t seem like much but giving and receiving Andes mints was one of her most cherished childhood memories. This just illustrates how simple a Thoughtful Gift can be, but how powerful is it’s effect.
There are a few conditions this gift has to meet to be extremely effective.
- The gift should be unexpected. The power of this technique is in the surprise.
- The gift should be something that the child will appreciate. This is pretty straight forward. You are giving the gift to make a connection with your child. If you give something that you like but your child won’t value, then who were you thinking about when you chose the gift? Even if your child recognizes that you were trying to make a connection with him, the real message you will be sending is, “My mother doesn’t understand me.”
- There should be no feeling of need to reciprocate. This is also very important. A gift that comes with strings attached isn’t a real gift. It is a payment in advance for a future favor that is collectible upon demand.
- The gift should be small. This is also important, though it is not so intuitively understandable unless you think about it. The power of giving a small gift has very little to do with the actual gift.
The reason this technique works is not because of what the gift is, but because of what it represents. When you give your child a small gift you are saying, “I love you”, “I was thinking about you”, “you are important to me.”
The gift becomes a symbolic representation of your feelings. Once the gift itself has significant value, much of this message gets lost. Instead, your child may feel that this is a payment in advance for some yet to be asked request.
You probably would react this way yourself. Say your spouse or significant other one day would walk in and unexpectedly lay a single red rose down in front of you, and say, “I was thinking of you today”.
If you are like most women, you would probably get the warm fuzzies.
Now take the same scenario and this time instead of laying in front of you the single red rose, he gave you the FTD $100 special bouquet. Would you really believe him if he said the reason was, “I was thinking of you today”, or would you spend the rest of the night waiting for the real reason to come out?
And even if no reason ever came out, wouldn’t you wonder what was going on and think it a bit strange? Your child is going to react the same way that you would.
Keep it small and it will work for you.
Warmly,
Anthony Kane, MD
