教育孩子時,不要每次都問一句“好不好”

Have you ever eavesdropped on other parents on the playground? Don't they sound, rather, er, wishy-washy sometimes? "Sophie, we don't throw sand at our friends, OK?" Or, "Declan, it's time to go now, OK?" Or, "Madge, leave that dog poo alone, OK? Poo is yucky, OK?"

你有沒有在操場上偶然聽到其他父母的談話？有時候，他們是不是含糊其辭？"蘇菲，不要向朋友扔沙子，好嗎？"或者，"德克蘭，我們得走了，行不行？"再或者，"馬格，不要碰狗屎，可不可以？便便很噁心哎，好不好？"

The thing is, for Madge, it is not OK. She wants to roll in dog poo more than anything she's ever wanted in her two years on earth. And Declan would rather spend the night alone on the playground, exposed to the elements, digging a hole for warmth under the see-saw, than go home and climb in your stupid bathtub. Sophie just really wants to blind her playmate.

但問題是，對於馬格來說，這是不行的。她才兩歲啊，在她這個年紀，她就是想要滾狗屎。而德克蘭寧願一個人在操場上呆一整晚，暴露在世界中，在蹺蹺板下挖洞取暖，也不願意回家爬到愚蠢的浴缸中洗澡。而蘇菲就是想讓玩伴眼瞎。

Which makes the suffix "OK?" kind of absurd. And yet we all do it, right? Sometimes I listen to myself instructing my four-year-old: "We're going to leave the beach now, OK?" which obviously leaves the door open for him to say no, it's not OK.

所以，末尾說一句"好不好"就有點荒唐了。但大家都是這麼做的，對吧？有時候，我在教育四歲大的兒子時也會說："我們不能再呆在海灘上了，好嗎？"，這顯然給他留了餘地說："不，不好"。

For some kinds of parents -- and I include myself in this group -- we don't want to be hard-a-se authoritarians, so we tend to err too much on the side of seeking consensus. What we really want to do is guide kids and set limits, not ask that they agree with us at every turn.

對有些家長而言--我認爲自己屬於這類家長--我們不想成爲獨裁者，所以我們往往會在達成共識方面犯錯。我們真正想做的只是引導孩子，爲他們設定限制，而不是讓他們每次都照我們說的去做。

This doesn't mean that children can't have input and some control, as Hannah Gooding notes above. When I can think ahead enough, I'll say something to my son like, "We're leaving the beach in five minutes," and when he (inevitably) screams nooooo, I say, "When we get home, we can have a bath first or a little TV first -- which would you like?"

如漢娜·古丁所述，這並不意味着不能給孩子建議或是不能約束孩子。當我遙想未來時，我會對兒子說類似這樣的話，"五分鐘後，我們就得離開海灘了，"當他（不可避免地）尖叫着說不行時，我會說，"回家後，我們可以先洗澡或先看電視--你喜歡哪一種？"

If I'm lucky, that sufficiently distracts him from the pain of leaving the beach. If I'm not, he screams bloody murder and I have to frog-march him to the car.

如果幸運，這足以讓他分心，讓他覺得離開海灘也不會很痛苦。如果不幸，他會殺豬般地尖叫，而我會把他趕到車上。

But I'm going to remove "OK" from my parenting vocabulary, because I think it gives kids an illusion of input they don't actually have, and that's kind of a crummy thing to do. Let them have input when you really mean it. OK?

但我打算再也不在教育孩子時說"好不好"了，因爲我覺得這會給孩子一種他們實際上沒有的錯誤輸入，而那是一件非常糟糕的事情。當你非常嚴肅認真時，一定要讓孩子聽進去你的話，行不？