On the Level

End the power struggle, give your kids the power

Level system basics

I had heard this so many times from my oldest son that I began to wonder. He would say things like "I would rather have a spanking". My response was "spoken like a child who has not been raised getting them". Not to say that he never got one…but obviously the ones that he did get made such little impact that he would prefer them over anything else. I did use grounding as our number one punishment and often times was left with trying to make different levels of grounding to fit different level crimes. This is not only hard…it is brain draining and requires creativity on the go. I was lacking. If you attempted to list this, you would find yourself writing a novel. If you come home late – this will happen. If you don’t eat your veggies – that will happen. Can you imagine covering every possible behavior with a pre-set consequence? Drains my brain just thinking about it.

Let me begin by telling you that I am not parenting expert. I am a parent who after trying this and trying that, reading this and reading that – finally found a system that serves our family well and I wanted to share it with outers who may find it helpful. I have no credentials to tell you that a professor taught me how to parent, my teachers were my children. I have no degree’s to tell you that I know how to parent, I only have the tracks of my tears left behind by the things that didn’t work. What I do have is a strong will to see my children succeed and be the best that they can be and an even strong faith in God and prayer for my children.

I was raised in a variety of settings ranging from broken home life with in-consistent parenting and having drill sergeant step fathers to living with grand parents who were far more laid back. I even did a time of my young adulthood in foster homes and detention homes and other such places for kids who can not control themselves. Now I was by no means a bad kid especially when compared to some other kids that lived in the same places but I was lacking direction and self-control. Self-control is either taught or learned and I can tell you that being taught is the easier of the two paths. Learning it comes from the school of hard knocks and life lessons. If you are lucky you will learn in the hard knocks elementary school. If you are like I was, you are among the unfortunate who has to learn at the hard knocks college level when the learning is much harder.

When I began a family of my own the memories of my own childhood existence were foremost in my mind and I wanted to find a better way to raise my kids. Little was I to know that I would spend the next 12 years of my life trying this and trying that and trying to find a way that worked thus creating total inconsistency. Now consistency is important, as any parenting expert will tell you, HOWEVER….if you are consistently doing something that is not working is it better to keep doing it (in keeping consistent) or better to try another approach (thus being inconsistent)? I struggled with that question for a long time. Some people will tell you to just keep at it and eventually it will sink in and begin to work. I did not see any indication that this is always true and knowing that I only had a only been entrusted with this child for a limited amount of years I was not willing to wait around to find out. When you begin finding a parenting style that works for you, the FIRST thing you need to do is make sure it does work – but for YOU! If a certain style works for the child but doesn’t work for you then you are likely not to enforce it and eventually it will stop working. Or worse, the child it was meant to teach will use it against you. I knew that being the drill sergeant parent worked great for my neighbors but I knew I could never be that, so that style did not work for me. I saw that buying your kids off by paying them to behave worked well for another family (until those kids are older) but I knew that would not work for ME because I could not afford to bribe and pay my kids to behave. Honestly in seeing how those kids turned out I am thankful.

Things come up in our lives that we do not plan for and can not avoid. In my case I ended up divorced when my oldest son was only 2 and parenting entered a whole new ballpark. Now everyone and their uncle wants to advise you on the best way to raise your children and they themselves have not done a hot job so you have to tune them out. I attended parenting classes, parent support groups, read books, watched videos, listening to tapes…the works. All in an effort to be the best parent that I could be. The father in this case was out of the picture not to return for many years. I remarried when my son was 5 years old. My new husband also had a son who was only a few months older than my son. By now I was set in my parenting style and my new husband was set in his. We spent the next few years attending talks and reading books trying to find a system that worked for us both without setting the stage for our children to work against us. We had many a disagreement on how best to handle any situation.

I never particularly cared for the spanking option but did use it for the more serious crimes. The reason that the spanking option did not please me was that I would never want to spank while angry and then by the time I was no longer angry…I no longer wanted to spank and this set me up for making empty threats. Again, not to say that I never did spank but it was not my first choice.

I was the ground hog parent. I wanted to ground him ground him ground him. I really did not know what else TO do. Time out was my primary choice when he was smaller and with my first son that was like a death sentence. He was the social butterfly of the family. To remove him from the crowd and place him in solitude was just the worst thing he could experience in his eyes. As a child grows older that time out naturally grows to grounding. Same basic principal, you are removed from the scene until they are behaving appropriately. To me this was FAR better then spankings right? Not as far as he was concerned. He would rather be spanked then grounded. Go figure. My second child is quite different. He loves time out, or in the very least is not effected by it. Making him sit still, on the other hand is a bit more upsetting to him. He has been much more of a challenge to find the right answers with.

When my first son was around 7 or 8 years old I went to listen to a lecture being done by Foster Cline. I walked away from that lecture with thousands of new weapons to use on the parenting front. Great ideas like "let your child live with his own choices". YES, a great idea….but not for the weak and I guess I was weak because I could not let that happen. I would tell him what was going to happen if he continued with a particular behavior and what the cost would be and then the cost would upset me more then him so I found myself nagging and ragging till I could not stand myself. "If you do not get that room cleaned before Friday you are not going to be able to spend the night with your friend and go roller skating". THAT should have been enough and come Friday when he is packed….:"I am sorry but you made the choice to stay home to clean that room". SIMPLE right?

Wrong. I could not do it. I knew how much spending the night with his friend meant and I did not like to see my child suffer and be unhappy. It never occurred to me at the time that saving him from unhappiness at a young age would cause him far GREATER unhappiness at an older age. I had much to learn.

I loved the theories and practices that Foster Cline and Jim Faye spoke about and I was interested in learning more. I spent time reading their books, listening to their tapes and trying to modify my style. Some things worked and some things did not and I was still a nagging ground hog. I would get even more upset if he was not upset by the punishment. This to me said I was being ineffective. I saved him from being upset about it because I was busy being upset for him! I was still reminding him over and over and warning him over and over.

Now to complicate matters, my oldest sons father was absent from his life for many years and then when my son was 9 years old he made his grand re-entry. I begged and pleaded with him not to step back in if he were only going to step back out again and he assured us that was not to be. Well it was to be and he was gone again 3 short months after my son turned 11. Just before Thanksgiving he stopped calling and stopped showing up. He lives nearby so we know he didn’t die or get drafted or loose his memory he just simply made a choice. I wanted him to act like a father and take some responsibility as a father and he seemed to have decided that was asking too much so he disappeared. No Christmas card, no birthday wishes the next year….just nothing. Now for those of you who have not watched what this does to a child….let me tell you that it is an UGLY picture.

I found myself left with a very unhappy boy. One who was now unable to get along in school, had other kids picking on him constantly. A boy who is very emotional and now very unsure about his surroundings. We began family counseling shortly after his father had reentered the picture and at a time felt good enough to discontinue. Needless to say that this event put us back into family counseling. My son’s teachers and counselors both noticed that my son really needed his life to be very A,B,C with everything laid out in a nice order and him always knowing what to expect. This sounded easy enough but when trying to put it into action becomes difficult. This is where the level system came into play.

In some of the foster homes and detention homes that I lived in we had a level system. The levels were designed to teach us independent living skills. It really was a great tool and I knew that such a system would be very effective but I had no idea of how to take that level system and convert it into a family setting as opposed to a system setting. I brought this up in counseling and the counselors agreed that such a system is very effective. We set out to build our Level System. I will now explain to you what that is and how it allows the child to control his situation by making choices. The hard part for the parent is to stand back and ALLOW your child to live with the choices that he or she makes. Sounds simple but I still to this day have to fight to keep my nagging ground hog under control.

In counseling we had begun working out our level system. It was decided that different crimes warranted different punishments or consequences and that it should be made clear to all exactly what the punishments or consequences were for what types of situations. Here is our basic level system. In keeping with looking at the positive I will start at the bottom since you can only go up from here.

Limbo…how low can you go. This level is the bottom of the barrel. This is the serious grounded level. Grounded to the bedroom. No television is to be on, no computer or computer games, no video games of any nature, no phone calls in or out, no radio, no friends allowed over, you are not free to go visiting and bedtimes are enforced (this level system is designed with the older child in mind). Bedtimes, in our case, were set to 9 p.m. on weekdays and 10 p.m. on weekends. You will need to modify this to fit your children’s ages and your situations. This level may sound harsh to some but it is meant to be. This is, as I said, the bottom of the barrel. This is where go when we refuse to learn the easy lessons and want to push to see how far we can get. No one likes this level including the parent. Your child will be miserable on this level (but will likely be getting a lot of sleep) and I imagine will work hard to get out of it as quickly as possible. My son has not had to be on this level very often. When we started this system he made it here many times but quickly worked his way back up and now rarely lands here. It may sound harsh but if you think about it, it is not different to being grounded to your room. Most parents do not allow tv’s and radios at that point anyway. I have just listed the details which makes look harsh.

Moving on up. This is still a grounding level but with an upgrade to your living environment. On this level you are now free to roam about the house (some may even choose to allow the yard to be part of this level). In our home we have family movie night on Monday nights. Depending on the child’s behavior he may participate in movie night but other than that T.V. is still off limits. Radio is returned. Still no computer or video games. No company, no phone. In getting input from other parents this seems to be the standard grounding situation in many households This is the typical grounding situation. We choose to upgrade bedtimes but, as with all of the level system, that is modified by your policies. Each family is different, this is merely a guide and the system that we use. Bedtimes on this level are 9 p.m. on weekdays and 10:30 p.m. on weekends.

For the lesser offense. This is not a ground hog level, this is a wake up call and a privilege loss level. On this level he is not grounded at all and can come and go as usual. No video games, no computer or computer games, no one spends the night, child does not spend the night with friends, no going to the mall or movies etc. Friends are still allowed over, child can still go out bike riding or normal activities just no additional activities as stated above. This one was hard for my son to get the hang of. At first he did not understand. He was still able to leave and go to his friends house or they could still come here (though why would they want to if they can not play video games). He could still do just about anything he could do on any weekday after school. Once he understood that it was "the extras" that were lost he learned to like this level far above the ground hog levels.

Note: I have avoided stating what crimes warrant what levels because then we get into the area that parents never agree on - how things should be done and what is bad and what is so-so. This is a very personal choice. Some people may see being late getting home as a very serious issue where others will see that as a non-issue so I am not going to suggest what behaviors get what levels or for how long. What works for this family and what we see as "behavior" may not be the same for the person reading this book so please modify this guide to fit your family.

Total Coolness. All privileges restored. Can spend the night with friends, go on outings, may have friends spend the night, life is good. Video games, computer, T.V. and radio all restored. Normal life. Bedtimes return to normal. Jim Faye talks about how, as adults, we cannot go to sleep on command and neither can our children. Based on his talks on this subject we have made a bedtime routine such as this. 9 p.m. weekdays. Weekends (for older children) have no bedtime. However, after 11 p.m. in our house is adult quiet time. (again, each family is different and 11 p.m. may be WAY to late. Jim Faye uses 8 p.m. as an example) Our children need to be in their rooms and quiet. We do not hear them or see them so it is the same as if they were sleeping. They are free to stay awake as long as they like while in their room. The catch here (and the thing that makes this a life learning opportunity) is that they can NOT sleep all day the next day. In doing away with bedtime we have made a wake up time. Now you may decide to give your kids a choice as to what works for them. In this house no bedtime works fine. Just like in the real world if my kids stay up too late and have to get up the next day, they are tired. Just like you and I when we stay up to late and have to get up the next day.

Level 5 is a bonus level. This can also be referred to as Level 4 Plus. Bonus level is for exceptional behavior. I put this bonus level in place to reward awesome behavior. Everyone loves to have their hard work recognized and our children are no different. When they do an incredible job they deserve to be rewarded with more than just "normalcy" like level 4. Yes level 4 is the reward for good behavior but this level gives the incentive to work just a little harder. On this level they have all of the benefits of level 4 but with a bonus. In our house my son has a computer game that he enjoys to playing. He has set times that he is allowed to play it so that he does not live his life on it. One of our possible bonus’s may be a day of unlimited game play. Maybe it will be two movies passes or going somewhere special or maybe getting something. A bonus!

There we have the basic level system guide. Now the level system can be used in both a negative and a positive. It can be used as a punishment or consequence system or it can be used as a reward system or it can be used as both. We use it for both. As stated previously, each family differs in what they see as behavior so it is difficult to lay out the punishment method of the level system. That is something that varies from family to family. In one house, coming home after the set time may be serious enough for a day on level one. In the next home that may be nothing more than a level 3. You will have to decide what works best for you in those situations.

One thing that I would like to make crystal clear is that this system is designed to give your child the responsibility and the accountability for his choices and their consequences. As with anything you still have to have a "BASELINE". I still have to deal with my children’s other behaviors appropriately. If my children are being disrespectful to an adult, for example, I do not say "Hmm I think you better go look at the level chart to see where you just landed". I deal with that situation. This is not a replacement for parenting. Our children still need to learn respect and obedience. This level system is just a simple way for them to have control of themselves and their situation. My oldest son may come home and want to go to the roller rink with his buddies on Friday. He can walk right up to his signature sheet and KNOW at a glance what the answer will be. He can see how many of his responsibilities were attended to the day before and say to himself "yes! I am on level 4 and mom will say yes". Or he may say "opps I blew it, better not even bother to ask".

How It Works

In our home my children each have their own responsibility as a member of the family. My oldest son has more than the younger. Each day they are expected to take care of their responsibilities just like you or I or any other part of a family unit. Now when I first began using the level system it underwent some changes as we saw things that needed tweaking. We began with a chart that we created and it looked much like a chore list. This, however, only addressed the "things to be done" and left out many other things that are expected of your children. So our check list evolved into the complete picture. We added "attitude" and "getting along with siblings" and other basic human functions. Not to say that we expect them to always be Little Johnny Sunshine or never to have a disagreement with their sibling. We all have our moments of weakness and our children are the same. We take that into account. What I mean by "attitude" on his list is if we have excessive problems in an area we address it. For example my oldest son would become very animated when told that he could not do something or have something. He would slouch those shoulders, change his voice tone, stomp loudly as he walked and speak to everyone in a sarcastic manner. This attitude was not acceptable and was therefore, added to the list as a reminder for him to self-check.

Now what happens next is entirely up to how a family operates and what works best for them. Each day our children would run down their "to do" list just as many adults do with their daily planners. They could either bring their list to a parent as they did them or at a set time each day after completion. For our family it worked best to have them brought at the days end. During the week in our home we begin to get ready for bed at 8:30. This is when baths and showers are taken, pajamas are put on and bedtime stories are read and prayers are said. This time worked out well for us to add this in. At 8:30 each night our children brought their list and we, the parents, would check it off.

Now this is where the system changed for us, from what it was when we first began to what it is today. In the beginning we would review these lists once per week at our family counseling session. The amount of signatures obtained against the amount possible determined the level the child was to be on for the next week. An example of this would be:

63 signatures possible per week

• 24 signatures or under equals level 1
• 36 signatures or under equals level 2
• 48 signatures or under equals level 3
• 60 signatures or under equals level 4
• 63 equals the bonus level

Now this is just an example. Some parents may require higher standards, some may require lower. Each family will want to decide that on their own, this is just an outline.

On the following page I have added an example signature sheet. One of the things that we had to add was a rule that said "no patterns". By this I mean that if you see that your child hits level 4 every week but did not do one particular chore ALL week, that is a pattern. My son hated cleaning his room so he would do EVERYTHING else except that and still had enough signatures for level 4. This system will need personal tweaking for whatever your families needs may be. I have seen list that encompass everything from getting to bed on time to grades in school. My older son has reached a point that he designs his own check list based on what he feels he needs to remind himself on. Other things are now just a given. The getting along with little brother one has been removed from his list because he felt that as a member of the family that should just be something he does. He is now 14 and he knows how to use a planner and a daytimer for other areas of his life for organization. He has gone from a straight F and D failing student to a straight A’s and B’s student who is more organized in his class work. Now his room is still total nightmare and in need of remaining on his list, but he has control over his list and what he does with it

Now, again, this is just an example. As you can see in this example there are 9 possible signatures per day or 63 per week. Currently we handle this on a day to day basis instead of weekly. Each day at 8:30 my children come to me with their chart. Each day at 8:30 I make myself available for this. Each day I sign off what was complete. THAT amount determines their level for the next day. We currently have a busy lifestyle and doing this weekly was not working. It did work well for us at a certain time in our lives and may again in the future but right now, we are very active in church and it works best to handle this on a day to day.

Now here is where the child gets all of the responsibility for him or herself. I make myself "available" for them at 8:30. There are many times they do not make themselves available to me at 8:30 and they plum forget. Well the next day when they walk in from school and say "hey, I am gonna do my homework and go next door to play basketball" they can then refer to their list on the fridge (or wherever you keep yours). Wow! Much to their disappointment they see ZERO signatures for the night before. As Jim Faye would say "BUMMER!" Not only are they not going to play basketball, but now they get to their homework in their room on level one with no radio to jam to. They, do however have plenty of quiet times to think and remind themselves of where they need to be at 8:30 tonight!

With this system, I have made the rules. I have remained the parent and I maintain my expectations as a parent. They, however, are now in total control of their choices and their outcomes. AND they know ahead of time what they are.

Now with the younger one we have a modification. As we started this with him at the age of 5 I would get the list out for him after he got home and I would read them off as he did them. This was to show him how the system worked. As he got the hang of having a "check list" he got into the swing of things. At 8:30 I would announce that was 8:30. As he got used to this system he quickly learned that when I say "time to get ready for bed" he knows that bringing his list along with his bedtime book is the cool thing to do.

Now for all of you parents who are like me, let me tell you the hard part. They WILL still slack off and not do what is expected. They will still forget to bring their list. They will still be normal children who blow it off at times just like we do. But with this system they can see at a glance without even having to ask where they stand. As a parent who always wants to rescue let me tell you how TEMPTING it is to remind them. If you remind them every day, you are doing them no favors. Yes they will always get their stuff done and yes they will always get their signatures and yes they will be on levels 4 and 5 forever. So you have created the perfect person. Or have you? What you have created is a parent who is now more responsible for the child’s behavior then the child is. What you have created is a child who is not self reliant or self-motivated. Does your boss follow you around all day reminding you of your deadlines and job duties? If he does he must be exhausted at the days end.

You know that your child has a big event coming up on Friday night and it is now 8:30 on Thursday and he has not appeared with his list. You KNOW he did not do half of the items, are you helping him out by announcing the time and reminding him about tomorrow? Does he learn anything from this? Sure he did, that he doesn’t have to be accountable or responsible because you will do it for him. What will happen if you say nothing and Friday he comes home from school and begins to get ready for his big event. When the time comes for him to leave and he walks in and says "Okay Mom, I am ready to go". You simply say "Great, I will be ready right after I check your signatures from last night". BUMMER! Okay now you have a very upset and disappointed child. No parent likes to see this because it hurts. We don’t want our children to have to feel that. But which of these scenarios has this child learned from the most? Which choice will help him more? Which choice is least likely to cause him bad habits as an adult when the price for failure is so much higher?

I don’t know about you folks but I think my job as a parent is to be a guide and teacher to them, to be sure that they have the tools they need to be respectful and responsible. As much as I would love to be their buddy and their best friend, I have a much greater responsibility assigned to me by God. I would rather be their parent now and their buddy and best friend later. Because the other option is to be their buddy and pal now, and their rescuer later when they are adults and can not survive and need to move home. No parent wants to watch their child deal with unhappiness and being on a low level will make them unhappy. But would you rather watch that now and know that they have time to learn and grow or watch it as they are adults and blaming you for not teaching them how to survive and be self-sufficient? I choose to watch little pains now as opposed to seeing them suffer big pains later.

This system will work for any family and can be modified and made to fit any situation. In our case I am a Christian with Christian values and this system allows me to do my job as a parent and remove the power struggles with my children. There is no struggle, they are in total control of their situation. I simply give them the rules and a guideline just as the Lord has done for me. It is their job to stay within their bounds and to keep track of their own progress. As an adult I have a bible to read and scriptures to tell me right from wrong and it is my job to see that I apply that to my life. I fail at times just like anyone else. I then have to pick myself up and try harder. The level system is the same thing. I am teaching my children how to be responsible for their themselves, accountable for their actions and the tools to learn self-improvement. My children know at the age of 5, lessons I did not learn until I was in my 20’s and getting cars repossessed, evictions from my apartment and having to re-evaluate my life and habits. I had no self-control because as I was growing up, control was always an external thing that was applied UPON me instead of being taught TO me.

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Copyright © 2001 Terrin Moon