The B Basket

When it comes to the B basket, the guidelines I try to use are a few questions.  Will they outgrow this with maturity? Does this just bother me or is it an overall issue?  Even transient issues may need to be addressed at times because they're very hard to deal with and live with.  Sometimes they'll outgrow something in time but guidance would help them get through it.  There are things that kids need to learn because it makes the lives of those around them easier and that is part of learning also (think housekeeping habits).  B Basket items are more of a decision as far as when and how to address them.  The same No Discussion Just Repercussion applies - but you can decide when the best time to address them is.  There's flexibility in the B basket.

Before I get to the example on this one I want to make something clear.  Baskets are extremely helpful in dealing with struggles and issues which arise - but they also apply to positive situations.  I wouldn't want anyone thinking we're just figuring out how to discipline our kids here - I think positive parenting is essential.  If we want to build positive kids we need to have a positive spin on almost everything in life.  We want to approach the good in life and focus on it.  We want to build positive character traits.  We want the magnifying glass to show us all the amazing things in the world and that our kids have to offer and become.  Deciding baskets applies to the positive things.  Of course repercussions will be replaced by incentives in those cases - but the idea is the same.  Prioritizing what things we want to work on in our families and with our kids - the growth mindset - is baskets.

Let's look at a potential basket B situation.  In my house, school performance is usually a B basket issue.  While grades themselves are not actually important to me - the effort put into school is crucial.  Grades are often an indication of what type of effort is being put forward.  I'll give a disclaimer here - I've always felt that for things like doing your homework, I - the parent - am not in charge of repercussions for failure to follow through.  I want the school to take ownership of the assignments they give and I never give my children incentives for doing or repercussions for not doing their homework.  Don't get me wrong, I don't discourage doing the homework and I always make myself available to help and even give them gentle reminders but I don't give repercussions for not doing it.  I digress, because we were talking about grades or school performance.  If a child is putting forth effort and not able to perform, I don't think that is a B basket issue (there may be other issues to address but that, again, is another topic), but a child who is under performing because of lack of effort usually falls into my B category.  Although the issue is important, it is not crucial.  I choose when and how to approach that issue.  I may set up ground rules with clear milestones they can hit and/or ways to show that they are making progress and if they fail to do that go to the no discussion just repercussion which I laid out.  A child who craves extra time on electronics, for example, may earn more time if they show they are doing the work or studying needed to put forth a good faith effort.  Although the failure to do their homework may be contributing to the issue, that is a conclusion I need them to come to on their own (another more on that later topic).  By doing so they're building their own skill set of how to problem solve and find solutions themselves.  It also helps take the focus away from the symptoms and more toward the issue.  The issue is lack of effort.  Effort can come out in many ways - rushing through homework isn't putting forth effort - so had I focused on the homework I would have a "weak" case here in my discussion with the child ("but I did do my homework") and my child would have taken the wrong lesson from the whole exercise.  My goal in this B case was to help my child understand and realize the value of putting their "all" into things - learning to make the effort even when they aren't terribly interested.  So I have to make sure my incentives/repercussions focus on that goal.  I also have to keep in mind, when doing this, what other basket issues I'm facing with this child.  If this particular child has an A basket issue we are working with, I may choose to overlook this for a while until that issue has been resolved.  Its a very case-by-case approach which helps me keep perspective on the importance of the issue at hand.