This past week we began leading a new Parenting from The Tree of Life class. Some of what we, along with Dave and Lis, advise in these weekly letters is derived from the ideas and teachings from this wonderful curriculum. One of the many concepts we love is The Potato Principle.
The Potato Principle was born from a dining experience and shared by the Ezzo’s ministry associates Don and Karen Kurtz. It speaks to the idea that often times we become fixated on the flaws at the expense of looking at the overall good.
Have you, your spouse or your children ever thrown out or refused to eat a baked potato because there is a small dark spot under the skin? Or maybe the skin has one too many cuts or “eyes!” In reality, the potato is just fine in spite of all those imperfections. Sure it’s not perfect, but that shouldn’t keep you from enjoying the majority of the potato.
Unfortunately, as parents, we often fixate on the bad spots of the” behavior potato” and begin to evaluate our child’s goodness by the absence of bad spots and imperfections. As a result, our children can become exasperated and disillusioned because it forms an unrealistic expectation for their overall behavior. We end up losing our parenting perspective when we throw out the behavior potato because of a few bad spots!
While we didn’t have The Potato Principle when our boys were younger, there was one situation where it really could have helped us and the boys. When Trevor was 5 and Alex was 3, our meal times were a disaster. Mealtime etiquette, or “jacking around” at the dinner table as Rich coined it, was not good. We became fixated on every little thing the boys did wrong as we envisioned the perfect mealtime experience. As you might suspect, all of us became frustrated with each other as we, metaphorically, threw out many mealtime potato experiences even when all the behavior wasn’t so bad.
Clearly, we lost our perspective. While our intention to address our boys’ bad mealtime behavior was correct, our neglect of their overall good behavior was not. Thankfully, we were able to take a step back and gain perspective during one of our CouchTime conversations. We decided that mealtime was going to be enjoyable in spite of the behaviors we needed to correct. Trevor and Alex were largely characterized by having good behavior and we shifted our focus on encouraging those behaviors. After a week or two of applying this Potato Principle, without knowing it at the time, our mealtime was no longer a disaster!
Yes, bad behaviors need correcting and we shouldn’t overlook correcting them. But we shouldn’t fixate on them either. As parents, we need to keep the proper perspective as we train our children towards moral excellence and not moral behavioral perfection.
As wife and husband, we have taken The Potato Principle a step further and have applied it to our marriage relationship as well. Just as we can fixate on those bad behaviors with our children, we can also hyper-focus on our spouse’s behaviors that drive us crazy! Rich, for example, forgets to pick up after himself or Shelly sometimes loses track of time and makes us late. Are we perfect? No. Are we working toward correcting those behaviors that drive our spouse crazy? Yes! It is important to not lose sight of all the great things you provide one another and love about each other. Don’t throw out the Marriage Potato because you are preoccupied by the bad spots.
For us, The Potato Principle is just another great reminder to elevate and enjoy the good while we work to improve upon the bad spots in our parenting and our marriage.
Blessings to your family,
Shelly and Rich