Is Child Psychology more Efficient than Adult's?

A recent post on reddit asked parents, "What is your best example of reversed psychology on your kids that actually worked?"

My favorite answer was by a user with the name blackbird77:

"Took my 3 year old son to one of those doctor's visits where he was going to get a shot. He was worried about the shot on the whole drive over, almost to the point of tears. We get to the doctor's office and a nurse subtly lets me know that my son is not just scheduled for 1 shot, but 5 of them in the same visit."

What would you have done in this situation? Immediate dread comes over me as I think of myself being the parent in this scenario. This parent had a very clever solution though,

"I turned to my son with an exaggerated smile and tell him, "Good news! They figured out how to take that one big shot you were going to get and instead break it up into these 5 little tiny shots so it won't hurt nearly as much!"

You could see the relief wash over his face. He stopped squirming and relaxed completely. He took the first shot and even smiled and said "It's true! The small ones don't hurt!""

As I finished reading the comment, my first thought was 'Great Parenting!'. I'm not so certain that I would have been that quick to think of an effective solution. Then I really started thinking. What if we looked at all the problems in our adult lives and broke them down into pieces? Not literally, of course!

We all know that even our miniscule day to day tasks can seem like a big burden when they pile up. So instead of looking at the entire picture, lets look at a few pixels instead. We wake up, go to work and then when the work day is done we come home and see everything that we still have to do. I refer to this as "homework". Whether it is doing the dishes, laundry or sitting down to sort through mail and pay the bills. Instead of trying to tackle all of these chores at once, what if we break up each individual task? That may seem like such a simple thought and some may already have figured this out but to others, the idea that we have to complete everything as quickly as possible brings out the protagonist in all of us.

I will watch the time go by with dread but I still don't want to get up from the couch and turn of my show because the homework will take hours to complete. The solution that I have found is that if I dedicate at least fifteen minutes of my time to complete whichever task needs to be done, then I can relax the rest of the day.

Homework isn't the only aspect of my life that I have used this technique on. I look at my bills to- specifically my loans. Altogether, between my truck, patio furniture and personal loan payment, it seems like I owe a lot of money! But if I step back and look at them individually, it doesn't seem as big of an amount. I have to stop and remind myself, not all of it is due at once. I can continue to make the scheduled payments each month and then an extra payment each paycheck toward the smallest loan- then I see results a lot faster. Once I pay a loan off, I feel a sense of relief and accomplishment wash over me.

Moral of this article is, try not to look at your problems as a whole. Instead, think about how you could break your task into steps- achievable steps. Make the steps as small as you have to because no task is too small and each completion will help you toward achieving your goal!