Lazy Children
Do you ever wonder what you have done wrong when your child does something wrong? Well, this morning I couldn’t get my daughter motivated to get ready for school. She just stayed in her bedroom and pottered around and I was getting quite concerned about the time.
It was 7.55am when I finally turned up the pressure by saying to her, “OK, Becky, if you want a lift to school I am leaving at 8.15am. You have 20 minutes to get dressed, have breakfast and pack your bag”. Then I went away again.
At 8.15am she came out of her room and started running around as if her life depended on it. I was just about to leave for work so I said to her calmly, “what a pity you won’t have time for breakfast this morning” and walked to the car in the garage. Becky was horrified but as she needed a lift to school came running pretty quickly when she realized that I wasn’t joking.
I drove Becky to school and she was pretty quiet in the car. Becky knew that she had done the wrong thing by trying to test the boundaries. And if she tries that again she will get the same result. I will not waver in my boundaries for her sake.
Sometimes kids will try to control adults by dawdling like this. We have no control over that. All we can control is our reaction to their actions. Becky knows now that there will be a sad consequence of no breakfast should she try to dawdle like that again. A valuable lesson for any child to learn.
Yes, I did feel bad allowing it to happen however that was Becky’s choice to dawdle. I had nothing to do with that part. I had to leave for work to earn money to put food on the table and pay for a mortgage. That is an adult’s responsibility.
Here’s the thing: as adults we need to resist the urge to keep on saving our children in every situation. Kids need to learn through their mistakes. If I had made Becky her breakfast she would learn dependence upon mum to rescue her. However I chose to help her learn a valuable lesson. As a parent I so wanted to help her out but knew that would not teach her anything.
The end result was that Beck was very hungry until morning tea break today. But I think perhaps she will think twice about doing the same thing again. Why? Because she didn’t like the end result. She experienced the consequences of her poor choices this morning.
I know this can be a hard thing for parents
