How To Deal With A Lazy Child
Today I couldn’t get my daughter motivated to get out the door to school. It was most annoying. All she wanted to do was potter around in her room. I gave her a couple of reminders but she just kept on mucking around.
At 5 minutes before 8 o’clock I started to get firm with her and said “Beck, we are leaving for school in 20 minutes, whether you are ready or not. You need to get dressed, have breakfast and pack your bag”. Then I left her again.
She finally emerged right on 8.15am and started running around furiously as she hadn’t eaten breakfast and was hungry. I simply said to her, “what a shame you will have to miss out on breakfast this morning as we have to leave now”. I started to walk towards the car and poor Becky realized that mum meant business and she would be going hungry.
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.
What Becky had been doing was trying to exert some control over me by making me wait for her. I have no idea why this happened. But now Becky knows that if she tries that again the result will be the same – missing out on breakfast. This is a valuable lesson for any child to learn.
I know it is sad to have to do that but if I keep on saving Becky she will never learn that the world requires people to be on time. I had to leave for work. I had to earn money to feed my children and pay the mortgage. And that’s the way life is. Becky had a responsibility to be at school on time.
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 as we all love our kids and want the best for them. But sometimes the best thing for our kids is to allow them to make a mistake so that they can learn from it. When kids learn from trial and error they will thank you later on in life.
For more tips on how to raise great children, please go to http://www.mychildcanbehave.com
