Kids And Dawdling
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.
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.
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.
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? It didn’t annoy me but inconvenienced her. She had to go hungry for most of the morning. I wouldn’t mind betting that she won’t do that again in a hurry. Why? Because she was allowed to suffer the consequences of her actions.
It was heart breaking to see a hungry child going to school. But I had no control over Beck’s actions. She made some bad choices today. But when we allow our kids to make mistakes and learn from them they will thank you later on in life. I guarantee it.