The Lazy Child
Filed Under Education |
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.
Finally at about 8.15am she emerged, and all of a sudden was rushing around furiously trying to be ready on time. But I stuck to my guns. I said to her, “It’s a pity you won’t have time to have breakfast now”, and went to the car. Becky followed, shoes and socks in her hand as they hadn’t been put on yet.
It was a quiet ride to school and Becky just sat there pondering her actions. I had done nothing wrong. I was just making Beck be responsible for her own actions or inactions as it was today. Now Becky knows that I do not waver in my boundaries.
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.
We need to allow our children to learn through their mistakes. I could have easily whipped up some breakfast or waited another 3 minutes for Becky. But the issue here was that Becky knew the boundaries and still defied me by being on a “go slow” to purposely try to annoy me.
Becky had to go hungry until morning tea break to realize that the world doesn’t revolve around her. And I do hope that she chooses to learn a valuable lesson here. It would be hard for me to let that happen again in our house however kids need an opportunity to learn from their mistakes.
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.
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