I guess times have changed because I would never have called my mother at home unless I thought she was depressed and needed a good laugh. If I ever called my father at work the house better be on fire, and I had better have called the fire department first.
For those who think the child will burst into a scholastic wild fire because of a 4 hr food drought then I would chauffeur the needed sustenance and bill the kid for your time. This will make future events a decision by the child. Make sure to give him the first-born rate or some other family related discount.
The lesson is simple, everybody makes mistakes, and should take responsibility for them.
Apparently we’re speaking different languages here. Because I said:
Other people said:
So could someone explain what the words “bring him his lunch” means in your language? Because it doesn’t appear to mean the same thing it does in mine.
I kind of think that a lot of people in this thread had some kind of issue with unreliable parents or something and are, you know, transferring. Not bringing the kid the lunch he forgot, again, isn’t the same thing as forgetting a child for three days in the snow, you know.
Good lord, this thread is giving me a great chuckle. Leave it up to the SDMB to turn something as simple as “my kid forgot his lunch” into a pedantic back-and-forth about whether it’s a going to irreparably scar him into being one of those “do everything for me” adults. I’m not snarking and I’m not pitting, I just find the consistency to be great-- only on the SDMB can one expect to find a reference to the suggestions of parenting books in response to the brain stumping “should I take my kid his lunch?”
FWIW, I don’t even see a question here. It’s not inconvenient for you, so I’d do it. Were I busy, I’d say so and not take it.
There is no point in trying to “teach a valuable life lesson” to an 11 year old kid who’s just forgotten his lunch.
I’ve got to agree with Ro0sh on this one. When I was in school, mom was a homemaker. And yes, I called her at least once in middle school to bring me something I’d forgotten. And thankfully, she wasn’t busy and wouldn’t be inconvenienced to do so. Nowadays, I don’t blame the world and ask “why do these things always happen to me” or expect anyone to do my work for me. I consider my mom to be very reliable and I’m always appreciative when she does a favor for me.
This is little more than a kid asking for a favor. Could you bring me my lunch today; I accidently forgot it at home? Yes, I can do you a favor, I’m not busy. -or- No, I’m afraid I’m busy, I can’t bring it to you. Hopefully, the kid understands and accepts either way. There should be no penalty or price or whatever beyond a simple “thanks mom!” If the kid thinks that going without lunch for a day is going to be the end of the world, then there are other issues here.
This is the kind of thing that doesn’t require input from Dr. Spock or a heated debate.
Freudian Slit has the most logical and reasonable take on this, IMO.
My mother taught me these kinds of “lessons,” and yes, it taught me to be self-reliant and independent and not count on anyone for anything. Is that last part really such a great lesson? I realize I’m taking this to the extreme, but I agree with the posters who suggest not everything needs to be a lesson and food deprivation is a counterproductive punishment.
That, or they had actual shit to do and didn’t have time to be pulled away from it for things that weren’t really majorly important. Some of us have, you know, work to do at work. Calling my parents at work would have involved either pulling Mom away from her class and disrupting 30 other people’s education, or having the office track down which job site Dad was on, calling the office trailer, and having the foreman track him down to bring him to the phone. For all that it damn well better be important. “I’m sick, somebody needs to pick me up” was important. “I forgot my lunch, but other people are willing to feed me” really isn’t.
And for that matter, I’m that way with work now. I run my ass off all day long, and I don’t leave until all the work is done, however late that is. If you call me at work, somebody better be in the hospital. Unfortunately, given various relative’s health, that call is sadly likely, which is why I fought tooth and nail for the right to keep my cell phone turned on and on my person at all times at work.
His mother was at home. Seriously, I feel sorry for anyone whose parents are so uptight they wouldn’t take a call from their kid for anything other than the most dire of emergencies. I have no clue what my social skills have to do with that.
I have a 12 year old son (sixth grader) who is allergic to yeast. The school lunches (mandatory for all students in Japan) have bread on Mondays and Thursdays, so on those days we have to provide something in lieu of bread.
He or I forget usally two times out of every ten… I work and simply don’t have time to take it to him. This means that often he gets a small bowl of soup and a salad item for lunch and nothing else.
I always leave the forgotten item and a big snack for when he gets home at about 4:30 (I work in one half of my house in my English school and the rule is my kids come in the school side and wave at me so I know they are back but that’s all the contact I have with them till 6:30).
I can’t do any more, and he can’t seem to remember any more, even though he is at the ravenously hungry stage of boy growth.
I feel sorry for him/like a bad mother but also irritated that he can’t get his act together. He will often get the rice/tortilla into a bag and in the leaving spot in the hall and then not pick it up on his way out. AUGHHHH!
I should say I rarely take his lunch because sometimes I don’t know he didn’t take it and he never calls me about it either any more. (Because nine times out of ten I am working and can’t take it, so it just frustrates both of us.) He never complains to me either any more… Dunno if that is good or bad!
Well, that’s the thing. It’s become *expected *that a parent is there to be a child’s servant and keeper - to the extent that one has to be able to articulate the developmentally appropriate reasons why one shouldn’t do that in all cases. We’re - or rather, I’m - an old fashioned parent in a world of helicopter parents, and yeah, I’m often put on the defensive because of that. So I have these answers at the ready.
'Sides, it’s just fun to talk about. This thread would be pretty dull if it was a string of “Yes” and “No” posts. From the OP, it sounded like she wanted to know WHY or WHY NOT, not just affirmative or negative.
I’m not a teach by consequences parent for the hell of it. If I was the kind of parent I see modeled by the people around me, I’d be a helicopter parent, too. I’m a teach by consequences parent because the other way wasn’t working and someone suggested a book which I read. I’ve thought about it and tried it out very deliberately and it seems to work.
My vote is yes bring him lunch, but make it something nutritional but perhaps not a favorite food (no, not as cruel as bring him lima bean soup or liver or something, just something he’s not all that crazy about). I think your instincts of “it’s hard to pay attention and think clearly if you’re hungry” are right on. As annoying as it is, kids forget stuff all of the time, this used to drive me bonkers when my kids were that age!
I came from depression era parents and while I never lacked for anything I was expected to take responsibility for my actions. That was a given by age 11. when I was 10 I was getting lectures on what was expected of me when I turned 18. Kids will rise or sink to the expectations made of them.
This is not to say my parents weren’t there for me. I once called my dad at midnight because my college car died while I was returning from a 2nd job that was an hour away. After giving him the wrong directions he was able to find me and help get a disabled car out of the mud.
I know parents who continually rescued their children. It didn’t matter how insignficant the problem was. Now they’re rescuing their grandchildren.
One of my fondest childhood memories was when I was in maybe 5th grade. I forgot my lunch money. Instead of asking for a free lunch (which usually works) for some reason I called my uncle (who worked nights at the time and drove me to school.)
He came a few minutes later, with a huge bag of tacos from Taco Bell and a giant Coke. I was always a bit of a misfit, but on that one day I was a rock star in my school. For years people remembered the time my cool uncle brought me Taco Bell.
Yeah, and being at home automatically means you got nothing at all going on. :rolleyes: My parents aren’t and weren’t uptight, but they did and do firmly believe that when you are at work, you are there to, you know, work. Chit-chatting or telling them about problems that are already solved is not working, and can wait a few hours until they get home. My folks have always been instantly available to me if I actually needed something, and they would always take my call to make sure that I was okay because the expectation was that if I was calling, something was wrong. But if I just wanted something, especially something that could wait a few hours until they got home, my ass was grass for calling and a) disturbing their work and b) scaring the shit out of them. I really don’t see expecting a kid to differentiate between wants and needs, or expecting them to defer gratification of their wants by a short time, as a bad thing.
Maybe it’s just another piece of the cultural disconnect between people who have the sort of job where you twiddle about the Dope and take personal calls with minimal disruption and those who don’t. My family has always fallen very firmly in the don’t have that kind of job category–construction workers, teachers, waitresses, that sort of thing. A lot of the sort of job where excessive (more than one a week or so) personal calls would get your ass reamed by management, possibly fired.
The post of yours that I responded to was specifically about being “at work”, a phrase very rarely used by stay-at-home moms. Also, stay-at-home moms rarely get in trouble with middle management for taking a phone call. I thought you had missed the part about her being at home, which is why I pointed it out.
Unlike you, I was free to call my father at work for things that weren’t emergency related. If I was trying to make plans with someone & needed to know the date my father was taking me to a ballgame, for instance. I didn’t abuse the fact that he would take my calls, and that sort of give-and-take worked quite well for us without sacrificing my ability to defer gratification. He taught that to me about 4 million other ways.
There probably aren’t many people on the planet who have/had a busier or more demanding job than my father. He sure as hell wasn’t “twiddling” a thing during the workday. The point being, the fact that some people take calls from their family during the day isn’t a sign that “times sure have changed”. Different people come from different situations.
Which is what makes calling other people’s parents “assholes” or “uptight” for having different criteria than your parents had a real dick move. You really have to wonder why your manners and social skills were called into question?
