It’s a child.
Irregardless of his “wants”, he doesn’t get to make the rules.
Yes, let him get up and go play Lego somewhere.
If Mom wants to go cuddle/explain, I’d say go do that.
It’s not like he’s gonna starve to death waiting on dessert.
Good teaching moment. It’s not always possible to have what you want, when you want it. We all have to learn this.
In my upbringing, whether it was ordinary dinner or a feast, there was always an intermission before dessert. Maybe 30 minutes, maybe an hour. The idea of tucking into sweets right after the main course is just weird sounding to me. Adults, kids, whatever.
Not that my way is the right way, simply that some folks do have a normal expectation that dinner & dessert are two separate seatings at the table with some non-table activity in between.
In our case the bigger the meal, the longer the intermission.
The old folks aren’t going to fall over dead if he has a slice of pie at the table.
It’s a slice of pie, it’s not a big deal, it’s not an important rule, it’s not an important “tradition”. Even if it were an important tradition, the point of tradition is to form positive bonds with the other people in your family, not to shit on the little kid who is sad over having his home taken away from him.
It could have been a good teaching moment for the old folks that there is no crisis if they let a bummed out 6 year old eat a piece of pie at Thanksgiving.
Okay. That’s fine with me. If that’s how they wanna be.
The poster did say this was the kids usual behavior. “Whiny and manipulative” were the words used.
At 6yo it seems it’s passed time to teach patience.
I wasn’t talking about some time between dinner and dessert - I always had that too. Because it takes about 30 minutes to put away the dinner food and take the desserts out and make coffee. I really did mean that I find it hard to believe that all the adults want to take a walk and not a single one would rather stay in the house. And once there is an adult staying behind , I don’t think it’s a big deal to give the kid(s) the pie while others are talking that walk. Why couldn’t those who wanted to take that walk if the kid was given pie?
I do agree that this incident and others like it taught this child that whining works on his mother - but that lesson would not have been learned if he had been given the pie when he initially asked for it. I don’t believe in always saying “yes” to kids - but I also didn’t say “no” for arbitrary reasons.
Aha gotcha. Agree about both scheduling and kid minding.
This is wise. I suppose the bicker now moves on to how “arbitrary” their plans were. I don’t have a serious opinion; this is pretty remote from my life.
Agreed. My kid gets a lot of opportunities to learn that he can’t always get what he wants, without having to orchestrate such events.
I have also decided that during holidays, on vacations, he can do whatever. My grandmother gives him special windmill cookies, he can eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner for all I care. He has a tendency to want other people to do things for him, in the way he plays. One Thanksgiving he wanted my grandma to do something for him and I told him he should do it himself. He was a little upset, but got over it. My grandmother, however, was greatly distressed for weeks afterward, worrying that I had ruined her relationship with her great-grandchild. I did not take this personally, but it made me realize with the limited years my grandmother has left, we are in the business of making happy memories on these occasions, not “teaching lessons” for the hell of it.
I’ve taken that approach to playing with him after school, too. He has demands made on him all morning at ABA, then he has ECSE in the afternoon, he comes home and like, yes, let him do the equivalent of kicking back and relaxing. So his idea of play after school today was dictating the dimensions and colors of the Lego pyramid I was to build. He had a blast watching me build it, so what the hell.
My wife could probably use some counselling for anxiety, OCD, depression and who knows what else. Are children tend to be a bit demanding and it tends to stress her out. My wife also tends to catastrophize everything (she gets that from her mother).
It’s like children’s laughter cause my wife physical pain while actually causing me physical pain causes my children to laugh.
Wow. That sounds trying.
I suspect different people might vary greatly as to what each of them consider “arbitrary.” Especially when it comes to such things as manners, patience, family tradition, respect for others… People also would likely differ as to what would cause them to deviate from behaviors they all agree have some merit. I think the choice of the word “arbitrary” somewhat problematic, because that could be applied to just about any personal behavior other than the need for immediate self preservation. Name something in your family dynamic that you consider extremely important and well justified, and let me tell you whether I consider your preferences “arbitrary.” 
I have no idea whether any adults (2 parents, 4 grandparents) intended to forego the walk if the kid did not express his desire to not wait for pie. AFAIK, that family takes a walk every T-day between dinner and dessert. To “settle dinner/make room for dessert.” As far as family traditions go, it does not strike me as insane. Actually sounds pleasant to me. Others may certainly differ.
IMO, not that any of you should care, the biggest issue here is the disconnect between the mom and dad as to how to handle a kid who, also IMO, is showing signs of developing undesirable behaviors. That’s fine. Not my kid/grandkid. I also suspect that if one is familiar with a child/person who exhibits traits one disfavors - whininess in this case - one might have increased sensitivity towards perceiving examples of such behavior in the future.
You’re right, “arbitrary” isn’t the best word for what I mean. It’s closer to that I tried ( because of course I didn’t always succeed) not to say “no” unless the issue was important enough to me to put up with sustained whining without giving in. Because IMO , giving in to the whining is the bigger issue , even if both parents are on the same page about doing so.
It sounds as tho you and I were similar in our child raising. I had to train myself early on not to just reflexively say, “No.” But, similarly, early on I consistently trained my kids that if they wanted something, whining was likely the best way to guarantee that they would not get it.
We told our kids that (in most instances) they should be able to make an argument why things should be done as they wished. I remember one time my eldest - when very young - asked if we could eat lunch outside as a picnic. I asked why we should go thru the effort, instead of just eating in the kitchen as usual. She gave some silly little kid explanation about how the weather was nice outside and it would be pleasant and fun to have a picnic. To which I responded, “Sounds great! Picnic it is!” But if she had just whined, I guarantee we would not have had a picnic. And if the kid insisted on whining, they would have done their whining in a room distant from me. If they chose to whine, and later came back and gave some reason, we probably would have had the picnic.
No - I was FAR from a perfect parent. Just trying to illustrate what I practiced and what still makes sense to me. Other people are free to make different parenting choices.
Making family dining a “lesson in patience” (to a six year old, indistinguishable from punishment for being unhappy and wanting something which they hope will make them feel better), is an excellent way to create a feeling of dread around family dining. In my family we all dutifully ate using our good manners and after we had dutifully washed and put away the dishes we each ran off to our own rooms to eat something privately in the grateful absence of judgement.
To this day I have trouble eating at my family of origin’s table. I sit and pick at my food, and wait until I can leave until I can satisfy my hunger. I can’t even feel hunger at that table.
So that’s another anecdote for you. I am congenitally unable to not side with the powerless.
My mother-in-law used to like to tell me, “It’s your job to raise them. My job is to spoil them.” Now, it’s not like she let the kids run completely wild, and the big rules were the same everywhere. But at Grandma’s house, if you wanted a cookie, you got a cookie, and she was absolutely fine with a level of chaos and mess that I didn’t allow at home.
My own mom, who also loved her grandchildren whole-heartedly, had a different perspective. She came from a multigenerational household where the grandparent was an authority figure, not a playmate, and she also lived closer to us and babysat the kids relatively often. Even so, Grandma’s Rules were different than Home Rules, and there was an appropriate amount of spoiling there as well.
So I’m on the side of letting a kid slide a bit at family occasions, but parents 100% should stick together on discipline issues. I just know that, for good or bad, if one of my kids had asked for pie at a family dinner, she’d have been on a grandma’s lap eating pie before her dad or I had a chance to get into a power struggle.
Sorry your parents’ choices fucked with you as you describe. You are saying that merely requiring decent manners during family meals caused such undue stress? I appreciate that your reaction is your own, but it impresses me as a tad - uh - extreme.
I realize many (most?) families eat no meals together. We always thought it very important. And while meals did not last any specific length, everyone was required to sit at the table, engage in conversation, no singing at the table, don’t eat until everyone has been served, chew with their mouths closed, hold their utensils correctly, no phones, etc. Not sure THAT permanently scarred any of our kids.
And neither I as a kid, nor my kids, were allowed to eat in our rooms. So if we didn’t eat at mealtime, no biggie. Unlikely we were going to starve before the next meal came around.
And you’d be fine with grandma applying rules different than the ones you wanted as a parent? I imagine there is some degree of embellishment in your telling, but at some point, before grandma was able to go to wherever the pie was, cut a piece, put it on a plate, and get the whining kid on her lap, I or my wife would have made clear to her that - at least in our house - she had to respect our rules re: raising our kids (future adults.)
I am also a believer in grandparents getting to do some spoiling (within reason - pie ,yes, ear piercing, no ) - but I think the idea is that the grandma would have said “I’ll get you a slice” before the parents had a chance to say no and therefore before any whining.
I have a problem with the pie in this story. Maybe the dessert baker would rather it be made more of a celebratory event when their creation is served.
Would we then let the kid get a piece early?
What if it was Gramps birthday party? What’s gonna stop him from whining for that cake earlier than everyone?
If it keeps happening (the “He gets his way by whining and manipulating his parent” foolishness) nothing will stop him. He will continue to behave like that until he receives help in learning the correct behaviors.
6yo. is comparatively late to start this training, IMO.
It is training, after all. Should never be punishment.
I agree, and sometimes I accidentally say no to something I realize two seconds later is not a big deal, and then I have to go through the whole sticking to my guns thing, just on principle, even though it’s a dumb hill to die on. That’s parenting, I guess!
I expect it depends on the way the discipline was exerted.
We had to sit at the table or ask to be excused, sit reasonably properly and make some reasonable attempt at table manners, eat what we were offered or ask to go make ourselves a sandwich. Food was brought out when my mother thought it was time to bring it out, and dessert wasn’t until after we’d eaten main course. We didn’t have food in our rooms; we ate in the kitchen, or the dining room, or occasionally in the family room if it was a snack or the living room if it was a party or some kinds of snack, but I don’t remember anybody – parents included – taking food upstairs unless somebody was sick and not supposed to leave their room.
But I also don’t remember ever dreading meals. And I was never forced to eat anything I couldn’t stand; or forbidden to talk; or forbidden to do things like mash my spinach into a flat field so I could pretend to be a horse grazing while I ate it; or severely criticized for something like an elbow on the table or too much fidgeting, just a casual mention; or teased or harrassed by other family members while at the table. I can easily imagine situations in which a child could come to dread the entire enterprise.
I even got to argue about the rules. I didn’t always win; but when I complained about not being allowed to read at the table on the grounds that my father read his newspaper at the dinner table, my father grumbled, but he quit reading the newspaper at the dinner table. I would have preferred that we’d both been allowed to read, but I respected the decision; because the fairness argument was respected.
We eat at table. All or one. When I was alone I took my food to the table.
The kids do the island or on the deck in good weather for lunches.
Not too strict. No electronic devices. Clean hands. Just act your normal self.
There are a couple of boy-type things we’ve worked on recently. With the grand-sons. The oldest grand-daughter stopped the last one by shaming them. So far it’s holding. I told the Mom’s let it ride. The grand-daughter can be over bossy. So we watch her with the younger ones.
I can’t imagine ever eating with out the dinner table involved. (Unless, sickness, or hospital stays).
Even if you live alone and slouch on the couch for meals. There will always be restaurants and dinner at someone’s house to contend with.
Basic manners are important. Kids need it to eat in the lunch room at schools.