Will you ever stop helping?

In My Humble Opinion
121

Yeah - and I woulda said, “No you won’t!” And, as I said, the kid was whining before he asked for pie.

I never felt the need to convince my kids that could not change my mind. But whining wouldn’t accomplish that.

Your upbringing seems similar to mine, and that of my kids. Hard for me to imagine that would be objectionable. To th contrary, I think it some of the more important things we taught our kids. Odd to think that would cause such distress. If so, I would hope I would’ve noticed it and adapted along the line. “No reading at the table” was another “arbitrary” rule.

122

What I was trying, and apparently failing, to get across to you, was that while the way this was done in your family and mine may not have been objectionable, the way it was done in some other families may well have been objectionable.

123

Exactly. The way I was raised was just oppressive on every level. And I could describe elements of it that other people experienced that they didn’t find oppressive in the context of their own childhood, but the context is everything.

124

My Daddy was Marine Drill instructor. I have 7 siblings.
Any meal was chaotic in ways that would curl Martha Stewarts hair.

But we had rules.
No rude bodily emanations.
No offensive language.
No fighting (food or otherwise).
Dog could stay under the table(after much begging by me) but no food to him.
And we had to at least try to eat neatly.
Daddy didn’t have time to monitor who ate what or how much.
(My own meals were much more restricted.)
But other than that you ate and took your plate to the sink and we’re free to go.

Daddy had one rule that was not to be broken. Ever.
He wanted an amount of time at the beginning of the meal to be silent. No talking, giggling or noise making.
He insisted.
We thought he was a ogre for doing this. Ashamed to tell friends staying over about it. It was just awful.

Then I grew up. Had 4kids at a time at my table.
The reason that measley 3min. (If that) Daddy wanted became apparent to me.
He wanted to shore himself up for the bombardment coming from all those mouths sitting at his table.

I don’t know how he did it.

125

Umpteen years of wrangling 17yo USMC recruits will give a man a lot of ability to tolerate, and put down, childish shenanigans.

126

You have no idea.

I mean I love my family and all, but I find it nerve wracking constantly having to correct behavior all the time. And you can see just in this thread, no one can agree how to actually treat children so they grow up right. And everyone acts like if you don’t have them squared away by age 6, you haven’t positioned them for success.

127

It’s life long. If it helps you to know that…umm. maybe not. Sorry.

It’s a big ol’ balancing act. You question yourself every day. About the time you get a handle on things some giant kerfuffle explodes. Back to square one, it seems.

They do grow up eventually.
All you can do is hope you did right. They’ll still love you if you stumbled some.

128

My daughter’s husband told me that they eat at together at the table because that’s how I do it. His family was always busy, so everyone grabbed and ran. He now likes to sit and eat, have conversation, enjoy the candlelight.

Our bird Rocco would be upset if we did not eat (and share) with him.

129

It’s very easy to fall into that mental trap. I spent a lot of time this year worrying about all the skills my son doesn’t have, and I eventually had to tell myself to chill the fuck out, he’s three. He’s probably going to be developmentally delayed in a lot of areas, which doesn’t mean he won’t ever acquire the skills, just that it might take him longer than other kids. But when I see things like he can’t sit at the table, or he turns around so he’s not facing us, or can’t drink from an open cup, or isn’t potty trained, etc. etc. I have to drop all the judgments of potential others and tell myself I’m doing the best I can and I have higher priorities for him right now.

For the table, we’re starting with trying to coordinate as many meals together as possible. My kid has food issues, so the reason he’s turning around in his seat is that he’s not comfortable being exposed to other people’s food, but the longer we work on dining together the more comfortable he will get. But even with his food challenges things are better for our family when we all eat together, sans phone.

I also wanted to say, it doesn’t have to be the end of the world if parents have different parenting styles. That can actually be good for kids’ development, because they are getting something different from each parent, that they might actually need. The problem is when parents start undermining each other instead of accepting the judgment of the other adult in the situation. Obviously this can go catastrophically wrong if the other parent is a terrible parent, but it doesn’t have to go wrong.

Another note. I’ve seen kids raised indulgently turn out to be totally dependent as adults, and I’ve seen kids raised indulgently turn out totally fine as adults. So there is probably an unknown factor besides reinforcing all these rules.

130

Well right now my kids act like horrible composites of the obnoxious kids from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. So my wife and I are trying to figure out how to deal with all that.

131

Oh, man. I wish you success.
Get on the same page. Make the rules and stick to them.

132

I have found, in general, that if outcomes widely vary even when the same criteria are applied to the problems, the answer does not lie in the applied criteria.

Said another way: when different people apply opposing techniques and all get good outcomes, the answer doesn’t lie in the techniques.

For example, I ended up with a baby rooster in a batch of chicks and I asked on the internet how to raise a tame friendly rooster – because I’ve had some nasty ones. About half the recommendations were to get him eating out of your hand and to pick him up and pet him, and the other half counseled making sure he was scared of you.
My conclusion was that roosters are either born friendly or nasty, and you can’t do a damn thing about it.

Childrearing is like this except ten thousand times more so. Some children thrive under a rigorous discipline, others are permanently scarred by it. Some children become ugly little tyrants when indulged, others blossom sweetly.

Because children are human, and humans vary enormously in what they need in order to grow up with all the social and spiritual abilities they are capable of.

133

I can agree with that. There is an element of luck involved.

134

Here’s an interesting example of helping:

135

We have plenty of rules but it’s more like the kids are adopting these fundamental character traits I really don’t like.

136

Not meaning to condescend, but possibly it’s your rules.
Think about them. Are they just pick-up, clean-up, shut-up, stop-it rules? Or are you teaching Personal safety, Respect, Kindness, maybe throw in good-humor*.
If you get some of them into your kids the others seem to fall in place.

Example: You can tell Bobby a million times to put up his bike.
If he does it he’s saving you from hitting it with the car or keeping it from getting stolen from the yard. Or baby sister from pulling it over on herself. If you reward with praise and thanks the next time he’ll respond quicker.

If you yell and scream, he never did it for the 30th time because he’s a little jerk who’s gonna kill his baby sister or lose his bike forever which he probably deserves, he’ll fight you forever on it.
He’ll think in his 8yo head well, I’m a creep anyway so I’ll just carry on.

It really is that simple.
But, it’s kinda not simple. The tough part is it takes repetition and repetition like you wouldn’t believe. And you have to start really early with giant, over the top praise. It gets easier over the years as you learn your childs ways. Some kids require more. There’s times when I thought I would go nuts sitting right on top my kids at every function.

By the time they’re young teens praising a job well done could be a thumbs up or a pat on the shoulder.

Like I said it’s a long dirty job with many pitfalls and failures. It’s rewarding to have happy young adults who are able to function without you hovering or bailing them out all the time. And so so worth it.

*We had grumpy mornings for awhile, so I made a rule. You had to smile at breakfast. No matter what. They groaned and rolled their eyes. But I kept insisting. By the 3rd morning they were laughing at each other’s pasted on fake smiles and enjoying breakfast. So now it’s a family thing. Smile at Breakfast. No excuses

137

It’s not really about chores and errands. They’re basically good kids, particularly in school. And they’re a lot of fun to roughhouse with.

It’s more like, with my son (Age 9), I’d like him to not whine all the time when we ask him to do something that isn’t playing with Lego or watching videogame walkthroughs on YouTube. He also really doesn’t have any friends. He’s on the autism spectrum so he’s a bit odd at times. Other kids are nice to him, but mostly I think he’s just really shy and uncomfortable around people.

My daughter (Age 6) I don’t like how demanding she is all the time. When she locks onto something, you don’t hear the end of it. “Daddy how many days until my birthday!?” About 20 minutes since you last asked. So ten days, 23 hours and 40 minutes. And there’s something going on with her reading too, so we need to get that all checked out. And all she wants to do is watching what we call “stupid YouTube videos”, but that’s easy enough to block.

138

Ignore bad behavior. That’s all I can say to that.
It’s hard when incessant whining and question asking is happening. Both of these things are things they will grow out of.

I know nothing about autistic children.

I will say get the screens outta their faces. There are studies that say 1 hour a day is too much for some children. I know, I know. It sounds brutal. My grandkids are limited about screens, for play. (They still get too much) then they go to school and the reading lesson is all on screen devices. And home work is done on a laptop every evening.

139

I don’t think I agree with this. At age 6 and 9, kids are able to understand plain language that certain behavior is inappropriate, will not be tolerated, and will have consequences. And IMO that holds true for many children well along on the spectrum.

msmith537, it is so exhausting to have to tell young kids the same damn thing that they know damn well over and over again. Especially when they whine and it is so much easier to simply give in. But that is a good part of what responsible parenting is, and what you signed up for. Just figure out a way you can respond to the kids that encourages the behavior you desire, and that you can apply over and over without getting emotional. I assume I am not the only parent who more than once found myself thinking, “Why didn’t you hear what I said the previous 20 times until I started screaming like a red-faced loony?!”

With both kids, I’d suggest specific limits on screentime - either daily total or specific time zoners thru the day. Or possibly as rewards for desired behavior.

For the 9 yr old, I’d encourage him to “use his words” and inform him that whining would not get the result he desires. And if he persists in whining, I would tell him he has to whine in his own room with the door closed, and when he chooses to stop whining he can come out and use his words and you will be happy to do any manner of things w/ him.

With your 6 yr-old: my wife and I are both lawyers. At a very young age, our kids learned what was meant by “Asked and answered.” IMO 6 is old enough to teach that repeating questions to which she knows the answer is unacceptable behavior.

Good on you for checking out the reading - but realize kids pick up reading at very different rates. The screen time is an issue I’m glad I did not have to deal with. I’d like to believe that if I had a 6 yr old today they would be VERY limited in the number of Youtube vids (or TV) they were allowed to watch daily.

But so much of parenting is boring, unrewarding, mindless repetition in the hopes that EVENTUALLY your efforts will have a positive effect, while knowing any positive effect will not be directly traceable to any specific action/choice on your part. Don’t be shocked when you kids are teens - or even young adults, and they do something just shockingly braindead which is contrary to something your specifically addressed and modelled hundreds of times in the preceding years.

Parenting is harder than anything else I’ve done, with more tenuous correlation between effort and results. Each kid is different and you are imperfect. You ARE going to make many mistakes. But the best you can do is to make intentional, well-intentioned choices based on the best information you have. Good luck. (And apologies if this comes across as patronizing or something.)

140

Ideally, you’d have been ignoring the whining since age 2.

Alot of time whining is increased if the child feels not listened to. If you respond with “Yes, Billy, Dad will help with your Lego in 15 minutes” and then do it, you forestall the whine. But when it’s ingrained, you have to ignore it and pick other times to respond positively.