When do kids start understanding consequences for their actions?
Here’s the deal: the kids are currently signed up for a gymnastics class. With each passing week, they become less and less enthused during the class. However, they are ALWAYS excited about going.
Once there, they usually make it through about 20 minutes before they start complaining and telling me they want to sit down, go home, stop, have some water, go to the bathroom, etc. Now, I know it doesn’t help that the parents sit in on the class; I know that we are an easy distraction and an easy out. I also know it doesn’t help that the class is actually a little boring. The coach is perfectly nice, but a little lacking in energy or enthusiasm. (Hey, it’s a cheap Park District program, so I can hardly complain.) I would have no problem just dropping it, except that they ask me EVERY DAY if they are going to gymnastics that afternoon.
This week, on the way over, I told them (again) how I get very frustrated when they tell me they want to leave, or that their stomach hurts (and yes, I fell for that one until Buddy’s tummy miraculously healed itself once the coach pulled out some huge, thick mat to jump on), or that they just want to go home. So I wanted them to listen to the coach, because it isn’t nice when they don’t listen to him… blah blah blah. I told them if they both did it again, we were going home and there would be NO MORE gymnastics, or anything else for that matter. Meaning: no ballet or t-ball, which are upcoming classes. They seemed to understand it all, even enthusiastically assuring me that they would “not talk during class and listen to the coach!”
I thought this would be a surefire threat. Bean begged — BEGGED – us to let her take ballet. Buddy was unbelievably excited about taking up t-ball.
You can guess what happened.
This time, however, we didn’t make it even five minutes. One of the other kids in the class has an older brother who comes in and waits patiently while his sister takes her class. His mom pulled out a pen and some paper for him, and as soon as Bean saw these, she told me she wanted to go home and draw.
I asked her no less than ten times if she was SURE she wanted to leave, because if we did, that meant no ballet classes, and no coming back to gymnastics ever again. Was she SURE she wanted to do that? Yes.
Buddy, of course, soon followed suit and said he wanted to go home, and yes, he was willing to forego t-ball to go home.
Now. I’m not proud of it, but I went pretty apeshit crazy on them. I’ll spare the gory details. Which quite honestly, were apparently only for my own benefit because nothing I said to them seemed to faze them in the slightest anyway. They could care less.
After talking to them over and over again about it, we’re still not sure they understand it all. Do they want to go to ballet/t-ball classes? Yes. But they know now that we will not be going to ballet/t-ball? Yes. And how does that make them feel: happy or sad? Happy.
Huh?
I’m ripping my hair out with this one. They seem to understand so much now. Are we expecting them to comprehend too much? Are they just ridiculously spoiled kids? Is it some kind of defense mechanism? Buddy actually said he didn’t care if he went to t-ball or not. And honestly, they really are acting like they don’t care one way or another. And yet… they were so excited for these classes.
I’m so confused. We’re not sure what to do. Quite honestly, I don’t want to cancel the classes. I want them to have other things to do, especially things I am pretty sure they would enjoy. I just want them to understand that their actions have consequences. And they usually do understand this, but we’re not sure if it’s because they haven’t tried these activities yet, or that they are too far in the future, that they just don’t understand the entire situation.
I’m befuddled. And feel like an idiot parent. Because they totally called me on my threat, and now I’m the one affected by their actions. And yes, it was ridiculously stupid of me to make such a large threat. Parenting 101, I know. And now I should follow through, but… clearly I’ve painted myself into a corner.
What’s even more ridiculous is that I’m concerned that because we have always followed through on our threats in the past, we have conditioned them to become totally indifferent to normally disappointing situations; to tell themselves that they don’t care if they don’t get X, they’ll just make do with Y.
In theory, I thought our zero-tolerance parental regime was a good idea, but maybe we ended up creating emotionally-robotic kids! Scary Stepford Twins!
Okay, I’m losing it. These kids are going to kill me. Either they are winning the battle of the will and minds or they are not as developmentally mature as G and I thought.
G*d, I hope it’s the latter. Or I am seriously F*KKED from here on out.
16 Comments
Our parents made us finish out the season or session depending on the activity. This made us evaluate not only our choices of things to do, but it made us learn things, like persistance, and that even though you might not like the activity at first, you can learn to enjoy it, or find some value in it.
My husband and I have decided that this is the action we will take with our own children.
I guess I would have just left the area where parents were so that it wasn’t easily available for Bean and Buddy to come and whine to you.
Let them miss the session, I’m sure they understand. My 2 year old understood when my husband made him miss music class for hitting, so they do understand. Then let them pick one thing they want to do next time the opportunity rolls around.
Have fun! Isn’t parenting grand?
You could do what our mom did: make us stay, irregardless of the consequences, because you paid good money for these classes to enrich your kids’ lives so hopefully they’ll get a full ride scholarship to an Ivy League school. So we had to be near-dead in order to miss such things. Got a sniffle or stomachache? We’d get some tylenol and get shuffled off.
Although we didn’t get into Harvard and will pay for our college edumencation til we’re retired, we learned how to swim, make crafts, kinda dance(that one was a fiasco though), sing well hidden in a group, swear ourselves to the Girl Scouts, play a few instruments, and overall, have the fun/boredom that is summer day camp.
Kids, especially your kids’ ages are easily distracted. And it’s hard for them to stay focused during the less exciting portions of class and wait for their turns to play/use equipment. But they’re at an age where they start getting A HA! moments, learning cause and effect for their actions/inactions. They don’t want to listen to somebody tell them how to do something - they just want to jump right in and start doing. Once in class, it’s not your responsibility to keep your kids attention - it’s the instructor’s.
It’s a good thing that they’re excited to go to these classes. Too bad the instructors can’t keep them interested while they’re there, but stay the course, Halfmama. They need to learn how to pay attention and listen to instruction. Eventually, they’ll get more out of these classes, fake stomachaches or not.
Imagine, trying to do this when they start going to school. I had plenty of “stomachaches”, “headaches”, and “I think I have encephalitis” when it came to anything math-related. And I was plenty bored during math class. But now, 15+years later, I still know the quadratic formula and a right angle is always congruent to another right angle. But I’m not volunteering to go back to another math class if I can help it.
And the kids are playing you in order to get what they what for that particular moment of time e. g. drawing instead of ballet. Since they’re only beginning, they don’t know just how much fun they could be having a few months from now, once they’ve learned the basics. And let’s face it, learning the basics aren’t exactly exciting, so it’s easy to think of something else they’d rather do. The entire time I was playing Twinkle, Twinkle 50 times on violin, all I could think about was missing The Muppet Show in TV. As for the zero-tolerance policy, it is a good thing in general, but I think for these classes, I’d say, hey, you wanted to do these classes, here you are, you’re gonna stay in this class. Once this program is over, then you can decide if you don’t want to continue. So said our Mom.
Holy crapola, I didn’t mean to write so much! So Sorry!
That sounds so frustrating!
If they were older I might make them stick it out, but at three, it’s possible they just aren’t ready for that much structure, especially since they are in preschool.
Also, IMO three-year-olds don’t really get consequences unless they are immediate. So maybe in the future you could say something like, “If you can stay in class and pay attention then I will give you a sticker” or “If you can’t pay attention, you will have a five-minute timeout in your carseat.”
Dude. I think I’m going to print out Swan’s answer.
Have nothing to offer. NADA. Zilch.
Last night, I tod LN that she shouldn’t push me or other kids. She asked, “Why?” I replied, “Because it makes me sad and makes other kids sad.” She asked, “Why?” I said, “Because it’s not nice.” She asked, “Why?”
So I changed tactics. I asked her how she would feel if someone pushed her. She said, “Happy!”
So yeah. Got nothing. I can offer you my hair when you’re done pulling yours… if I have any left myself.
Em’s done this in classes before too and it drives me NUTS!!! I think it’s definitely somewhat of an age thing though; a 2/3 year old can only deal with structure for so long, and some of those classes do get a little dull. Young kids are so easily distracted - and so easily envious of what any other kid is doing!
I’m still at the point where I don’t want to make any of these “fun” classes into a negative experience. I figure when Em’s old enough, she’ll develop a deeper interest in something and we’ll help her extend/deepen her enthusiasm for that hobby. Until then, can you take a little break from classes to see if the twins clamor for more activities?
(Btw, I’m always second-guessing if we’re holding Emmy to a higher-than-age-appropriate expectation for her behavior. You’re definitely not alone there!)
first off, thanks so much for the comment. i really love knowing there are others out there reading up on me as i read up on them and i really appreciate the time you took to swing by…and you can use the twin card anytime you want, because i know.
apparently i will be knowing more by reading here, i have very little to suggest in the whole dilemma of gymnastics and the next step, but i do want to hear what others say because i think i have those twins, you know, the ones walking at 10 months and trying all kinds of things that scare me because i think three year olds do that stuff, not babies under one. arrrgggg, what in the hell was god thinking, oh yeah, payback for my precocious childhood.
i love the way you write and i think from everything i have read here that you do really well as a parent and buddy and bean sound very far from stepford….just sound like kids to me. i have 7 other siblings and that still has not helped much with the raising of twins but it does give me the realization that my parents got us through it and they had to try every tactic in the book including sleeping in the garage. probably a bit of overkill for the twins at this point, yeah?
I have no advice but…I feel your pain…and it makes you feel any better I would have said the same thing to my dd. Sometime when I give her consequences…why is that it is harder on me then her?
Now…I try so hard not to say BIG consequences but…it’s so hard.
My dd is a gymnastics class and for the life of me…she will NOT listen or follow instructions during the stretching part. She does have good days and bad days.
Yeah…I never know if what I am telling my dd she understands or if it’s above her poor 3 year old head.
they really know how to push our buttons, huh? ash likes to refuse to do ANYTHING at all in our baby gym class until about 15 minutes in… then she’s the class leader and talking up a storm. they’re so tough sometimes and so stubborn about what they want. i say make them stay. they’re the ones who were so excited about it every time. let them deal with their decision to take the class. they can seek therapy later.
I feel your frustration about your children not understanding consequences and then being stuck i a threat. I’m in that boat with A-chan right now, not about her activities because she loves going to gymnastics and soccer. It’s about other things. She completely doesn’t get punishment and consequences, and it’s so frustrating! I’m surprised I’m not bald. I don’t know why I waste my time talking to her since she doesn’t really get it. I just drive myself bonkers.
I’ve always felt that 20 minutes was the max for any one activity for my BabyGirl, so maybe it’s not the twins, but the length of the class? Especially if it’s a bit boring…for what it’s worth.
I didn’t read the other comments (reading in all caps gives me a headache…) but here’s my 2 cents, for what it’s worth (since my kids are turning out so great… HA)
They’re too young to really, really understand consequences that happen weeks later. If you do a class, perhaps you should bring a treat or toy or something (nothing toooo fabulous. Maybe just fruit chews or a granola bar or something) for them to receive, but only if their behavior is what you want. It’s immediate. It’s gratifying. And seeing their sibling receive something but not themselves is always a good motivator.
If they both misbehave, you could make a big deal of either eating it yourself or of having them throw it into the garbage cans themselves. I just had my 2 year old throw away all of her chocolates and candies from the easter egg hunt because she kept stealing them. She’s still repeating that mantra…”no steal candy, gotta frow it away… mommy get weeeealllly mad.”
ryc: Man that 6lbs is perfect!! I hope the twins come out weighing about 6lbs. I read that the safe weight is 5.5 lbs for the twins. So you’re perfect!
This sounds familiar. Aargh. So I will pass along the words I received from Sensei: “Sometimes you have to be the jerk parent. You have to push them sometimes, so they learn that it’s not okay to quit something just because it’s hard.” And I also try to tell myself that, once he’s in kindergarten, he has to go unless he’s really sick, so he might as well learn that lesson now.
Having said that, we still get pushback from time to time on martial arts despite all our efforts. And I think it’s okay to give them a break from it once in a while.
Consequences: They get them. But only if they are swift. I think that a class that is coming in future weeks is too abstract.
Was any of that helpful? No? Then how about knowing that we are dealing with the same crazy-making shit over here.
I’m taking notes. I am terrified of bargaining with my son. He’s so bossy! He can’t even talk yet.
LOVE the grandoise threat-you-cannot-possibly-keep. I hate it when I do that. You are pretty well f’ed either way. Good news is, you have to make a certain amount of mistakes to compensate for how freaking gorgeous your family is so no one gets too jealous.
As to the activities, you’re much more patient and generous than I am.
It’s a bummer to pay for a class they’re not getting; but far worse to pay for a lot of stress and misery and ungrateful kids.
We don’t go to activities if the kids give me or the teacher any grief about it at all. I just can’t bring myself to beg and plead with them to do something a lot of kids wish for and can’t have.
This post was a while ago. What did you decide?