Was I out or order?

[alacazam]

Today 04:41 alacazam

My DS is 8, only child and only grandson in the family. He is amazing and a good, bright kid but because of his only child status I think he believes the grown ups around him are there to solely make him happy. Not his fault I guess, it's all he's known. There have been occasions when we've been in days out and he's not enjoying it i.e.) a walk around a local village on holiday, and he'll moan and moan and be rude to us (DH and I) Anyway yesterday (we are on holiday) when he wouldn't do something I asked (get out of chair his dad wa sitting in) he has a massive strop and he stroppee off to bed. When I went to check on him and discussing why I was upset he started smirking. I totally lost my cool and started shouting pack your suitcase etc etc, we're going home in the morning! He got upset and started crying. My husband went in to comfort him, which I felt totally undermined me, which made me worse! I took myself off to bed. The next morning DS was still upset and I asked him why he hadn't packed his suitcase, I said we were going home and I wanted him to feel the humiliation of going into school and telling his teacher why his holiday was cut short. My husband who always says I am too weak with him and I must follow a punishment through told me it was like emotional abuse. I haven't stopped crying since. I am racked with guilt, but mad with both of them. AIBU?

I didn't want to ruin a holiday but in that moment I just got to the end of my tether.

wow, well...yes, I do think you were out of order - were you really going to follow through and go home?

children (and maybe especially this age) can be right pains in the arse, but you need some better strategies for dealing with this than making idle threats and losing your cool.

there is a book called How to Talk so Kids will Listen, and Listen so Kids will Talk

It helped me a lot.

Maybe have another talk with your son, and try to reach a better conclusion to this.

We all lose our temper and feeling guilty is all part of parenting! But he'll forgive you, don't worry.

I can understand that he shoukd have had a sanction for his attitude and that in the heat of the moment you over reacted and said the hokiday was cancelled BUT You wanted him to feel humiliation and that was at least 12 hours after the event . That is not a feeling we should want for our children.

oh and your Dh was a bit OTT, calling it emotional abuse...
unless this is a regular occurrence, it won't scar him for life, or anything.

However, you did go a bit far in that you were still going on about it the next morning. Try and resolve arguments before bed.

At that moment in time yes I was absolutely going to take us all home.
Thankyou for the book recommendation. I'll give it a go x

I think cutting the holiday short was disproportional. But it does seem like there are behaviour issues, I think you need to come up with sime strategies but mostly you and DH need to get on the same page and not undermine each other.

So did you end up coming home early? If not I totally see why he was smirking.

The punishment (or threat of) was totally disproportionate to the crime.

You wanted your child to feel humiliated? In front of his peers at school? Nice.

I think you need to look at your relationship with him as you sound very disconnected from him.

It's really common for young boys to smirk when they feel uncomfortable. They tend to get in trouble a lot at school for smirking when they are getting in trouble but they can't actually help it, it just happens because they are feeling uncomfortable. He may have been smirking because he was being an a**, or it might have been because you were telling him off. As hard as it is, try & ignore the smirk. 8 is also ap really hard age, it's when boys tend to get their first hit of testosterone.

Wow, you could all be handling this a lot better. Shouting, tears, wanting to humiliate a child?!

You need help, you sound very high maintenance.

I think the punishment was out of proportion to the crime but you weren’t wrong to impose sanctions.

Try a less harsh approach - also give some warnings too - don't just turn into a crazy woman from nothing
You were out of line I'm afraid. Chose something appropriate to the crime