Why do children do so many self defeating or ill advised things.

[Commonsensitivity]

My children's teachers are on strike today, so I forced (sic) the children on a dog walk to the beach before doing a fun trip this afternoon to a trampoline Park.

Jesus. My 7 year old did so many silly things during the beach trip. Plonked himself in the woods and said he wasn't coming (how would he find his way home)? On the beach, unlaced all his shoes in a strop (I had to replace them so he could actually walk home in them). Pulled the bobble off his hat when he didn't win a game of rounders..... Walked around without shoes for half the walk home. I'm knackered.

I have noticed that (my) children are really hard to govern in the outside world without them doing silly or dangerous things.

Is it just me or do I need to just accept they are kids...

Because when they behave really badly on a trip to the beach they get rewarded by an afternoon at a trampoline park?

Look around your house and ask yourself how much crap your children own and how many nice places they have been taken despite behaviour that has been consistently poor.

I agree with a previous poster that I would not have gone on an afternoon outing after such behaviour. Not as a punishment but as a natural consequence of earlier actions of my child. I would assume my child was tired or something like that, as it would be out of character and that mostly happens due to tiredness in my experience. I would have sent him off for a nap first once we were home.

You're sending a 7 yr old for a nap? Do you hate yourself? If my 4 yr old naps that's it, everyone's routine is rui ed for days trying to recover 😱

Yes, my child is 8 and sometimes maps. Now, I must say we do not live in the UK but in the Caribbean and with this climate it is lovely to have an afternoon nap as it gets really hot during the day. It is quite common here, in the weekend I even take a nap sometimes 😊

I must add that my child is very easy going and that an afternoon nap does not involve our routine crashing down on us, so no negative side to that for us.

Maybe it’s just my kids - or me! - but I would not schedule two activities in the same day. I think kids are kept too busy and entertained and parents (mums usually) are like bloody cruise directors running around trying to keep them happy. And they don’t appreciate it. Do any kids actually need to do a big walk and a trampoline park? Is that not completely knackering and almost guaranteed to end in an exhausted tantrum?

I would do either the walk or the trampoline park followed by a bit of mooching around the house. Maybe some board games if they got restless. If they complain then threaten to give them maths sheets to do seeing as it’s actually a school day.

That stuff sounds like toddler behaviour not that of a 7 year old!

I don't think h ink people are being superior, but I work with children 4 to 12, and that really is not typical 7 year old behaviour

7yo boys rarely engage brain before, well anything really! I found it quite a frustrating age as silly behaviour annoyed me but they weren’t being deliberately awful. A lot of it is curiously - “I wonder what would happen if…..” I personally wouldn’t withdraw a promised treat over silly behaviour, especially one that has the potential to tire him out before a hopefully early night. Maybe that’s soft, I’ve always been more of a carrot than a stick person, but my boys are now both very pleasant adults so I obviously did something right.

I don't think h ink people are being superior, but I work with children 4 to 12, and that really is not typical 7 year old behaviour

Yeah but kids very often behave very differently for their parents compared with in a formal setting.

This must be why those dystopian stories about "what if all the adults were gone and children ruled the world" are so popular - Lord of the Flies and the like. You look at their behaviour and think, if everyone acted like that, how crazy would it be?!

Good point @Squiblet
Swallows and amazon's is very ambitious in terms of kids skills sets!

A lot of the older kids' stories where they are independent (like Swallows and Amazons, which I am currently reading to my 11 year old) are actually about mid-teens - a "child" in those stories was really a 15 year old.
My DF has some magazines from when he was a child and I worked out that though they say "for the modern child" he was actually 12-15 when he got them. The last one was from the year he turned 16.
This may also explain why we think older children's books imply that children 50 years ago had much better reading skills than our children. First, the books that were out were only bought by well off families whose children had really good teaching, and second, the things we think "my 8 year old will love that" were actually read by 14 year olds who were still into children's type stories.

I am of the baby boom generation and there were 56 in my class with one teacher. (School built in the late 50s with an estimate of how many children there would be and the reality was double)

No TAs

But if you walk a dog then you go out everyday for a big outing

I personally couldn’t stand being cooped up in the house.
Mooching around the house = destruction

The more activities they did, the more tired they were, the easier it was to get them to bed in the evening

@Commonsensitivity It’s your child pushing at boundaries, if they meet the natural consequence, they will learn not to. Eg if apparently left in the wood then they will get a fright and are less likely to do that again. Ditto walking without laces, why not let him learn he needs to put them back in?
That will take longer then the next natural consequence is no time for trampolines.

Did you speak to him and ask him why he was behaving like that? Kids are always testing the boundaries, however it sounds as though he was digging his heels in because he didn't want to be there.

It seems unusually stroppy for a 7yo. My DD is the same age and is past the disruptive tantrum stage; rather she'd tell me (vocally) what it is that was annoying her.

Maybe he just wanted to go straight to the trampoline park (you're brave to do that when the teachers are striking!) and saw the dog walk as an annoying activity that was taking too long, so was just being disruptive on purpose.

Unless you ask him why though, none of us will know!

For me it is not that they cannot have 2 outings in one day. They absolutely can. But if they behaved like that on the first outing, I would think that the first outing was too much and they are already too tired. I would then change my plans and not go on the second outing.

Big difference is that we live a lot outdoors already, so we are not cooped up in a house due to the weather and that I live in a country were walking the dog is not common, we have a big plot surrounding the house and the dogs are naturally really lazy during the day.

Big difference is that we live a lot outdoors already, so we are not cooped up in a house due to the weather and that I live in a country were walking the dog is not common, we have a big plot surrounding the house and the dogs are naturally really lazy during the day.

Jealous! I get really bored with my dogs walking me!

I remember those days too Kennykenkencat. Children brought up to be submissive to all adults at home and wider society, even calling friend's parents Mr / Mrs. Children sat in rows learning passively with no room for questioning or initiative, low ability children not moving up with their peers, SEN children sent to other schools. I'm sure you'll appreciate children now being active learners, creating their own questions and investigating their learning in all subjects, may need more adult support and resources unless you think 56 children sat down in rows all day is the way we should take education forward to save money?

Honestly I don't think it's normal 7yo behaviour either. My boys are 4 and 6 and the 6yo in particular can be a bit wild, but the only thing they might do from the OP is sit down and refuse to move. In which case I'd say "well guys if you don't have the energy for the walk then you don't have energy for the trampoline park!" and they'd be up like a shot.

But I don't want to make OP feel bad, January can feel like a long month and kids are tired and obviously it did all feel too much that particular day for her DS. Another day he probably would've been absolutely fine and behaved like a dream. I think in general people expect kids to behave like mini adults and that's just not what they are.

@Commonsensitivity Living in the Caribbean has its perks. 😁

I was pointing out that we didn’t have TA’s when I went to school many many years ago.

The thing is that there might have been 56 children to a class but everyone learned to read and write and spell and do up to their 12 times tables.
We weren’t in rows exactly but our desks were grouped into ability.

The teacher would teach the whole class about a particular subject e.g the Romans then everyone was given set work to do.
Top group were told to do the 20 questions in the text book. Middle ability were told to answer the first 10 questions and those who couldn’t yet read or write or had SEN were helped by the teacher to label a picture with things like Fire, Jug, Tiles etc

Otoh Ds with only 30 in his class and a TA didn’t learn to read by year 2 and was effectively abandoned. He was expected to answer the equivalent of the 20 questions but couldn’t read one word.

He was told he had to stay in at break time to finish his homework or class work and I was called in because he was defiant as he refused to do any work.
Apparently he had to do the work as it was the National curriculum and not being able to read or write was no excuse and the work had to be done.
Those who couldn’t read, we all
ended up having to take our children out of school altogether as they were not learning anything and just being bullied by the other children because they couldn’t read. The teacher and h/t didn’t do anything because in their words Ds couldn’t read so what the children were saying was true

The school actually wanted to put Ds in the local residential special needs school as he would never be able to look after himself and had the academic age of a 2 year old.
He apparently scored 0 on all his exams and the teacher couldn’t seem to understand that was because he couldn’t read and not because he needed to be institutionalised

Yet once he could read the question he found maths very simple.

I think years ago primary school was there to teach everyone to do the basics.
Secondary was about learning in depth about different subjects.

With out that foundation then Secondary school is useless

Also I don’t remember everyone being on their best behaviour.

I know I used to get the cane regularly.
But we were predominantly engaged in the lessons as what was being asked of us was suited to our ability.

I certainly don’t remember calling anyones parents Mr or Mrs. i think that was a very middle class thing to do

Also just noticed that you put SEN children were sent to other schools yet this is exactly what I experienced with DS.
There were SEN children in my class but no one thought of them as SEN. They were just friends who maybe needed more help

You said that children weren't put into SEN schools but the school wanted to put your DS into a special school, because he struggled with reading, which would be quite a mild thing today, perhaps dyslexia which is quite well understood now. Certainly not a reason to be in a special school.

And you said that everyone learned to read but your DS and some other children did not, you took them out of school. So it's not true that everyone learned to read under that old system.

I don't think the current system works but we can't go back to that one!