Cancelling a day out due to misbehaviour.

[survivalinsufficient]

Unsure who is being unreasonable here.

Family day out is planned to a country house type place. Grandparents, Uncle&Aunt, parents and their 3.5 year old all going. Plan is to meet at parents house and go from there (all couples in their own cars).

When grandparents arrive, 3.5 throws a full mug of tea all over his grandads legs/feet. Just completely random, but a real pattern of behaviour here that parents are trying to work on with their child. It hurts Grandad, tea all over carpet, everyone a bit upset. Both parents are a bit stressed.

Child refuses to apologise for bad behaviour. One parent then decided that they are not going on the day out. Working on consequences of actions with child at the moment - bad behaviour, no apology, day out with family cancelled.

Grandparents and Uncle&Aunt don’t undermine parents and although are sad they go on their way to the day out. When they’ve left - other parent goes mad. Thinks it’s complete overreaction, thinks won’t impact child’s behaviour, ruined a day out for the whole family over what they consider a small incident.

Now caused massive disagreement within the family. Who was in the right? Was this an overreaction?

I agree with this.

Also: If one parent wanted to keep the child at home, could the other parent not have gone on the trip with the relatives?

It does seem a bit unfair to bring them over to your house, spill tea on them and then send them home disappointed.

What you've taught him is it's ok to let other people down.

I doubt he cared about whatever this day out was, it would only have mattered to him if it was a trampoline park or similar.

So you were rude to your family for a meaningless consequence and ruined your day, your husband's and family's as a result.

It sounds like you flew off the handle and know you've done something silly, so why not own it.

For my kids the consequence is no TV later if they do X / don't do X. It tends to work.

I think the issue is not the day out (unfortunate) but the child's behaviour.

I can't recommend the new learning centre enough:

tnlc.info

If you properly follow what they say for 6-12 months you will have a happy family going forwards. Big claim, I know, but I am happy to make it.

Children that age do silly and infuriating things. Yes it was probably upsetting and has parent A worried about what it means for future behaviour if not tackled, but cancelling a day out that wasn't even hugely child focused isn’t going to have a strong cause and effect at this age. I’d be removing all cups from arms reach, encouraging child to help with clean up and starting to build some awareness of other people’s feelings. Reading lots of books on emotions and helping them link their behaviour.
Also sensory play in the bath to get it out of their system.
All children have a behaviour at that age that does your head in and makes you annoyed.

Cancelling the day was an overreaction.
but it’s done now.
When you and partner are calmer have a talk about how to tackle this current phase of behaviour.

I think the lack of apology would have made me follow the same path as you.
if the child understood they had made a mistake and apologised for their behaviour I probably would have carried on with the day out.
As he had understood what he had done but refused to apologise I think that your decision was fair.

I agree with the cancellation of the day out.

I was a ‘strict’ parent and raised v well-behaved kids who are now v decent young adults. But we would not have cancelled a nice big family day out for a child this age. I am on your partner’s side.

The other way of looking at this is if the child is in such a state that they are throwing mugs at people do you really want to take them to a stately home type place?

Personally I think punishments or consequences work best when kept simple and ideally immediate. You did something mean to a family member so we won't be spending time with this family member today.

I've never understood the logic of a child being too young to be able to make the link between their behaviour and the consequence and yet somehow being capable of taking in a load of flowery words about empathy and big feelings.

I think you did the right thing. Many of the problems in schools with behaviour are down to a lack of proper parenting. Your family could still have gone and had a lovely day out together.

I could never have done this. Consequence would have been something that didn't impact anyone else. If your 5 year old throws a strop before their future birthday party are you going to cancel that too and leave a load of kids with party outfits and presents they wasted?

He is nearly 4 and needs consequences. I am not sure why so many people saying he won’t learn from that, he absolutely will and he will get consequences at school when he misbehaves.
a day out was ruined, that is sad, but hopefully he won’t throw next time and chucking tea at an old man is not ok.edited to say that if the cup had caught grandad in the face it would have been a lot worst. Nip this in the bud now.

Your child has acknowledged what they did was wrong, seen what the consequence is and said they won't do it again.

Suggests you were right in what you did.

Hopefully this will set him in good stead for starting school, as there are enough children in schools terrorising students and teachers.

A strop is rather different to deliberately doing something to hurt someone. If needed the rest of the children could enjoy the party without the child for some of it.

Hmmmmm… You always knew you would be strict..

It comes across like you’re proud that you used to ‘tut at other children’.

Is this all driven by your apparent perfectionism?

You can be strict AND sensible. You can be strict AND far less dramatic that your cancellation of a day out where everyone have come to your home specifically before going out..

It comes across like you have something to prove to others - performative strictness or something.

Agree you should reflect on your own behaviour.

3-4 year old (boys in particular) do dumb things sometimes… You need to adapt your parenting to the child you’ve got, not the child you want.

Op, it might be helpful to remember the 3 R’s - so consequences should be reasonable, rational and related to the incident to help the child make the link to the behaviour. So, cancelling a day out has nothing to do with the behaviour. A more proportionate response might have been involving the child in clearing up, getting grandad a cloth and new socks. It sounds like you inadvertently punished your child when your intention was to teach them and help them learn. Punishment just creates shame, confusion and anger. Insisting a child apologises can also create a stalemate situation and a battle of wills. Instead, perhaps ask how your child might make grandad feel better and show how sorry they are, and let your child choose and decide how they want to repair the rupture in the relationship - this might be with a hug, giving grandad their favourite Teddy to cuddle, drawing grandad a picture etc. Forcing a child to say sorry is meaningless if you’ve forced it out of them. Instead, a gesture to try and put things right and make the situation better is far more effective and meaningful.

He’s 3. A consequence should last 3 minutes.

You are trying to raise an empathic, well regulated adult. You get there by teaching the child how to regulate themselves.

One way to regulate is by fear of consequences. Those adults behave well when someone is looking.
Another way is by being compassionate. They behave well because they understand the negative impact on others.

If that had been my DC, they would have had to help clear up the mess, understood there would be a slight delay to leaving while we sorted out the mess, checked Grandad was ok in case their poorly leg hurt too much to go out. Said sorry to Grandad for hurting him- but not because they were forced to, but because you were checking Grandad’s leg was ok and giving it a rub better.

That would have taught them the various extended consequences of that kind of behaviour, and how to repair when you’ve made a mistake.

In this scenario, I would have held back in the house and let the family head out to the trip without us (remove the audience). I would have then sat DC down and explained again that he hurt grandad, we don’t hurt people we love etc and would reiterate that he will not be able to go until he apologises and he has the car journey there to decide what he wants to do (give him time to think).

So, hopefully, when we got to the activity he would want to apologise in order to meet back up with the bigger group. Saying sorry with a big group stood around them can be very intimidating for small DC (and 3 is very small still).

It seems to be a MN knee jerk reaction, cancelling a day out as a consequence, which most often affects others. “AIBU to have cancelled my DD 13th birthday party because she had a detention at school?” I opened this thread expecting it to be one of those, but now I see it applied to a 3yo, who won’t understand.

I was relatively strict certainly compared to my sisters. I have taken DSs home early from things due to misbehaving, or taken them out of the way for a period of time. I would not have cancelled a day out of this kind, planned and with others attending. And I would have been massively pissed off with DH if he had taken it upon himself to do so. Furious in fact.

You're very strict but you have a child that picks up and throws heavy mugs at other people, and you make it sound like there have been other issues... maybe your parenting style isn't working and you're not getting the outcome you expected.
Either way, you should have discussed it with your husband before making the decision on punishment.

I think your punishment was over the top. You can handle unwelcome behaviour without ruining the full day (especially when they are so young). If my child did this I would have taken them out of the room until they were calm enough to talk about what they did.

Depending on how that went/there general understanding, I might limit something about the day out ("because you threw the tea, I'm going to need you to hold mummy's hand when we get to X. I need to make sure you're feeling sensible before you can run around" or similar).

I absolutely wouldn't be ruining everyone else's day so that I could make a big point to my three year old. Please tell me they were your parents and sister, not your in-laws? I'd be furious if DH unilaterally decided to spoil a day out with my family.

I think yabu. There was a number of different consequences of you could have come up with that wouldn't have been cancelling the day. I think that was a big over reaction

I also agree with someone elses point of punishment that negatively affects others. I remember when one of mine were small and was having a pay per kid party. All arranged and sorted and an hour before another parent cancelled as their child had "misbehaved" Very disappointed birthday child on my end and a waste of a space I had paid for. I let the mum know how annoyed I was

Also, why did you think it appropriate that you make the decision that affects everyone elses day without discussing and agreeing with your kids other parent? Once you have said that as a consequence out loud, its hard to take back by someone else as then its undermining you.

I think you were very unreasonable.

I’m baffled by how people think this is a harsh consequence. It seems very reasonable to me. People don’t give little kids enough credit - this is not a mistake or a meltdown, obviously kids do find it hard to control themselves but this is extreme negative behaviour and is not ok. If my eldest had done something like this at that age I’d have been mortified and if it was part of a pattern I’d be taking it seriously.

And it also just makes sense as a natural consequence as clearly if the kid was dysregulated and acting out before the day had even started then taking him would have just descended into madness and it would have been a horrible day for everyone. To say it’s not a connected consequence to the behaviour is simply wrong imo. The granddad was literally there to go on this day out, and the kid threw a full mug at him. I wonder if on some level he didn’t really want to go or knew he wasn’t up for it.

Also, the strictest parents I see always seem to have the worst outbursts from their children. If you expect too much too young, it's natural some of that pressure is going to boil over into even worse behaviour... or you get the children who seem too scared to put a foot wrong. Either way, it's not ideal.

What the DC did was unacceptable and obviously needed to have consequences.

I think the punishment you went for was:
*Over the top to the point of being performative.
*Had more of a negative impact on other people in the group vs your DC. (DCs tend not to be bothered about stately homes and won't have been looking forward to the trip as much as the relatives).
*You probably would have got a better outcome if the consequence just affected the DC. What's their favourite TV show? Eg. No Bluey or screentime today.

It's OK having high standards just be proportionate with the consequences - both good and bad.