Consequences for child who opened presents early

[LemonadeRemedy]

Just after a bit of perspective on this. My just 9 year old (nt) opened two of his Christmas presents before the big day and then hid them in the hope of not getting found out. He also unwrapped other presents and then used sellotape to tape them together again after having peeped. I'm fucking furious but struggle with knowing how to handle these kinds of issues. Wwyd if this was your child?

Tests are the same in Ireland and the US, Larry. A teacher might give a test at the end of each chapter or unit. The test would take place during the normal class time. House exams are held at the end of a semester and are sometimes called finals. The coursework for the semester is tested. In addition, in Ireland in Junior Cert and Leaving Cert years there are mocks, held a few months before the real (public) exams. In the US, there are various public exams - the SAT, the ACT, PSAT, NMSQT, and various statewide exams. Cheating on any test or exam of any stripe earns you an F or a fail in the case of the SAT, etc.

Christmas was such a high stakes event for the OP that she was considering quite drastic punishments for opening presents ahead of the special day. For most parents, I suspect, the Christmas experience of seeing children's surprised faces is one they look forward to. The OP was no different from many other parents in that regard. However, unlike most parents who look forward to seeing the surprise unfold and who therefore hide presents ( because they understand that children are children) the OP left them out.

If Christmas isn't high stakes, why not just give the presents as you buy them, or take the children along with you to shop? You wouldn't even feel the need to wrap them.

What about cheating in a test/exam if you think you won't be found out? Where is that on the same scale? He was trusted not to open the present and he broke that trust.

the day santa and christmas are on a par with doing an exam is probably the day you need to re-think how you are rearing your child.

Why on earth does opening a present early mean your child will cheat on an exam? God, I hope the teen years are kind to you. But in case they are just normal teen years like most of us have, I want to let you know that lying, coming in late drunk, and having an unsuitable boyfriend/girlfriend don't actually mean your teen will lie to congress under oath, commit perjury, cheat on their spouses, and end up in the gutter taking crystal meth.

Pallisers,

Honesty is honesty. If cheating is your modus operandi, you will apply it whenever you can get away with it.

And I never said that children (and some adults) won't push boundaries, in fact quite the reverse. I merely said that if you are dishonest that there ought to be some kind of appropriate consequence (which was actually the OP's question).

If natural consequences and chatting are all that is required to bring up a child, why does every successful school have a behaviour management policy? Laissez faire has been tried and shown not to work.

Of course how OP responds to her son in this single incident will have little bearing on how he turns out as an adult but it is the issue that she asked about.

Honesty is honesty. If cheating is your modus operandi, you will apply it whenever you can get away with it.

So sad. A life of crime ahead of this child. All for the want of not being fucked out of it for opening a christmas present early.

Good luck with the teen years Larry.

Pallisers,

You have deliberately picked the first line of my post and ignored the rest of it, which supplied context and a pertinent question, which you have also chosen to ignore.

First off, the OP's son is 9, not a teenager. Secondly it is very sad that you think that the default position of teenage years is to lie and deceive. I don't. Teenagers are capable of honesty and the vast majority that I know are honest and honourable most of the time.

It is also true that they get their security from appropriate boundaries being enforced. Look at the rookie teacher with a raucous class knowing that he\she will not use the school behaviour policy. Pupils are unhappy and confused. Contrast that with the confident and inspiring teacher who generally does not need the policy as the lessons are so interesting but also is unafraid to use it when necessary.

Sorry Larry. We may well agree on the importance of honesty etc. but I disagree with you that anything more than a I'm very disappointed in you for doing that" to a 9 year old opening presents early is an overreaction. Making any more of that than that on christmas day or christmas week is inappropriate parenting that will not help in the long run.

And no, I don't think the default position of teenage years is to lie and deceive - you made that up. My own teens are pretty decent people -- who have lied to me on occasion. I didn't then presume they were destined to a life of deceit and lack of integrity (politicians maybe?). You really do have to get a sense of proportion with rearing children and especially with rearing teens imo.

For what it is worth, I also don't subscribe to the common MN attitude which is that you have more or less no authority over any child age 16 plus. I have plenty of authority and influence over mine. I just don't judge them striving for a bit of privacy and independence in teen years - which is what most lying is about - well that and getting away with stuff your parents disapprove of a- s being an indication of a rotten character that needs to have a huge response.

Larry:
1 - If natural consequences and chatting are all that is required to bring up a child, why does every successful school have a behaviour management policy? Laissez faire has been tried and shown not to work

2- Teenagers are capable of honesty and the vast majority that I know are honest and honourable most of the time. It is also true that they get their security from appropriate boundaries being enforced.

You seem to think it's all 'enforcement' - the authoritarian model of setting rules and punishing transgressions.

Amazingly, there are families that talk to their children along the lines of 'You have disappointed me', or 'I know you can do better than that', or 'We don't behave like that in this family', or they have conversations about their responsibility to their classmates to create a positive learning environment and the responsibility to be respectful to the teacher. Maybe they have introduced the idea that their children are not working for the teacher but for themselves, and they owe it to themselves not to waste their brains or their time or the opportunity the school presents.

You are confusing 'rules' with 'boundaries' here.

Rules are what we enforce - stuff like
'fill the car to at least half a tank if you take it out'
'leave the kitchen and bathroom in the state your mother wants to find them'
'pick up after yourself'
'answer your phone/return texts when you are out'

'Boundaries' is knowing deep inside where you end and other people begin, and the respect for that separation is how healthy boundaries are expressed. Children are taught boundaries gradually and in accordance with what they can deal with, given that they are in a state of immature social and emotional and psychological development. Adults should have healthy boundaries in place.

For babies, there are no boundaries - we do not assume they are crying in order to annoy us, etc. Some people with no boundaries take crying as a personal rejection, and babies and toddlers end up being swung against walls, shaken, horribly abused, even murdered.

Toddlers are gradually taught that other people can go to the bathroom or talk on the phone or with other people without interruption from the toddler. Life goes on even when the caregiver is not paying complete attention to the toddler. It is difficult for toddlers and even preschoolers to accept this. There are varying degrees of disbelief in individual small children as they are exposed to the idea that they are not the centre of the universe. They protest and challenge as best they can. Ultimately they become socialised/ the lesson is internalised one way or the other. Sometimes they can get a pep talk before a shopping trip, with comments as to how they are doing as the trolley circles around. Sometimes they can be promised a reward if they behave in a certain way on a plane or train. Parents work up to taking the children somewhere nice to eat by trial and error elsewhere.

They can eventually be sent to school where the lesson continues alongside lessons at home that can involve conversations (attempts to pass along the adult/sensible perspective), involvement in chores (with the adult acknowledged as the person the child answers to), and either natural or imposed consequences for choices. The parent establishes influence and authority and internalisation of the message by engagement with the child, not by imposing the top down transgression/punishment model. It's a long process of parent-child engagement and depends for success on consistency, fairness, and the appropriateness of imposed consequences.

For adults as for children, knowing where they end and other people begin is 'having healthy boundaries'. An adult with healthy boundaries does not try to make their spouse change into the person they want to live with. They do not blame their spouse for general unhappiness in their own lives. An adult with healthy boundaries does not see him or herself as their child's 'friend', and does not use a child as a confidante. An adult with healthy boundaries does not place the responsibility for the sort of Christmas they hoped to experience in the hands of a child.

Adults with healthy boundaries accept that the responsibility for maintaining their equilibrium is their own.

• No wife or husband forced them to hit or abuse. The adult with healthy boundaries would probably not hit, but if they did, they would understand that this was their own choice, coming from some impulse within them. Nobody was 'asking for' it and they had lots of choices as to their response to annoyance.
• No child engaged in behaviour so rotten that the parent had no choice but to go fucking ballistic (or whatever). A parent with healthy boundaries steps back and asks how they contributed to a situation or how other factors contributed, and takes a situation from there. They also ask if they have placed too much importance on certain events running in a certain way, which could contribute to disproportionate disappointment in a child's behaviour.

It's also a sign of poor boundaries to allow your anxiety about how the child will turn out at age 23 and up to colour your judgement of what he does at age 8 or 9.

You should be very concerned at torture and killing of animals, but apart from that there are very few behavious that indicate the sort of propensity towards a life of crime implied in the phrase 'Honesty is honesty. If cheating is your modus operandi, you will apply it whenever you can get away with it'.

That phrase is your own anxiety speaking.

Math,

So why do schools have behaviour management policies (I.e sanctions).

A pound to a penny says you chose a school with good behaviour management for your own children and not one where the only sanction was ‘you should be very disappointed in yourself’.

Larry, schools are not parents. They are not people.

Go away quietly.

Because schools are in the crowd control business. They also have a curriculum to teach and Ofsted breathing down their necks.

There was a time when schools thought they couldn't teach and maintain order without reserving the right to cane children, and teachers routinely humiliated children with sneering, sarcasm, and stunts like the dunce's cap.

So it seems they are slowly getting to the point where they will accept that the top down model is a heap of hooey. Not there yet, obviously.

My DCs went (and one still goes) to a high school where adequate provision is made for all sorts of interventions designed to enable students to focus on their studies, succeed, and move on to a productive life. The hope is that interventions will improve behaviour, not just impose a punishment.

One of the published school values:
We believe trusting, collaborative relationships and strong communication establish a safe and respectful school community.

To facilitate improvement, there are student intervention directors/deans, social workers, and a school psychologist. There are various learning and behavioural support programmes. Also a fully staffed nurses' office, a professionally run daycare for the babies and small children of students and staff and the general public, and full time academic counsellor staff. There are over 60 extra curricular activities, with staff paid to coach/direct. Students are given every encouragement to engage with school life, and invited to live up to expectations. Most exhortations regarding behaviour in general are couched in positive terms, not lists of forbidden acts.

My own DCs have never been in contact with any of the formal discipline structures. Weirdly, given the insanity of my approach, all of them bought the idea that they are in school to learn and to contribute to a positive atmosphere. However, I know from reading the handbook that there is a schedule of offenses, in categories ranging from most serious to least, and the discipline path that follows each offence. There is also a clearly delineated appeal procedure. Plus a student mediation service featuring trained student volunteers.

And no uniforms. The idea is that students are well on their way to becoming responsible adults, capable of choosing clothing responsibly.

thecatfromjapan thank you for your kind words, I'm feeling rather pathetic at the moment and they brought a tear to my eye! I feel cared for but only really on a superficial level. A couple of years ago I took sertraline for anxiety and during that time came to see that perhaps I had spent the last few years in a depressive haze - while taking sertraline I was able to enjoy my children and relax into being a parent.

I've been off the meds for almost a year now and the familiar feelings have returned, Christmas intensifies it all a bit, as does the post Christmas and New Year slump!

I was so angry at the time when he opened the presents and hid them, purely because it felt so sneaky and deceptive. I should have added that he has other issues with impulse control (e.g. when there are sweets in the house he will sneak them a few at a time until there are only a couple left). I find it frustrating and it is difficult not to compare him with his older brother who has no such issues.

thecatfromjapan your response to the pp about being in a negative cycle with her daughter really struck a chord as this is the nature of my relationship with my older child. He is 13 and cannot stand the sight of me most of the time!

Anyway, all is well now and the 9 year olds bravado died down quickly so perhaps he was using it as a cover for feeling ashamed about what he had done!

Bloody hell, nobody warned me how difficult this would all be