How would you discipline a 5 year old for saying this horrific thing?

[avata]

My mum was looking after my five year old today while I was at work. She had told him he would have an ice cream from the shop next to the park after school, but by the time they had left the park it was fine for dinner so said it was now too late for an ice cream.

He kicked off massively in the shop, falling to the floor and screaming/shouting. He then ran off down the road and another parent went after him, whom he proceeded to also shout at.

He said to mum he hope she's gets run over by a car. She said that is an awful thing to say, particularly to family, he said he hopes she gets abandoned by her family.

I am so unbelievably cross, shocked and upset with him.

I'm not sure how to play this in terms of consequences and discipline?

If you're not good at time management don't offer children in your care ice creams.

Easy.

In 1984, aged just 4, my sister said she'd push our Mother in the wood-burner and slam the door, in the midst of a meltdown over a very similar 'tired child, expectation ramped up then not met' type situation.

No we were not 'gentle parented', we were smacked, yelled at, sent to bed with no supper, bollocked for 'talking back'.. and more. All the things some posters seem to be suggesting are necessary to avoid spoilt entitled children/young people.

Its bollocks.

It's no better a parenting method than the completely hands off 'un-parenting' some people seem to think is 'gentle' parenting. It produced two pretty fucked up young adults who have taken a lot of time to un-fuck themselves.

Some kids, particularly those with a decent vocab and grasp of language at an early age, will lash out with words - sometimes, its all they have got, the only 'power' they hold in a world where literally everything else is out of their control.

Who are you people?

Why is a 5 year old saying he "hopes someone is run over by a car", he "hopes someone is abandoned by their family".

These are deeply disturbing things for a 5 year old to say.

Just what have you exposed him to?

What he says is NOT normal. What you are saying to him is absolutely not normal.

I'm not surprised he has meltdowns.

If I knew your identity I'd be calling social services.

He's five. He needs routines, security and love. And non-melodramatic parents who shout out threats. Because what he says at age 5 is mirroring the behaviour of adults in his life.

The word lie is appropriate

The GM said one thing then did another

I don’t believe for one minute the excuse that it was too close to tea time

How long were they at the park for, anything less than 2 hours and it would always be too close to tea time.

Dont forget that it might have been close to tea time but there was still time to visit a shop.

The answer to your last question is Don’t Lie. If you promise something then do it.

Otherwise you will have children who will never believe a word you say and don’t trust you

Fwiw this meltdown I think is probably because the gm has form for promising things that she has no intention of delivering

What I would I have done is said, oops it's nearly dinner time. Bought an ice cream that could go in the freezer at home until after dinner and let him have it then. I don't understand why she didn't do that.

Because humans don’t act optimally in every situation and move they make? Shit happens, and this isn’t even shit. Stuff like this happens to me and DD all the time. ‘Ah sorry I know we said we would do X but it’s too late now’ ‘can we do it tomorrow mummy?’ ‘Yes of course’

Not ‘I hope you get hit by a car’

Kids are frankly brats now used to saying and doing whatever and having their feelings ‘validated’

Crap lesson for adult life

Sounds like a kid with issues. That's extreme. But punishment won't work.

What tv is he watching? Does he have an unsupervised iPad?

Your mum broke a promise. End of

I would be horrified if dds had done this with grandparents ... or anyone! Clearly he was upset BUT for me the running off so another parent had to chase after him is the worst part! Sooo dangerous.... he could have run into a road!! I would be making a point for a very long time that he had to hold hands every time we left the house! He needs to know that having a tantrum was one thing but running off was dangerous!

When I was a Brownie there was an illustration of a girl walking through snow because she'd promised a child a toy in our Handbook. It stuck with me and I won't make promises unless I keep them. He was promised by his GM that he would have an ice-cream and he didn't get it. There's a huge injustice done there if you're five. I'd feel bad if it was someone of any age tbh. It was a horrible thing to do and he was clearly upset by it.

In my brain he reciprocated by saying he wished something as horrible as that would happen to her. It wasn't kind but in his eyes neither was she. Talks to both I think.

Social services 🤪🤣😆🤣
Did you miss the bit where he is a very intelligent young child? I have 4 of those (albeit grown now) but they literally pick up on everything and anything - books, films, things people say, hell it might have even been a dog he’s seen who’d been abandoned by its family. They remember these thoughts/experiences and they play them over in their minds and then one day they come out, maybe in a story they are writing or a painting or, in this case, in anger to their GM who had let them down badly.

Deeply disturbing indeed.

Well honestly I probably am someone who tells people to look as ASD/ADHD because I think it is underdiagnosed/commonly missed or fobbed off especially in younger children. But those things are very common, whereas psychopathy isn't even diagnosed in children and the precursory signs which are visible in childhood are extremely rare (and are more things like hurting animals/smaller children, going out of their way to make premediated plans, manipulating other children to take the blame etc - not lashing out verbally in a tantrum!)

I just find it so very bizarre how people are getting so extreme on this thread. Some of the initial responses were OK (though some were strange) but it has devolved into utter madness. It's like a competition where people either have to be "so shocked" and "have never heard of such behaviour" or conversely the grandmother is the worst person in the history of the world - calm down?? It's not that serious

Is is just me - I feel like all this handwringing about broken promises and such is from another planet. Five year olds are quite prone to lodging some innocent throwaway remark from an adult in their head and then building it up into huge importance. I feel like posters are taking it as though the grandmother has been building up the idea of a special ice cream all day, taken him to a specific ice cream shop to look through the window and then at the last minute withdrawn it out of spite. Which would indeed be cruel and unfair. But to me, it seems much more plausible that she might have said earlier in the day something like "It's a lovely day, perhaps we can get an ice cream later" and then with other things going on she might have forgotten all about it. When they get to the corner shop to pick up some other staples, she has forgotten all about the ice cream whereas the 5yo is looking forward to it. When he says something like well, what about my ice cream, she says no not right now, it's nearly teatime and because he's built it up in his head, to him it is a great betrayal and a broken promise, which is why he has an emotional reaction which looks OTT from the outside. But it's not any of these things. It's just an ice cream. IMO, it's totally understandable for him to kick off, even though not great behaviour, he's only 5 and 5 year olds are still learning appropriate behaviour. It's also completely normal for their behaviour to be worse when they are some combination of tired/hungry/hot/emotionally overwhelmed. You can have sympathy for that as an adult, while remaining aware of the fact that in the great scheme of life, this is a very minor disappointment regardless of how a 5yo feels about it, and it's really OK for him to feel disappointment and be upset, and he will get over it. It doesn't need making into a huge deal. If he's reacting in this way to everything multiple times a day, that would be a concern because it's not age appropriate at 5, but if this is something which happens once in a while then it's probably nothing more than a tantrum, which is perfectly normal in young children and he will likely grow out of it, especially if you make it clear it's not acceptable behaviour.

Likewise adults are only human, and it's not possible nor is it really ideal to be perfectly attuned to a 5yo's interpretation of every utterance. It's OK for there to be misunderstandings and lapses and such - that is life.

Is this how people parent now? It must be completely exhausting to either stress out over every occasion of misbehaviour or try to constantly pre-empt any possible disappointment or upset in your child. I usually get called an unrealistic softy on MN But this is too much even for me.

100% agree with this

"Remember my boy, if a woman ever changes her mind about what she previously agreed to, she's to blame for the natural consequences of you kicking off and doing the worst things you can think of".

Isn't that an ever so slightly problematic lesson to teach from this?

I'm glad that I'm not the only woman on this thread who learned their sense of morality from Brownies and Guides. Guiding is predicated on The Promise, that's how it and Scouting differ from youth clubs. What a promise is and means was essential pre-Promise training.

Are you seriously comparing a reception child's, understandable at that age, tantrum over a broken promise to adult men with full agency committing rape and domestic violence? You need to give your head a wobble.

If he's punished, the message he gets is that adults can withdraw food and anything else they like from him, even when they promised he could have it, and he's not allowed to object. I think that's a very problematic message to give a child. One of the reasons why children and adults with learning difficulties are so much more likely to be abused (three times more likely to be sexually assaulted, for autistic women and girls) than non-disabled children is because they are conditioned into compliance and punished for objecting to anything they don't like in a way that other children aren't. This means that they don't object to Mr Paedo molesting them. High compliance training is a form of child abuse, regardless of whether the child is disabled or not.

Na.

i am pretty sure you need to teach both. To a little boy (girl it doesn’t matter) :yeah granny/adult in charge of him needs to keep her/Their promises…to a grown up boy: yeah peers can change their mind.

Two different ages, two different situations, no gender relation, for two different lessons. Both valuable at the right time, called respect.

Absolutely no comparison whatsoever in the behaviour. But lessons, attitudes and morals are taught in the formative years and they carry into adulthood.

I don't think that anyone on here has said that its OK for the child to kick off or run away. What has been said is that in those circumstances its understandable in a child of that age and in this case could probably have been avoided by the adult in the story behaving differently.

Jesus Christ, the poor little boy who didn’t get his ice cream is now going to turn into a rapist when he’s older. This place is batshit.

Isn't it though...

Perhaps about halfway between those two approaches - "a happy medium" as some might say - works best?

Hansel and Gratel vibes going off there