So Mumsnet jury, would you allow your six year old DD to feel the consequences of her behaviour by not allowing her to go to a birthday party on Saturday?

[LittleBella]

I bought a fabulous book for the boy whose party it is, which I told her she was not allowed to touch as it could get dirty or damaged. Now I know I should have hidden it from her, wrapped it up, kept it out of her reach, etc., but I didn't because I'm not effing Supermum and I can't remember to be permanently competent. Actually that's not strictly true, I did put it up high and she would have had to get a chair to get it down. I also want my DD not to touch things which she has been told not to touch and at 6 years old I am wondering whether it is unreasonable to expect her to leave stuff alone when she has been explicitly told that that item is out of bounds.

Anyway the inevitable happened and she has broken the book. Not only is it broken, a couple of the bits are missing so it can't be fixed. (It's one of those books that you then use to build a castle.) I don't want to buy the child another present, so my inclination is to say to DD that as she no longer has a present to take to the party, she can't go.

Would this be utterly draconian? I have a feeling it would be, but otoh what consequence should she experience for this unfortunate event?

[pagwatch]

I am a pretty strict mother. I have an extremely well behaved bunch of children who I adore and who adore me.
I have used very strict punishment in the past for severe misbehaviour but that fortunately has been rarely needed.
My 14 year old is a lovely young man so I haven't fucked up too badly.
But my DD is 5 and she finds certain things irresistible - things which like littlebellas DD include my make up and jewellery. But I really don't see it as deliberate disobedience - i see it as the same impulse control that leads me to MN when I should be doing the housework.
She really tries to resist but ... we call it her pink head.
I would punish her but i still think the party is too distant a punishment. had it been the next day then yes I may well have done it. But I would figure out something for sooner .
DD is a smart girl but I don't think by Sat she would be blaming herself for having been naughty - she would just think I was being mean.
I am happy to be mean but not if it dilutes the lesson.
I would def do something focussed towards reparations .
I am just trying to counter the notion that by taking her to the party a parent is therefore 'soft' and wossy. It is not beacuse I am a warm and fuzzy fool. It is because I don't think you are linking behaviour closely enough to consequence and different children get this at different times.One child may get it at 4 another may struggle until 7 or 8.

[Nighbynight]

number6 - yes, I think you are right about my parents, in that most mumsnetters seem to talk to their children far more than my parents ever did to me.
I think it could be a generation thing - they just thought parents are the authority and should be obeyed, whereas we agonise much more about things, and get each others experience off mumsnet!

[Nighbynight]

ingles, obviously 7 isnt a switch! for example, my ds2 is 8, and is very immature for his age. I dont think at 6, he understood a lot beyond: Mummy is very, very angry, I wonder why???

[LittleBella]

OK here's what we eventually agreed:

All DD's toys have been taken away except her bedtime cuddle ones. She has to earn them back one by one by jobs, good behaviour etc. (So far she's got 2 back, there are about 600 more to go by the look of it. ) She also has to pay for a new present out of her birthday money AND give up one of her unopened presents for the next birthday party she goes to (I know that sounds like a double punishment, but she had 20 presents, a couple of which were opened, not even played with and immediately lost or damaged, so I really don't feel bad about that one.)

The alternative choice was to miss the party. So she agreed the former sanction. I also told her that if she does this specific thing again, she won't go to the party of whoever it is and we had (yet another) chat about looking after things and keeping things nice and not broken.

So am I harsh and wicked or too soft?

I have ordered that Alfie Kohn book btw 6 - keep seeing his name on here and can't resist anymore.

[ingles2]

So obviously LB it's entirely your decision and you know the best way to deal with your child..
But, I think that's much harsher then missing the party! Sorry!

[LittleBella]

LOL. I wondered, but DD much preferred it!

It has made me realise what ridiculous, ludicrous amounts of toys she has. Most of which she never plays with. I suggested a cull and she has amazingly agreed. Of the 2 toys she's had back, one of them has gone in the charity bag.

Am using this as a life laundry opportunity!

[seeker]

This is such an interesting discussion - I've been thinking a lot about this. LittleBella, I said about a day ago something about whether your family has rules about touching other people's possessions that apply to everyone - for example, is your ds allowed to play with dd's toys without asking - and do you go into her room without knocking? I wonder whether she might get better about respecting other people's property if you made a big production out of respecting hers? Does that make any sense?

[getmeouttahere]

Crunchie, I totally agree with you.

[tigermoth]

littlebella, I think it was a great idea of yours to give your dd a choice between missing the party or forfeiting her toys and having to do chores.

Interesting discussion on blind obedience. I personally don't like using the 'you do this becuase I said so' phrase to my children as it makes me feel upset and disappointed in myself. I feel I have failed in some way.

That's not that I never say it, or that is it altogether bad (it can be quick and effective) but it's not my favourite method of discipline. IMO it feels like the verbal equivalent of smacking (tigermoth dons hard hat and runs!)

[LittleBella]

Seeker - yes it does. It's very interesting because during the course of the discussion, I've become aware there are 2 separate issues for me. One is the respecting possessions thing and the other is respecting Mummy's instructions thing.

I think there are certain situations where children simply have to do as they're told, for example when there is danger, and it is unrealistic and simply unreasonable to expect parents always to be in control of the world and therefore of the potential dangers. The simple and obvious examples are the road, or an out of control dog. In these situations you want your child to obey you unquestioningly for their own safety and tbh I have no patience at all with the argumetn that blind obedience is a Bad Thing. In dangerous situations where there is no time to talk through the issue, it's crucial.

I think my kids are at the age where we are moving into another lifestage - dd still comes into my bed at night, DS's bedroom doubles up as playroom and her wardrobe is there, so the idea of possessions, bedrooms etc. is still quite fluid and difficult to enforce and it's obviously all bound in together.

[LittleBella]

tm, we had this discussion the other day. My DD ran across the road after I had told her to wait for me. Now granted, there were no cars coming and she looked left and right, but because she is 6, I don't believe that she is yet competent to judge that the road is safe, so I don't want her doing it.

We had a big talk about why she should never do it even when it looks safe and why sometimes, even when she doesn't understand why Mummy is telling her not to do something taht looks OK, she should do as mummy says for her own safety. I also said that if I do tell her she must do what I say just because I said so, i would explain later on, when it was safe again, why I had told her to do / not do something. I think that takes the "verbal smack" aspect of it away. She obviously thought really hard about it, as she wrote a note later on saying how much she loved us all and didn't want to be run over!

[LittleBella]

LOL you have no idea how many toys there are to gain back. Part of the reason for this consequence, is so that we can do a life laundry and get rid of some of these things that she simply doesn't value or even use. She earned back another toy this morning and immediately said "oh that's too babyish now, I don't want it anymore". Another one bites the dust.

Re the safety thing, everyone agrees that children need to do as they're told when it comes to safety. But the problem is, is if they don't do as they're told in other situations, then how can you be sure they will when it comes to danger? They don't know the difference between a dangerous situation and one that isn't.

[Tortington]

if i was 6 an there was a new toy..l.for someone else i think i might take a look and a little play.

cos thats what kids do

ffs

but you are effectively punishing her becuase you didn't recognise the enmotions in the first paragraph take that on board and hide the bloody thing.

its your fault - not hers.

i would have raised my voice - but not sacrificed a birthday party - totally mean

[MadamePlatypus]

A bit off the subject, but this thread reminded me...

If I buy a book for somebody as a present I almost always read the book beforehand if its one that interests me. I am very careful not to bend back the pages, but I find it difficult to resist the temptation.

Recently MIL was saying that she hated it when people did this and that she didn't like her books to be pre-read. (I think this just applies to new books - she buys second hand books). My immediate thought was not "Oh I must make a note not to pre-read her books in future", but "I must be extra careful with her books in future so she doesn't know I have read them".

I am just LB's daughter with a little more manual dexterity ...

[Othersideofthechannel]

I think that's quite relevant Mme P.

Would we like our children to be pretending to have done the right thing or not have done the wrong thing (but in reality just sneakily hiding all the evidence)?

In this case, would it have been wrong for the girl to look at the book if she hadn't damaged it? She would still have disobeyed her mother.

LB, how would you feel if your DD had disobeyed you without breaking the book? Would you have punished her in the same way?

[LittleBella]

I don't think I should have to hide things from my children actually Custy. She is 6, not 4 and she's old enough to understand that she shouldn't touch something which has been deliberately put out of the way from her. If she forgets, fine, but there is a consequence for that and the natural consequence would be that she wouldn't go to the party because there was no longer a present to take. I've actually ameliorated that consequence, which to her would have been the worst and come up with another solution which she prefers, which I hope will impress on her that she doesn't have the right to continually play with things she has been told not to.

Othersideofthechannel if she hadn't broken it, no I wouldn't have punished her in the same way, because the result wouldn't have been the same. IE the lack of a present to take to the party.

[LittleBella]

otherside you're right, she still would have disobeyed me and I would have had a talk with her about the danger of breaking the book if she plays with it.

[Othersideofthechannel]

But she would have still have defied you....

[LittleBella]

Yes, but the consequence wouldn't be the same.

One of the reasons for this punishment is because the consequence of her behaviour was (I felt) slightly too harsh to let her suffer.

[soapbox]

I think it will be interesting what punishment you invoke for really bad behaviour, if this is what happens for playing with a toy destined to be a present for someone else.

You know that the way you are reacting is extreme don't you? I'd hate for you to be thinking that it is normal to take all of the toys away for something like this?

You sound like you've swallowed all the parenting books whole - dear god don't buy another one - and taken the worse from all of them!

[ALMummy]

You have spent four days talking, posting and justifying punishing your DD for this really not all that important incident. I agree it is irritating and I would have probably been quite cross.....for about 5 minutes and then just got on with things. This is a massive overreaction imo.

FWIW my Mum overreacted to everything I ever did as a child and I never went to her about anything as a teenager - even stuff I needed help with because it just wasnt worth all the drama.

[LittleBella]

Soapbox I consider what she did really bad behaviour.

Other people don't, that's up to them, but for me this is a big, ongoing issue that I want resolved. I do not want my DD to continue to play with things she knows she is not allowed to. This punishemnt (which you all think so harsh and which my DD isn't finding harsh at all - she's reading and playing with her brother more, which I frankly think is a good thing) is meant to make her aware that there are real sanctions for bad behaviour.

The alternative was for her not to go to the party or apparantly to just accept that she will continue to break things without sanction. The former wasn't acceptable to her, the latter is not acceptable to me. She preferred this one. And she has now earned back 6 of her toys, 4 of which have gone in the charity bag - on her instruction.

Oh and I've only read one parenting book, which I ddin't really like but I consider it quite insulting to imply that I'm so stupid that I would uncritically accept something from a parenting book which wasn't appropriate for my child.

[Othersideofthechannel]

I guess with hindsight (marvellous thing!) it would have been best to look at the book WITH her enough to satisfy her curiosity.