When do you cave to your kids without regret"
by Charlie Brooks posted in Parenting
I'd love to be a strict parent, but I'm not. Nonetheless, I often try to draw a hard line against my kids. When they cross it, I sometimes crumble and give them their way. But that?s not always a bad thing.
The other day, screen time became my hard line. The kids had had enough and they needed to do something else before bedtime. But after a long day of school and baseball practice, they were surprisingly burned out. In tears, my daughter asked me to watch one episode, and I felt my line crumble.
My ego told me to stick to my guns. I?m the parent, darn it, and what I say goes. A more rational part of my brain told me to just cave. Twenty minutes of Sid the Science Kid wouldn?t be the end of the world, and it would make bedtime go much more smoothly. As it turned out, my daughter woke up in the night with a high fever. Her whining earlier had been legit. She was getting sick and didn?t have the energy for much more than cuddling up with me on the couch to watch some TV.
I wish I had some deep parenting insight regarding the situation, but that?s not the case. That situation plays out in my household all the time. Half the time I stick to my guns and create a row before bedtime. The other half I cave and my kids get more screen time than they need.
It?s not just limited to screen time, of course. My kids cross all sorts of imaginary lines in the sand. While we sometimes reach a reasonable compromise, it usually comes down to either them...
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