son in tears this morning

kelpie35

j.e.j. wrote: »

The trouble is, if the child doesn't get to school on time, or hasn't got their lunch with them, or whatever, mum feels she will be the one who gets the blame for it. So she prompts/nags (depending on your viewpoint!). She's then criticized and made to feel guilty for being the shouty, nagging woman. Can't really win, can she :rotfl:

From my experience the school supported all I asked them to do.

I think if the school see you are supportive of trying to instill manners and respect in your child for all teaching staff they will go along with whatever you request.

That was my experience anyway.

kj*daisy

Went through exactly the same thing with my DS and DD. what helped was writing a list on an A4 sheet of paper of the order in which they should get ready - I did little drawings for DDs as well. Then stuck one copy upstairs and one downstairs so a visual reminder of what they need to do to get ready. It helped a bit but mainly DS getting older has helped more - and when he's not playing up DD doesn't so much.

cottonhead

Kids dont have the same sense of time and pressure that we do. I constantly have to hurry my daughter up but I think boys tend to be even more laid back from what I have heard.
The fact that you feel bad shouting at him shows you do care and do realise what impact your behaviour has so thats a good thing. Everyone has bad days and your son will know this. I think I would apologise for shouting and explian that you were frustrated and he needs to realise that at 9 he can do some more things without prompting. I realised that I was babying my daughter and it just made her more slow and more dependant in the mornings. Once I gave her some more responsibility things improved. I have also promised myself to not shout and to not pick an argument about everything. Back down on some things or it will see like all you ever do is nag. Do you have 1 on 1 time with him? Jealousy could be an issue and its his way of getting attention.
Dont feel bad we all make mistakes whe parenting but you are one of the good ones because tou acknowledge that and want to improve.

the_cat

Aww don't feel bad - we've all done it at some point!

The one thing that struck me was the comment of telling him 20 times to do something, then losing your temper in frustration. Sounds to me like he is filtering you out a bit because of the number of times you tell him something

Mine would get asked once. Just once. And given a timeframe of 5 minutes or whatever

If they did not do as they were told, they were told to do it and also told what the consequence of NOT doing so (by the time I counted to 10 usually - short fuse, me;)) would be. If I reached 10, the penalty would follow instantly.

Kept me much calmer (all those 20 times lets the anger build up in you, doesn't it?) and because they knew without doubt that I would follow through, they invariably did as they were asked on the first instance.

POPPYOSCAR

Judi wrote: »

Words fail me

I quite agree.

If either of my children had ever spoken to me like that their feet would not have touched the floor!!

Unbelievable.

jellyhead

Sambucus_Nigra wrote: »

They only go to school once in their jim jams.

Mine didn't go to school in them - he wouldn't have walked there in his PJ's. He sat on the doorstep and got dressed there. It never happened again

Another thing that worked for us was having breakfast as the last thing that gets done, so if the child doesn't allow themselves enough time for breakfast then they get a drink and a banana on the walk down to school. Neither of them want a banana, so they soon learn to hurry up.

It's their choice though, so it gives them a bit of power over their destiny

We sort bags out the night before, and put things like PE or swimming kit on the door mat for the following morning, so we won't go past the door without seeing them.

I ask the children at night to make sure homework is in the bag, any slips that need to be handed in, reading book, dinner money etc. so that the only thing that needs to be put in the bag in the morning is the packed lunch, drink and snack. I do that bit for the 6 year old. Teenager does it himself.

My youngest gets dressed super fast now because I told him if I had to nag him and hurry him up it's time I should be spending making his packed lunch, so if he wants to take up all of my time that means he is choosing school dinners :rotfl:

Good luck for a better morning tomorrow OP :T

POPPYOSCAR

OP sometimes you just have to lose your temper with them and better that than to smack them IMO.

I can remember one occasion when I just lost it with my daughter and in the end I screamed at her to "Just go away and leave me alone" She burst into tears and ran up to her room sobbing into her pillow.

About half an hour later she came back down and gave me a big hug
and said sorry. So sometimes all the reasoning with them in the world does not work, and whilst I do not advocate shouting all the time, I think you have to occasionally.

Savvy_Sue

Mrs.W wrote: »

Her teacher followed up, asking why I filled in DD's late slip with the reason 'zombie attack'.

I do wish I'd thought of that - although we didn't actually have 'late slips'. I was once threatened with Educational Welfare, because despite living 5 minutes down the road we were regularly late. I said that was fine, EWO was welcome to come at getting out of the door time, so that s/he could see what I was up against! DS1 must have been in Juniors, DS2 in infants, I think DS3 was going to nursery, but it was always a nightmare to get him to do anything.

Actually, when DS2 was 14 or 15, he was regularly being late, and the school summonsed us, and asked if he was trying to get out of tutor time. You could almost see a lightbulb going on inside his head, as he'd never thought of that. No, he wasn't trying to get out of tutor time, he just couldn't see the point of hanging around in the playground before school. Getting the timing right (not too early, not too late) was a bit of a black art with the buses not being particularly consistent.

He improved radically in 6th form, was getting up and getting out of the house before 7 am, and walking 4 miles to school! :eek:

fluffnutter wrote: »

I remember my brother having a battle with his little boy one morning when he (my nephew) completely refused to get dressed. My brother just took him to school in his pyjamas (with his clothes in a bag). My nephew soon begged for a change of clothing once all his mates starting laughing at him in the playground

We skipped straight into the classroom so that I could explain, we put DS3 in a quiet corner and left him to it, he was soon dressed.

Deleted_User wrote: »

Then what at school?Did the teacher support you or did you feel they thought you were being un-necessary?

I've not had to do this yet, but would be willing if needed, but ive always wondered if the school would understand

No, the teacher was completely on my side, and the teaching assistant. He was 5 or 6 at the time.

And I really thought he'd learn from that, because he was NOT happy, but no, next day we left home with his trousers in his school bag. Fortunately he had a long coat which just about covered his pants.

He did learn after that ...

I agree that you have to work out what is the school's problem to deal with, and what is your problem to deal with, but I do think it's worth while making the school aware if you ARE struggling. Because we all know that children can be different in different places - I remember one teacher being astonished by DS3 rushing around the hall like an express train after they'd had assembly at the end of the day. I had his best friend's little sister with me, so he knew we'd be going there, and he was just SO excited. She had NEVER seen him like that, because he was always very quiet and contained. For her, maybe - by the end of the day he was just like a kettle coming to the boil and needed to let off a lot of steam and make a lot of noise!

But when I found that DS1 had put pizza into the washing machine rather than eating it, I decided against storming down to school mid-morning and bawling him out, tempting though it was! The teacher overheard me saying to him "What would you say if I told you that pizza doesn't dissolve in the washing machine?" and was quite fascinated ... They already knew he was quite particular about what he ate.

dibuzz

I'd like to say it get easier but it doesn't. I still have to remind my 16 year old to do certain things such as put his other sock on which invariably ends up with him taking the clean one off or putting both on one foot :mad:
He is so scatty I'm amazed he actually gets to school, luckily it's a 10 minute walk and not a bus ride or he could end up anywhere.
Another problem is when you have other kids and the uncooperative one makes them late, it's hard not to nag them when it affects other people.
At one time I had signs up everywhere such as one near the front door saying "don't forget your lunch box or dinner money" and a list of who had PE on what day, it saved a lot of reminding with 4 kids.
The plumber was amused though because I forgot to remove the sign on the bathrrom door saying "if you need a poo, use the other loo" when we had flushing problems

Nan63

delain wrote: »

Yep, my 9 year old can be really nasty and shouty too. I do my best to ignore it TBH, like this morning when we were walking to school everything was my fault, I'm the reason she's unhappy, she's shouting at me because I'm stupid (:eek:) and then when I asked her why she said I don't care about her, then she called me a fat blob :mad: at which point I just switched off, ignored her and spoke to the other two. Within ten minutes, which was how long it took her to realise I wasn't going to be whinged at she was chatting away fairly normally.

She can be awful in the mornings, it's slowly getting better. She used to hide her school shoes because she wanted to wear her trainers, glad that stopped it was a nightmare!

She has sex ed next week, I am absolutely dreading it

Good lord! If my daughter had spoken to me like that she would have been grounded for life! I know as parents we are expected to ignore some actions but seriously, you let her speak to you like that with no repercussions??