To Bed Without Dinner

My son is in his room, going to bed without dinner.   He has been having some behavioral issues lately and has had repercussions both at school and at home.   In part it’s been because he’s been defiant about things, but there is a negotiations component that has been consistent and constant with my son.  His teachers have commented on how everything needs to be a negotiation with him and we’ve seen it at home as well.

My husband and I talked about it and we wonder if we’ve been part of the problem—if we’re letting him negotiate things, little things, and he’s built up an expectation as a result.  Is he pushing to see how much he can negotiate?   He wasn’t able to improve his behavior at school so he lost the privilege to go on the field trip.  Tonight, he lost the privilege to eat dinner, do his homework, have pajamas and brush his teeth.   Also, he had to go to his room at five-thirty instead of eight o’clock.

He asked me at one point (well, screamed at me over the bridge) what he had done.   I went through about twelve things he’d either not listened to, was rude about, had been outright defiant to adults and had tried to negotiate through.   The list is long and the story isn’t that exciting but he basically lost opportunities to do good things—things he wanted to do—simply because he wasn’t willing to listen to reasonable requests from adults and instead wanted to try and negotiate and or whine instead.

While he was in his room, my husband, daughter and I had dinner and he yelled at us from above.   We ignored him.   He wanted a second chance.  He was willing to listen.   He wanted to give us a hug.   He hated us.   We were going to die.   He was going to destroy the wood railing.   Could he please have dinner?  He was calm now.   Could he have dinner and then not have breakfast instead?  (You get the picture on how the conversation went.)

He did eventually calm down and no, he did not get dinner.   But I came up and he and I had a very nice conversation about nothing in particular and then I helped get him a clipboard and some pencils so he could work on his drawing.  

He didn’t ask about dinner.   That was put up and the dishes were cleaned up.  I hope he remembers this lesson going forward.

The Big Boy Update:  In the middle of the evening when my son was upstairs, not allowed to leave his room, my husband and I got into an argument.  It was fairly heated and it was about a serious, non-trivial subject:  how long the dishes should be left out on the drying rack.   It was such an important matter that our voices got raised as we voiced our opinions—specifically our opinions about how the other person was dead wrong.    During this my son yelled down, “don’t break up! Don’t break up!  Don’t break up!!”  We stopped and asked him what he meant and when we realized he was worried we would get divorced we assured him we were most definitely not breaking up and that all was fine.   Once he was calmed, my husband and I realized how silly the argument had been in the first place and it was all over.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter snuck upstairs after dinner to the children’s bedroom.   She came downstairs and told dad, “I wanted to give my brother something.   It wasn’t anything to do with food.”  After a few seconds she said, “actually, I want to tell you.   I gave him a pumpkin seed because I had two.”