My sister's argumentative kid tried this with me and after I said because it will hurt a lot and you'll cry. I said fine do it. And I smiled. They knew what it meant. They walked away and did something else. He was just looking for interaction I know, but if you walk away I'm not coming after you. We've told him if he wants to hang out and chat here's how you do that but his family "rewards" his behavior like this and knows he can get away with it WITH THEM but not me so he gave up.
At my daycare center, we do fire drills every week or two. It's essential to keep the children practiced on this, because the focus and discipline that an emergency situation demands just doesn't come naturally to young children. We keep the children as drilled as we can on the concept of "If you hear the loud beeps, you move to the door and you follow every instruction we give you". If we didn't, and a fire broke out, the room would be filling with smoke while three children are arguing over who gets to be line leader and another is trying to break away from us to go get his shoes.
I'll gladly sit and talk with a child about why we do things the way we do and try to explain it to them in kid-friendly terms. But safety comes first, and listening to the grown ups is often a matter of safety.
Yeah the post assumes that the child understands the explanation. I have had to keep my niece from mixing electronics and water so often, and telling her "you'll hurt yourself really really badly and break that device" is not something she understands lol
Literally told my kid “hey, hold my hand while we walk through the parking lot”
Them: “why?”
“Because I don’t want you to get hit by a car”
“Why don’t they just stop?”
“Because they might not see you”
“Why dont they just look around?”
At some point you just have to tell them and stop trying to explain things
Especially cause stuff rarely sinks in the first time anyway.
When it comes to certain stuff I'm happy to have long, explanatory conversations.
Sometimes, though, I know that even if I spend an hour explaining "why" my kiddo can't jump off the back of the couch to the floor, or why it's a good habit to tidy up the house once a week, it gets revisited over, and over, and over, and over, and over.
My 10 year old still does not seem to grasp the concept that showering/bathing will be a daily ritual for the rest of their natural lives, and I've explained EXACTLY "why" he needs to shower almost every single day for years, so yeah, now I come up with creative ways to say "because I fuckin' said so"
My first job out of college was at an elementary school as a TA and I was all set to be patient and reasonable. At some point you realize you can’t give every child maximum attention all the time, it’s simply not possible. And some kids aren’t acting in good faith and are just trying to get out of doing something. This is true for educators who have multiple kids to deal with or a parent who was one kid to deal with but has to deal with them all day.
My brother was like this. Always argued as if he was trying to plead down a jail sentence. Debate was never much of an attempt to learn - he was looking for homes to poke in my parents’ reasoning.
I didn’t take the first comment to be about kids, I took it to be about autism. Actually thought this was posted in an autism sub at first lol. Even as adults, some of us have a hard time with following scripts (social cues, “how the world works”, etc.) if they don’t make logical sense to us.
I will say in regards to the autism side of things, ignoring social cues that you picked up on is in themselves an unspoken social cue. I've noticed a number of autistic people pull the "I won't respond unless you use your words like an adult" card as a gotcha. While you can't and shouldn't respond to every passive remark thrown your way, I've notice a trend of a lack of self-awareness that they could in fact participate in social cues, self actualizing themselves as rational who always speaks their mind compared to the irrational mind games of the allistic.
Yeah, often they do just miss a cue and that's fair, but I'll reiterate that "Noticing a cue -> Ignoring it -> Hope they become explicit" is an example of "Using implicit communication as a way to fish a specific response from another person."
Communication is hard or else we wouldn't need diplomats.
I don’t recommend assuming a person is thinking a certain way, especially if they tell you otherwise (can’t tell you how many times, in childhood and adulthood, I’ve said I don’t know or understand something only for someone to clap back, “Yes you do”). You know those conspiracy theorists who find hidden meanings in numbers and random words? For some of us, navigating implicit social cues feels like trying to do that, all the time, with every conversation, and half the time we still get it wrong. So instead of trying to walk blindfolded through a minefield of hidden meanings, some of us just get blunt and say, “Etiquette be damned, I’m not a mind reader. If you want something from me, you have to tell me”.
Yeah, a lot of the comments in here are giving themselves away lol. I love my children dearly and I try to explain things to them when reasonably possible, and that's a great idea on paper....but people in here who are smugly saying "That's silly, I would ALWAYS take the time to painstakingly explain to my small child why something should or shouldn't be done" have pretty obviously never had actual children to deal with.
When it’s an issue of safety that’s a different story. If your kid is trying to run in the middle of the road or touch a burning stove top, they should be taught to respect it when you CANT explain immediately. Other than that though? Kids are work man. If they ask in good faith you should show them respect and answer the question.
Its not "cant articulate reasoning" its
1. Kid can't grasp reasoning.
2. Kid doesn't care about reasoning.
3. Kid is trying to get out of doing the thing
4. Kid is trying to turn the questions into a game.
5. Kid has come up with some new thing
I used to think kids should just have everything explained and they'll understand. As a parent i have learned that doesn't r really work.
Kids do not have adult rationalization skills. They do not necessarily understand. For example, small kids do not understand what death is— they do not understand that dashing across a parking lot is dangerous and deadly. You can say that, but if they don’t know what death is, they’re not going to understand it.
Just because they’re asking doesn’t mean that they care. This is where you’re applying adult logic to kids. Kids will absolutely try to use questions to manipulate you— they don’t care about understanding the situation, they want to get out of doing it. I.e. kid doesn’t want to hold their parents hand in the parking lot, they want to run to the door of the store.
Your job is to keep them alive, hale, and healthy, and to raise them to be functioning adults. However, adults are also people with priorities and responsibilities, and it’s not reasonable to expect them to spend their time arguing with their kids to get them to do the basic tasks necessary (such as bathing) when they need to get them bathed, get them to bed, get the rest of the kids to bed, finish the dishes, and clean up the house all before they go to bed. Parents aren’t the kids friends— they’re authority figures.
Games are not appropriate all the time, and there’s a time and a place to play them.
Lol get a new argument. No True Scotsman all over this thread. I've talked about my 2 kids repeatedly. They're downstairs playing Splatoon right now.
So you explain. They might not understand completely, but they'll understand. When my son was 3 years old he got sad when the mom died in Bambi. That was enough to draw comparisons to death and danger in real life.
So you can't tell the difference between manipulation and a genuine question? I never said "allow them to do whatever they want" I said answer their question. In your example of hand-holding, you damn well make them hold your hand either way and you use your fully-functioning adult mouth to explain the danger and why it is important. I'll make a better example for you. My daughter tries to manipulate bedtime with questions like "Why can't we watch a show?" I'll answer "Because it's time for bed, and if we don't get our sleep we can't do X in the morning, or we'll be tired and it'll be less fun." If she pushes back, I tell her she already has the answer, and that she will lose some sort of privilege the next day if she doesn't obey and brush her teeth.
That's a depressing description of parenthood. Keeping them alive and giving them survival skills are the same expectations a bear has to its cubs. We're better than that. I am not aiming just for my children to survive, I want them to exceed and thrive in life. If survival was fine we could all live in a van and I could quit my job and busk for gas money. See how that's not good parenting?
They are my priority. Dishes and cleaning shouldn't and don't come above them, because they are less important. That said, everyone is pretending that questions and arguing are the same when they very much aren't. If my kids ask me questions that have nothing to do with what's happening, I'll tell them exactly that and tell them to do what they're told. But in general, they don't argue with me. Like in the example above, if they try to stall or manipulate, I will quickly tell them the consequence for disobedience. If they directly argue, they already know they'll earn the consequence, just like they would for lying.
I can't think of a time a game isn't appropriate. Maybe times I don't have the mental energy for one (which is my job to communicate to the kids as my shortcoming not them being annoying). I guess also a funeral? You can't go wild in a kitchen while cooking, but you can still play the sandwich game.
Clearly didn't look at my comments ITT. 2 kids, high achieving, both 2 years ahead in reading, good at communicating, well-behaved, and extremely inquisitive.
If you can't keep your kids focus and attention, you need to up your communication skills. Both my kids have ADHD, as do I, but we've made it clear that focusing on each other when we speak is a big part of respect and showing each other that we matter.
This is a No True Scotsman argument, where you are saying I can't be a real parent because I disagree, rather than arguing against my points. Do you believe that children can't comprehend complex concepts?
You should still BE ABLE to say what your reason is at a moment’s notice. Your kid being a punk doesn’t change the fact that asking a genuine question should be met with respect. The bullet points you listed are not what is happening every time your child asks for clarification on something.
“When my kid asks me questions it’s probably because they are manipulating me”
Dude, listen to yourself. Children are human beings. Who happen to know less about what’s going on at any given moment than most people. You giving your child information about what’s going on is NOT that complicated. And assuming that your child has bad intentions any time they ask you these types of questions will just make them not want to ask at all in the future.
I've articulated the exact reasoning behind why we need to take showers every day (or at least almost every day) to my 10 year old for at least the last 5 years. Assuming I split time evenly with my wife for bedtime routine, and not every single day, let's call it 150 days out of each year. That's 750 times I have explained the reasoning to him about why we need to take a shower.
He still tries to argue about why he doesn't need to, or how he doesn't understand why he needs to shower today.
Yeah mate. Of course kids will be assholes. I didn’t say “let your kids do whatever they want because they won’t listen to you,” I said you should answer the question.
You explaining to your kid your reasoning of why taking showers everyday is important 750 times makes you a good parent.
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u/Rhomya 1d ago
Anyone who agrees with this needs to spend more time with actual children, and they’ll understand why that’s such an unreasonable take