Reply To: Are We Spoiling Our Kids?

Health, I appreciate your concern regarding my dragging in my kids. But really, I’m not resentful that I have to do so. All I said was that it’s hard to drag in my kids when all the other neighborhood kids are still playing outside.

Giving my children alarm watches will not help regarding it becoming easier. I will have to enforce the rule of them being in at a certain time which would not be easy as I know they will have a bucketfull of excuses and then they would need consequences. At this point I don’t see the need for that.

My kids are b”H responsible in the areas I expect them to be. I see no need to enforce a rule that I believe would rather be appropriate when they are a little older.

As I said, when I will determine the time is ripe, I will teach them responsibilty in this area as well. In fact, at that time I will suggest to my kids that they can set their alarms on their watches as a reminder to be home on time. (I just thought it was funny for all my kids to have alarm watches going off at the same time and envisioning them running into the house at once, which as I said before is not really realistic expectation at this time.)

As for my kids seeing that I am bossy, well they would see the same thing if I would try to enforce the rule that they should come in on time on their own.

There is no dodging it. Parents need to be bossy, or rather the correct term for that would be authoritative. As long as parents don’t abuse their authority by trying to use it to inflate their ego or make unreasonable demands of their children, then yes their children should see their parents as their authority who has the last word.