Love stories like this that unintentionally show how hard parenting is. I guarantee a big share of non parents are thinking “I would simply stop the bad behavior or would have never let it start to begin with”
A child who throws tantrums and breaks windows would be a parenting challenge indeed and it's not as simple as blaming the parents, but to be clear a situation like this (child breaks windows on a routine basis) would be rather rare.
/s
But even I’m having a hard time rationalizing that replacing windows with plexiglass was the first solution that worked. It seems like there are a number of other things that would’ve helped without having to go to that extreme.
But I do get it — every child is different, and every parent has different methods for approaching challenges.
Just saying that this feels extreme, even from the perspective of another parent.
I think there is evidence to show that children who can't delay/deny satisfaction end up making significantly poorer life choices and have worse lives.
Anecdotally, every teenager I knew who couldn't accept delayed/denied satisfaction were absolute shits.
Definitely. I appreciate when someone asks for clarity.
The part I was talking about was “denying the child the satisfaction” as in the parent intentionally frustrating the child to teach them a lesson. I tried to take a shortcut by using the same wording as the person I replied to but I can see how that made it unclear.
The point I meant to make is that if a parent uses that technique to teach lessons in that way it’s likely that the child learns to use that technique themselves and turn it on the parent.
Further: If a child learns this type of technique from a parent it can be very hard to stop them from using it.
Kids (and adults) often have an impulse to make problems worse once they know they are in trouble. If they don’t have the opportunity to do that then there is a shorter path to calm down and talk.
Like if you know your kid cheated on a test, don’t ask them if they cheated and give them a chance to lie. Just start by saying you know they cheated and why.
Having a kid that smashes windows when told to go to its room sounds like the kind of soul draining thing that causes relationships to end. Huge props to those parents for navigating through that.
“Bad behaviors” are almost always rooted in chronically unmet needs, over/under stimulation, hypersensitivity, general lack of control, sibling jealousy etc etc.
its a good idea to treat them as symptoms to investigate rather than ”behaviors” to eliminate.