Parent Time

It seemed like a great idea at the time. Seven-year-old Lisa had been asking to visit the zoo, and the weather was reasonably mild for December. “OK, let’s plan to go on Saturday,” I said. But when Saturday dawned, it was raining — a horrible, cold, freezing rain. The idea of trudging around the zoo in that weather with Lisa and her two younger brothers (four and one) was not at all appealing. But when I told her we’d have to postpone the trip, she was, to say the least, upset.

“But you PROMISED!” she insisted.In my mind, it wasn’t really a promise. It was a plan. But Lisa’s distressed reaction is common, says Judy Arnall, a Calgary parent educator and author of Discipline Without Distress: 135 Tools for Raising Caring, Responsible Children Without Time-Out, Spanking, Punishment, or Bribery. “This is the age when children begin to see things in more concrete terms. They tend to be very black and white in their thinking, and to have definite ideas about what’s fair,” she explains.

Some of this “follow the rules” thinking is developmental, she says, but she also points out that, as parents, we work hard to teach these concepts to our children. We expect them to keep promises they make, for example. And by six, their lives tend to be filling up with rules — at school, for sports, as well as at home. Not surprisingly, following the rules becomes important to them.

“The trouble is, life happens,” Arnall says. “Life doesn’t always follow the rules and it isn’t always fair. And that’s pretty upsetting for a seven-year-old.”

Originally published in Today's Parent, December 2007