Raising your own children
I am looking for advice from other care providers who have older children.
I find compared to all the other children we know (family and friends) we are pretty strict parents. I am looking for some sort of encouragement I suppose, that we are doing this right.
I don't think we are unrealistic but we have pretty high expectations of our child. She is to stay at the table until everyone is finished their meal, she eats the foods we eat not special substitutes. When she is whiny she is sent up to her bed (for about 10minutes where her special blankie and bears are) "because she is clearly tired". If she is not cooperating (getting herself ready and out the door, with appropriate help) then she doesn't get to bring a stuffed animal in the car that day etc. Consequences for her actions, consequences that are generally related to said actions (or inactions).
The last few weeks we have cancelled many outings with her due to behavior (no tulip festival, didn't go to the pool, didn't go to the fire station for doors open). She was acting up and not cooperating so we cancelled after giving her the option to start cooperating or missing out on the outing. We figure these are outings that we can afford to skip out on and they will drive the lesson home. She seems to understand after, telling people that she didn't get to go to the pool because she was not cooperating.
She turned 3 in march. She is a stubborn, persistent, strong willed child. She loves to help, is loving and is a great child...but she is, well, stubborn, persistent and strong willed.
While there are a lot of positive moments fun times and loving moments I feel like we are constantly having to take things away, send her to her room, or cancel outings lately. I need reassurance this does pay off. That we are not just making it harder for everyone etc etc.
I don't have friends to check with because I don't think they get it. They just give the kids crackers and send them off to play at meal time, let the kids whine endlessly with no consequence and never cancel an outing even when the child really shouldn't be allowed out of the house.
Are we just too mean? Are our expectations too high?
We were leaving Costco the other day and stopped in the ice cream line. I was trying to talk with my husband about just getting ice cream or maybe getting hot dogs too (we hadn't had supper yet). My daughter kept interrupting and I kept telling her to wait her turn I was talking and she started whining that she didn't get a turn to talk. So I pushed the cart on out of the store letting her know she can talk now, since we would no longer be getting ice cream since she was interrupting too much for her dad and I to plan. She of course was not impressed. We've been working on her not interrupting conversations lately and she was interrupting.
Anyways, rambling here. I just feel like if we don't spend a lot of energy now making sure she understands acceptable social skills and our expectations for her then we will spend the rest of our lives with a child ruling the house. I don't want her to be squashed down to nothing and not having any say or control in her life...but I don't want to be confined by a 3 yr olds actions.
Am I doing this right? Short term pain for long term gains?? She is a very well behaved child. As incredibly strong willed and stubborn as she is, she is a well behaved child. She is very bright, she learns very quickly. But she is a spazz, she lives in her own made up magical world and has trouble joining reality at times. But she's 3.