Today I couldn't get my daughter motivated to get out the door to school. It was most annoying. All she wanted to do was potter around in her room. I gave her a couple of reminders but she just kept on mucking around.



At 5 minutes before 8 o'clock I started to get firm with her and said "Beck, we are leaving for school in 20 minutes, whether you are ready or not. You need to get dressed, have breakfast and pack your bag". Then I left her again.

She finally emerged right on 8.15am and started running around furiously as she hadn't eaten breakfast and was hungry. I simply said to her, "what a shame you will have to miss out on breakfast this morning as we have to leave now". I started to walk towards the car and poor Becky realized that mum meant business and she would be going hungry.

I drove Becky to school and she was pretty quiet in the car. Becky knew that she had done the wrong thing by trying to test the boundaries. And if she tries that again she will get the same result. I will not waver in my boundaries for her sake.

What Becky had been doing was trying to exert some control over me by making me wait for her. I have no idea why this happened. But now Becky knows that if she tries that again the result will be the same - missing out on breakfast. This is a valuable lesson for any child to learn.

I know this seems harsh but I had to go to work this morning and I could not have Becky holding me up. She also has a responsibility to the school to arrive on time. And when she is late I leave it up to the school to give her a consequence.

We need to allow our children to learn through their mistakes. I could have easily whipped up some breakfast or waited another 3 minutes for Becky. But the issue here was that Becky knew the boundaries and still defied me by being on a "go slow" to purposely try to annoy me.

The end result was that Beck was very hungry until morning tea break today. But I think perhaps she will think twice about doing the same thing again. Why? Because she didn't like the end result. She experienced the consequences of her poor choices this morning.

It was heart breaking to see a hungry child going to school. But I had no control over Beck's actions. She made some bad choices today. But when we allow our kids to make mistakes and learn from them they will thank you later on in life. I guarantee it.