Watch and learn how children make a slave out of their well-intentioned parents...and what you can do about it.
Timestamps:
00:00 Child wakes up screaming in the night for attention.
03:40 Child has learned he has the power to disrupt the entire household.
06:15 This must stop today.
08:10 A possible consequence to use.
12:01 Mother admits she gives in to the screaming every time and what this teaches the child.
13:39 Be consistent so he learns that it is less pleasant to scream.
14:51 The more a child senses losing control over you, the hard he has to manipulate.
16:15 Giving in to a child's manipulations (screaming) teaches him at least 3 ways to fail at life.
18:05 Long-term consequences of giving in to him.
19:14 What to hang on to get through his screaming/consequences.
Transcript:
Training a Mother to be a Slave
Mother writes me about her 5- and 3-year-old sons. They sleep in the same room, and for most of the life of the younger boy, the 5-year-old has been getting up in the middle of the night, screaming, waking up his mother, and waking up his brother.
**Can you imagine the chaos of living in this home? No rules, no order, sleep deprivation, entitlement, drama, victimhood. Happy emotional development would be impossible for everyone.
This 5-year-old child has learned—from his mother—that he has the power to disrupt the entire household. This bedtime nonsense is just one indication of disaster on many levels. He can do literally anything he wants, and Mom has no clue what to do about it. He’s trained her to be his slave. It’s destroying her, him, and his brother.
Variations on this theme—perhaps not most visible about bedtime, but demonstrating itself in many ways—are regrettably very common. I suggest that everyone review section on bedtime at end of Chapter 7 of REPT.
Mom: I want to learn ASAP how to respond to 5-year-old differently when he wakes up. He has repeating and sometimes creative excuses to get up and scream every night: monsters, wants me to hold him, wants to play, wants drink. Whatever. But I’m tired of it.
Stopping the Disruption
**My first thought is, Really? Now, after 3 years of this, you’re tired of it?
Let’s start with this: NONE of this can happen anymore, because it drains you. It empties your soul, and then you’re unavailable to love either of your children or your husband. (Chapter Seven again)
First, he has to be told that he can't wake you up at night anymore. No more. Not one more time.
Then, if he does wake you up—because he will—something has to happen that he doesn't like. That’s what consequences are. For example, you take his mattress and put a blanket on the bedframe or the floor. OR he sleeps in a closet away from his brother, where he won't wake everybody up. Or the bathtub. Wherever. But he has to STOP waking you up. I don't live in your place, so I don't know what specific plan is feasible, but he has to dislike it enough to stop. This computing?
Mom: This seems impossibly difficult. That screaming makes me give in every time.
**Which is why he DOES it. Because he’s learned that in order to get his way, all he has to do is scream or make excuses or beg or make up stories. You have to be consistent in NOT rewarding his screaming. Not ever. EVERY time he cries like that, he goes into the tub (no water) or closet or bed made in the garage. Only when you’re consistent will he catch on not to do it.
Negative Consequences of Giving in and Being a Slave
SECOND email:
Her: Right now I have him in the tub for the night and this is hard as hell. He is using every possible manipulative hold he has on me and it's incredibly hard to not give in.
**Oh, I really know. The more he senses losing control over you, the harder he MUST manipulate. In the past his tricks have worked. If X manipulation doesn’t work, he doubles it to 2X. But if you break now, you'll never have credibility with him. You MUST be the queen of your home, not your FIVE-year-old’s slave.
Her: He's crying Mama Mama over and over and I feel like a terrible mom to not answer. I feel like I’m abusing my son.
**IF you allow him to keep this up, THAT will be abuse. How? How could giving in to him, giving him his way, be abuse? Because, if he keeps manipulating you, you’ll be teaching him these principles:
- That he can do whatever he wants
- That there is no consequence for whatever he chooses
- To do this as an adult, and then his life will be hell. And YOU will have caused his life of hell. Not kidding.
You give in to him in the short term because it seems easier, but wait until he’s demanding and entitled at 17 or 30. Oh, that will be VERY hard, harder than you can imagine.
He’ll be an emotional cripple, and you will have created it. There is a very high likelihood that he’ll be addicted (porn, alcohol, anger, victimhood already), he’ll be living at home, living in prison.
I wish I were making up a fairy tale, but I’m not. Letting him continue a pattern that gets him to a miserable life? THAT is abusive. You being “mean” now saves his life. Hardly abusive.
Enduring the Screaming and Being a Queen
What can I hang onto to get though this?
**You can remember that you are here to be a mother and queen, to teach him to be an independent soul and save his life, NOT to give him what HE—at the ridiculously inappropriate age of 5—decides is best for himself and the family.
If you let him out of the tub, you might as well give him keys to the car and tell him to go to the bar and have a good time. At age 5. You think I’m kidding, but what you’re doing now is headed toward exactly that. So you might as well just give him the keys now. The effect would be just as bad as the giving in to him that you’re doing now.
I've seen the results of giving him the job of making his own parenting decisions far too many times—watching over time what really happens down the road, for 25+ years—and I ask parents, would you prefer to put up with a little screaming now (maybe 1-2 hours sometimes), or hear their ENDLESS cries when they have lousy marriages, unhappy children, can't find a job, go to treatment centers, and worse?
I have visited these kids in PRISON—the very ones whose parents wouldn’t require them to go to bed. Not joking. I’ve lived long enough to see the end of the story, to see the prophecies fulfilled to the letter.
Mom: My 5-year-old finally went to sleep, and when he woke up in the morning, my husband was the first to talk to him. He asked our son why he had spent night in the tub, and how he was feeling. Son told him, "I slept in the tub because I fussed and screamed. Mama's teaching me that there's another way. I didn't like it at the beginning but at the end, I liked it." He made jokes, passed gas, and laughed at himself. He was happy.
**WOW. (To all) They KNOW what is right. Somehow they know. That universal flow—love and truth—teaches them what is true. They’re COUNTING on you to make it happen, to make the right thing happen. You can’t afford to fail them.
