agonyaunt | (no subject)

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Dear Care and Feeding,

Any ideas for creative consequences for going into a sibling’s room uninvited? Repeatedly? The offender is elementary age and the room owner is in middle school. I am sure the stuff in there is incredibly enticing but boundaries and privacy are important!

—Raising a Snoop

Dear Raising a Snoop,

When your younger child goes into their sibling’s room uninvited, they should lose a privilege that they value: dessert, screen time, etc. You can also talk to your elder child about how to incentivize their little sibling not to go in there. Perhaps a week without sneaking in can net them a 15-minute visit into the room under their sibling’s supervision. Continue talking to your younger child about the importance of privacy and boundaries. Ask them how they would feel if someone was snooping through their stuff without permission. Explain to them that it is important for their older sibling to have a space that is all their own and that they would want the same respect for their own things. Talk to them about the fact that as we get older, we have a greater need for privacy, and that it’s important to respect that. Be consistent about consequences; as long as they get away with this behavior, they’re going to keep it up.

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It amazes me that people's problem solving when it comes to kids often begins and ends with consequences.

There is an easier solution here, and that is to swap out the older kid's doorknob for the sort that has a lock. Mom and Dad have one key and implicit permission to use it if they think they absolutely have to for the same reasons they'd go into the kid's room now. Older Kid has the other, and if they lose it, the replacement comes out of their allowance.

This is a stage, and honestly the younger kid will most likely outgrow it so long as it's not being encouraged. You don't need to consequence your way out of it, which relies on you catching the kid every time and then never ever caving on the punishment you've picked, and you certainly don't need to ask the older one to make the huge concession of allowing their sibling in their room once a week! You just need to go to the hardware store and put a lock on the door. Some things simply don't need consequences when you can have the same result without them.

(This, by the way, is also my advice for the equally-common problem of door slamming. For some reason lots of people will just fall all over themselves to tell you to remove your child's door. And where the hell do you put it until you decide they've repented? Just get a little doohickey that keeps the door from slamming and call it a day.)

YES. This was totally my first thought - just give Older Sibling a lock on their door!

It drives me straight up the wall how "consequence" has become the new word for "punishment," and people immediately jump back to taking unrelated shit away from kids for doing things they don't like. An actual consequence is supposed to be related to the action, which means the appropriate consequence for younger sibling not being able to stay out of older sibling's room... is that older sibling can now lock their door.

It drives me straight up the wall how "consequence" has become the new word for "punishment," and people immediately jump back to taking unrelated shit away from kids for doing things they don't like.

Oh, god, this isn't even the worst example I've come across in the past ten days.

Soooooooo there was a thread about the scourge of children - gasp! - peeking at their Christmas presents early. Which is an entirely made-up problem by people with way too much time on their hands. I mean, if "hiding the presents" is the fun game everybody in the family likes to play, great, but if it's really stressing you out then I suggest you either stash the presents with a neighbor or simply drop the freaking rope - tell the kids directly that their presents are in the bedroom closet and if they'd like to be surprised on the big day then they probably shouldn't look. Failure to be surprised is its own punishment.

But this one person posted this story about how their mom caught them peeking when they were, like, six and told them that since they peeked that gift would go to a neighbor instead of them - and people were upvoting this! I was appalled. That would be overly heavy-handed at sixteen, but six? FFS. Why would you do this to your kid? Seriously, why?

Huh. Is wanting to be surprised something normal kids do, so failure to be surprised would be a punishment instead of a reward? Neither I nor any of my siblings ever *wanted* to be surprised; it was a rule made up by the adults, and there would definitely have been a punishment (if only a scolding) for peeking early. In fact, I got scolded once for calling out what a present was during the present-opening, when the present got partially knocked open during the kerfluffle of opening, but wasn't the present being officially opened while everyone watches.

And while my parents definitely were non-representative, and had way too much time on their hands to make up problems and rules, I had the idea this one was actually representative. There's a scene in one of the Little House books where Laura *accidentally* finds her present, and she's in agony between then and Christmas because she wasn't supposed to see it, and Ma will be so upset if Laura's not surprised by the gift on Christmas. And then she has to fake excitement the same way you fake liking something, so as not to disappoint the giver. The whole surprise thing, I thought, was for the adults and their impulse control, not the kids and their lack thereof.

The person in this household who isn't great with surprises is me - I keep urging the kids to accept their gifts early and they keep refusing!

But the previous time I was in a discussion about this several people posted about That Time They Peeked and then the holiday, to them, felt flat because they weren't surprised at all. I genuinely don't understand that one either, but apparently it's common enough! And if you don't care about the surprise then at the very least being told where the presents are will take the forbidden enticement away, so it's only regular impulse control issues you're dealing with.

Yes, what's being proposed is the exact opposite of consequences! Once you're talking about being creative, that's not a consequence, that's a literal punishment. Just changing the name doesn't have any effect. If you want to avoid punishment and teach that actions have consequences, you have to actually do that.

I fully agree that a lock is a much better solution. Possibly rehearsing with the younger child some alternative to going into the older sib's room. It honestly doesn't sound like the problem is sneaking, the little one is just feeling like playing with their sib's stuff and just going right in. So maybe they need some help in cultivating a different behaviour instead. Can they think of something of their own or stored in communal areas they'd like to play with instead? Can they practise asking for permission and gracefully accepting a no?

My wife and I use consequence to emphasize that our children are responsible for their actions and thus also responsible for any punishments they receive as a result of misbehavior. We impose punishments sparingly, and when a punishment is called for, we also hold a discussion about why the child's actions warranted punishment. Consequence helps make that link.

In the case of this letter, I agree that a lock is the best solution, coupled with a discussion with younger sibling about why older sibling deserves a lock to protect their privacy.

Edited 2023-12-31 16:05 (UTC)

Yep, give the older sib a lock!!

Engineering controls are always more effective than training; if you physically can't do something, you won't do it versus being told not to do something and deciding to obey that instruction. I see no reason why that wouldn't hold true for kids.

Picking one's fights is important, too.

For the longest time, we had magnetic door locks for our kid's wardrobe because they would open it, pull out the drawers and climb on them to reach for stuff that was hanging in there (the drawers are wonky and getting stuck to this day; the wardrobe itself was bolted into the wall, of course). If it's supposed to be a hard boundary, it needs to work even when you're not around to enforce it. It's not like we're advising parents to leave all their sharp knives lying around and to "simply" teach their kids not to touch them... If they're able to reach them, they're ideally at the age to understand why knives have to be handled carefully. And they'll have their own play-appropriate alternatives if possible.

Just wondering whether “teaching empathy” would always work here. Younger sibling, either by age or by temperament, might not have the same issues around privacy as older sibling, so that may not land as a lesson at all.

I think this will depend on the personality and age of the younger sibling, since "elementary age" is a considerable range. A neurotypical kindergartener struggles with impulse control at the best of times, doesn't have a developed enough brain to understand privacy as a concept, and cannot really make the connection between breaking the rule and having an unrelated consequence to remember not to do the thing or understand the punishment. A neurotypical fifth grader, on the other hand, could probably be taught to understand why going into their sibling's room is so upsetting to sibling, can be expected to not do that, and can understand why they're losing a privilege well enough to perhaps avoid the undesired behavior to keep the privilege.

Introduce ADHD at any of those ages, and the impulse control will probably never be strong enough to keep the kid out of their sibling's room, no matter WHAT you do.

I've got an age gap between my younger siblings and myself. 9 years for one and 12 for the other. My parents' solution was to put a hook and eye lock at a height where myself or my parents could reach, but the littles couldn't. I locked my room when I wasn't in it and could supervise / shoo away when I was in it.

Were there a few times when my siblings conspired to quietly move a chair down the hallway and lock me into my room? Yes. But my parents were home and let me out when I yelled for help. Now that we're adults it's a funny story.

In addition to the issues other people have raised here, I kind of had an issue with "perhaps a week without sneaking in can net them a 15-minute visit into the room under their sibling's supervision." Or...perhaps it's okay for the older sibling just to NOT WANT THEM IN THEIR ROOM. I think if the forbidden thing that the younger sibling was getting into was the older sibling's underwear drawer, this would be clear to Care & Feeding. It's okay if the older sibling NEVER wants the younger sibling in their room, and pushing them that "come on, Eldest, Youngest has been good all week...well, most of the week...it's been six days...almost six days really...surely you can let them in NOW" is a big nope from the Marissa judge. It is okay to have boundaries, it is okay to just have that boundary permanently, you never want that person to do that, okay.

Yeah, that really jolted me. The reward for respecting a boundary is getting to cross the boundary and do the thing? What?

Give the kid a lock and key for their door.

Yeah, as an older sibling, I wasn't thrilled with the idea of the parents giving away some of the older sibling's time/private space as a reward for the younger sibling's good behavior.

Edited (argh typos) 2023-12-31 18:34 (UTC)

1. get a lock

2. you probably should do some work to teach the younger child about respecting boundaries (do this after the lock) but it involves figuring out why they are going in. Is it really to access the stuff? Is it to get a big reaction from the older sibling? Is it because they aren't allowed to have boundaries around their own space/time/stuff? Is it because the older sibling literally never leaves the room anymore and they miss them? Is it because they need help from someone and annoying older sib works better than asking you? Is it because they're developmentally young enough they still need help with the basic concept? These all have different solutions.

(giving them scheduled room access is probably not a solution to any of those. setting up scheduled sibling bonding time some other place might help with some of them, though.)

Is it when the older sibling is there, or not there? Seems like different motivations might be involved.

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