Am I Overreacting To My Kid’s Unkind Behavior? A Parent’s Real Experience
Last Tuesday, I sat in my minivan in the elementary school pickup line, my iced coffee gone lukewarm, when the text popped up from Leo’s third grade teacher: Leo hid Jake’s prescription glasses in the art room trash can today. We just found them, Jake was very upset. Can we chat after pickup?
A drop of coffee sloshed onto my gray sweatpants when I tightened my grip on the phone. I was already 10 minutes behind schedule to pick up my 5-year-old from dance, and my phone was at 12% battery. When Leo climbed into the backseat, crinkling a pack of Goldfish, he acted like nothing had happened. “Can we get ice cream on the way to Lila’s dance?” he asked.
I stared at him in the rearview mirror. “What happened with Jake’s glasses today?”
He shrugged, crunching a cracker. “Jake kept drawing on my dinosaur art. It was just a joke.”
That’s when the question popped into my head, the one I’ve asked a hundred times as a parent: Am I overreacting?
I shot a text to my closest mom group while I waited for Lila’s class to let out: My 8yo hid a kid’s glasses in the trash. Am I overreacting if I come down hard? Half the responses said it was just a dumb kid prank, boys will be boys, he’s too young to really get how upset he made Jake. The other half said hiding someone’s glasses is cruel, he needs a real consequence. One of my friends even said she would’ve grounded him for two weeks. I went back and forth all evening: was this a minor mistake that I should brush off, or a big enough deal that I need to step in hard?
I didn’t react in the car, which ended up being the best call I made that day. I was too stressed and rushed to talk about it without yelling, so I told Leo we’d sit down after dinner to sort it out. After Lila’s dance, homework, and baths, I sat on the edge of his bed with him, and I started by asking him to tell me what happened, from his side. He admitted he’d been so mad about the dinosaur drawing that he just wanted to make Jake mad back, and he didn’t think about the fact that Jake couldn’t see without his glasses.
That’s when I remembered the tip a school counselor friend gave me a few months back: when your kid does something unkind, start with their feeling before you talk about the consequence. It keeps them from shutting down right away. I told him I got it: being mad when someone ruins the thing you worked hard on sucks. I’d be mad too. But then I told him exactly why his choice was wrong: Jake couldn’t see to do his work for the rest of the morning, he thought he’d lost his glasses that his mom worked extra to pay for, and he went home crying.
Instead of pulling a random punishment out of the air (I was this close to taking away his tablet for a full week, which is my go-to when I’m frustrated), I thought of another simple trick I’d picked up: tie consequences directly to the mistake, so the kid can see the clear connection between their choice and what happens next. We picked three specific things together: One, first thing the next morning, we’d go in early so he could apologize to Jake face to face, with the teacher there. Two, he’d take $10 from his birthday jar to help pay for the new glasses case Jake needed because the old one got crushed in the trash. Three, for the next five school days, he had to tell me at pickup one specific thing he did when he was mad at someone that wasn’t being unkind. No exceptions.
When we got to school the next morning, Leo shook a little when he apologized, but he did it. Jake shrugged and said it was fine, and his teacher pulled me aside afterward and said he’d noticed Leo struggles with big frustration when things don’t go his way, so he gave Leo a little green “calm down” card he can bring to the back of the classroom when he needs a minute.
I still drove home that day questioning if I overdid it. A part of me thought, maybe it really was just a joke. Maybe I should’ve just let the teacher handle it and not added extra consequences at home. But what I’ve realized over the past few years is that when it comes to small unkind acts when kids are little, it’s not about shaming them for being bad. It’s about teaching them that their choices affect other people, before the choices get bigger. No one expects an 8-year-old to regulate every big feeling perfectly, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need to learn how to fix the messes they make when they slip up.
It hasn’t been perfect. Last week, Leo put a rubber snake in a classmate’s desk as a prank, and the girl got so upset she wouldn’t stop crying. We did the same routine: name the feeling first, connect the consequence to the action, practice what to do next time. He apologized, he gave her a sticker he’d saved from the class treasure box to say he was sorry, and we talked through how even if you think a prank is funny, you have to stop if the other person isn’t laughing.
I haven’t figured out the perfect line between being too strict and too lenient. Some days I let small stuff slide that I probably should have addressed, some days I snap when I’m tired and I’m harder than I mean to be.
Last night, I texted that friend who told me I was overreacting about the glasses a photo of the rubber snake, and I asked her again: Am I overreacting? She wrote back, “We’re all just figuring this out as we go, right?” I think that’s the truth. Right now, this slow, specific approach is working better than yelling or brushing it off. We’re still practicing, we’re still learning, and that’s enough for now.
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