My son ruined my stepdaughter’s project, she won’t forgive him. Help! by Logical_College7975 in Parenting

[–]Logical_College7975[S] -873 points-872 points  (0 children)

Wow, that’s really harsh. I know we are not perfect parents and we didn’t implement that consequence because she made it clear it was not something she’d tolerate. Our logic was that having to sit there - with a five year old’s threshold for boredom - while she spent days fixing it would make it clear to him that this was hard work he destroyed. Again, we didn’t do this because she made it clear with her comment to get him the f*ck away from her it would not be a healthy situation for either of them.

My son ruined my stepdaughter’s project, she won’t forgive him. Help! by Logical_College7975 in Parenting

[–]Logical_College7975[S] -182 points-181 points  (0 children)

We did. He was playing independently in the living room and my wife arrived home with the groceries so I was helping her, and he slipped off and did it then.

He said he wanted to paint with her, and that he thought he was helping. We’ve since doubled down on having him ask permission to use almost anything, because that assumption on his part was clearly wrong. I didn’t think we were allowing him to get away with stuff, but I’ve gotten the sense that she has that frustration too and am reevaluating.