When Parental Consistency Scooters out the Door

When you have several kids and/or kids of largely varying ages a subtle issue can creep into your parenting. The oldest or older kids will probably point it out first and it will sound something like this, “You never let me do that at their age!”

It could be letting a younger sibling stay up until midnight on New Years three years sooner than you did their older sibling, or introducing Star Wars movies sooner, and don’t even get me started on the desserts and food related things.

It’s hard to stay consistent as a parent year after year. To some extent the situation has changed so you may not be being inconsistent so much as adapting to a new reality. I used to say I’d take a kid camping when they were at least three and fully out of diapers. By the time I was taking four of them I decided I needed to change that age limit and it’s gone up considerably since then.

More often than not I think it’s a lack of focus though. As you’re navigating the older ones through new things some of the rules you had when they were younger have a way of just slipping by with their younger siblings.

How many cookies did I let them have? What time did the older ones go to bed when they were six? We let them start going around the block on their bikes at this age too, right? It’s hard to keep track and sometimes things have a way of just morphing to a new standard on their own.

All this is to say our daughter gets away with way too much. I’d love to blame the 5-year-old’s influence (which isn’t inconsiderable) however we’ve gotten lax with number seven.

Case in point: her pink scooter. 1) We never got or agreed for her six older brothers to be given a scooter when they were two years old. 2) We never got them a three-wheel scooter at all.  3) We never let them ride their scooters in the house.

We’re 0-3 with the girl. She saw the boys riding their scooters and wanted to so badly. We agreed when Poppie and Grammie wanted to get her a scooter and since her little pink scooter has three wheels she can actually ride it. Which she does, in the house.

It was the cutest thing to see her gliding down the hall on her scooter with a big grin on her face. Now, I could point out the hallway was carpet for many years and wouldn’t have been conducive to the boys scootering down it anyway. Or I could point out that her three-wheel scooter doesn’t travel at the breakneck speed and with the same propensity to tip over as the boys’ two-wheel ones. Or that her gliding gently down the hall and not smashing into every wall and piece of furniture like a pin ball (the way the 5-year-old travels everywhere) means her indoor scootering is of a different nature.

As true as those things may be, they’re not the reason. She just gets away with things that her brothers wouldn’t have. She’s not quite three yet so I guess there’s still time to right the ship. But it’s going to require a re-doubling of efforts at being consistent that’s not going to be easy. And I think it’s going to have to start with indoor scootering.