I know that my children mean well, but sometimes they just don’t behave even when I give them strict instructions otherwise.
I don’t want to have to treat them every single time they go out to the store just to drive them into behaving well.
I think it’s a dangerous road to go down and establish the wrong trend. Because then they’ll be expecting rewards just for behavior that should be expected of them regardless of the situation. And then in the future they’re not going to have the values and the character built inside to behave properly just because it’s the right thing to do. It’s not true morality if you have to see an ulterior motive for doing the right thing. You need to be able to make the right decisions in life regardless of how something could benefit you in the long run. Right now we’re trying to teach our children to keep their hands off the thermostat for the central HVAC system. After going back and forth with them, I decided to put a lock box over the thermostat. It’s basically a clear plastic box with a key pour on it that you manually unlock every time you want to access the thermostat. These were over thermostats in our dorm rooms in college. Basically the thermostat would get set by the administration and then it would be locked so you couldn’t change it as a student. I feel frustrated that I have to use a lock box over the HVAC thermostat, but it’s the only solution right now until our children learn more self control.