Am I just a lazy parent?

I used to wonder where the need to lie comes from. Were my girls lying because…

1. they were scared of the reaction they would get?

2. they were too lazy to process the request and just gave an automated response? Or

3. they were consciously choosing to do it for some other reason…

I think point 2 was my girls go to. They were just too lazy to come up with an answer to the question, to show interest, or to help.

It is hard to punish laziness.

In fact the harder you push your child to be un-lazy, the harder they will work at being lazy!

There were times when my girls were small, that I realised I was being the lazy one.

I would ask them to bring things to me to show me, rather than going to them to see their latest creation.

I would tell them to tidy up, and not offer to help and model the behaviour, as I was too tired.

Or tell them to come to me in a voice which would have scared me off, because I was angry or annoyed by their behaviour.

When they chose to respond by ignoring me, or with a similarly lazy response, I realised that I needed to get off my backside and take the action that was required, rather than double my annoyance because they chose not to make my life easy.

It is tiring being a parent, but if you need to take action, then you need to take action.

Asking another to run into your fist because you are too tired to hit them, is very rarely going to work!

What do you do when you find yourself being a lazy parent?