7 year old mid tantrum went for the knife. Please help

[thrivenotjustsurvive]

I'm a nanny with more than 10 years of childcare experience. I've been with this family since January 4.

B is 7 and D is 4. (Their birthdays were earlier this month)

When I started with them B was in a big transition. The nanny who'd been with him since birth went to school full time and he spent the first half of the school year with a new nanny who was, by all accounts, less than attentive. Due to some complications in his public school he had a veritable merry go round of substitute teachers coming in and out of his classroom. His school work was really suffering and his behavior was scary bad--tantrum/meltdowns that really baffled me.

But I stuck to a couple of consistent rules. Three strikes and you're in time out. When you don't finish your lunch at school (every day) you finish it at home before you eat anything else. His parents let me buy him my favorite roal Dahl books and even white stories. We still read all the time. After a couple of months and into now, his behavior is back to that of a typical 7 year old. Occasional tantrum but almost 0 meltdowns, and he finished first grade with all A's and B's (and one c in writing. To improve this, I told him this summer he and I were going to write graphic novels together--he's really into captain underpants)

So yeah. It hasn't always been easy but he is a good kid and I'm not a monster. But what just happened makes me less sure.

The story:
When mom was leaving this morning we established that if B continued to misbehave and be unkind (tantruming/throwing stuff) he would not be allowed to go to a friends b day party today.

Things were mostly chill all morning. Then he starts bothering his sister. I'm trying to instill that when a person tells you to stop, you stop right away. When a person says "no" one time, it means the game is over and to quit. Obviously this is a process, but it's one of very few hard and fast rules that I insist they comply to.

So B is not stopping and ignoring the hell out of me and his sister. After several warnings (this isn't the first time he has done this and been corrected this morning) I come to him and say "you are not behaving like a person who wants to go to a birthday party today"
He said "ok" And i said "ok, no birthday party" and walked away.

He flipped and was tantruming but I ignored. Let me be clear: I always intended to take him. I had an out planned for him and everything.

Sometimes his mom will just wait till he has calmed down to ask him to change his behavior and then doesn't address the bad behavior, they just move forward without discussing the fight or the tantrum and then he repeats the behavior. I didn't want that to happen.

Without promise or even mention of going to the party I told him "let's write down some behaviors I can expect from you this summer, because the way you have been behaving is unacceptable." I also had him write down the names of people in his house who he would be treating with respect."

I told him as he was writing that this didn't mean that we were going to the party (because respect and kindness isn't something you receive a present for, it's something you give to the people and space around you because that's what's expected of you.)

He went from 0 to 60. Screamed, got down from the counter and opened the knife drawer which I was standing next to, and half heartedly started to grab a big knife. Saying he wanted to stab himself in the head. I shut the drawer, told him to go to time out immediately, he went, crying.

Here's how I tried to handle it:
I followed him a minute later and brought the knife with me. TO BE CLEAR there was no threatening of any kind. I know that he's kind of too little to understand what he did. I wanted him to just look at it and maybe absorb the weight of what he'd just done.

I talked to him about what he was feeling and he said "I was so mad, that's how mad I was, that I wanna stab myself in the head"
I told him that what he did was in no way acceptable and it's NEVER ok to threaten to hurt yourself or other people. I told him that what he did made me feel unsafe and it could make his sister or mom and dad feel unsafe. I told him that his parents would also feel sad and disappointed that he thought this was ok because I sure did. I let him in his time out spot. He was showing a lot of remorse. I could tell he was deeply sad, but I can't tell if it's about the party or what he did (and I'm willing to bet it's the party).

And then I called my mom.

My mom never used bday parties as leverage in this way and so I was hesitant to do it. But, you, know, B's mom did it, right? So I gave it a try. And it got me to a 7 year old with a knife. He's obsessed with guns and violence and war and Star Wars etc.

I was really at a loss and by this time we were late for the party (that I was always planning to take him to anyway!) so...we went.

After another 10 minute talk. Among the things I said "I'm worried you're going to think that doing something like this will get you want you want. It doesn't. This was my plan for the day" I told him after the party he and I were going to have a long talk and figure out what to do. The party is ending now. What do I do?

I'm on r/parenting and r/nanny and I peruse enough articles that I've seen this kind of story before. But I don't know what to do next. This feels like something I have to tell mom and dad about but I don't know how.

I know I screwed up. I mean well. Please help.

I just picked him up from the party. The goodie bag was just a gigantic water gun.

AGH.

 

[gabrielea]

@thrivenotjustsurvive I wouldn't be thrilled if you were my nanny and that were my kid. Why use an empty threat if you always intended to take him to party? Why follow him to time out with the knife? Why take him to the party if mom specifically said no if he was acting up?

None of this feels like the right course of action and despite meaning well yes you should talk to parents about it and potentially reevaluate your method of discipline.

 

[thrivenotjustsurvive]

@gabrielea YEP, like I said, I know I screwed up. I stand by the knife part though, and here's why: I was sitting next to him and we were both looking at it. I think his age doesn't connect the thought with the action. That would be ok except in this case he started to connect the two (talking about doing it vs taking the first step toward doing it) I wanted him to have a physical object to connect to his action, and associate meaning to the hypothetical. I'm trying to give his actions weight, so that he can regret them instead of just saying eh regrets them.

 

[bachjazz]

@thrivenotjustsurvive Ok. There's a whole lot of intermixed things going on here so there's no magic bullet that will untangle all of it. First off, you cannot fix everything because at the end of the day you're not the parent. You mention a lot of these disciplinary things as your idea and they shouldn't be. Mom and Dad should have hired you because you already basically agreed with what they'd decided on as a strategy. If what you're doing is not supported and continued by them during the time you're not there, it's going to continue to be hard for you. It is absolutely possible for kids to behave better in one environment than another but 7 is old enough to know that you're an employee and thus can leave (or be fired) at any time. Again, an uphill battle.

Secondly, you absolutely should not have taken him to the birthday party if that was the consequence agreed upon. Never threaten anything you are unwilling to follow through on. I'm not sure that consequence was the best thing to threaten here but once made, you go through with it. The only out is if you realize you overstepped, apologize and talk through your reasoning with him, and give a separate consequence instead. Use sparingly, lest the kids think all consequences are up for negotiation.

Now, for the knife incident. Try not to let it get to several warnings without any consequence. It should be no more than one reminder of the rules and a statement of what the consequence will be should it happen again. "If you hit your sister again, I'm going to ask you to play in your room until you can behave politely to her." Also, are you absolutely certain the 4yo is not instigating some of this? Not that it excuses his actions back but both kids may need more help in how to deal with conflict between them and if the 4yo is needling him (intentionally or not), it's not surprising that the 7yo would eventually lash out.

I'd also guess that he needs a lot more help working through and releasing his emotions in a healthy way. The 0 to 60 thing sounds like he's trying very hard to bottle things up and shove them down because he doesn't know how to deal with them. The attempt to grab the knife was an outpouring of this, trying to show you how miserable he was. It sounds like you missed this cue and rather than talk about his feelings, you talked only about everyone else's feelings. The exercise of what behavior to expect isn't necessarily a bad one but I think it came across to him as saying that everyone else is more important than him and thus he lashed out. He could probably care less about others when he's hurting too. With my own kids, I try to divide how we treat people from how we feel about them. You can always act politely, even if you don't like them. It's tricky talking about this with kids because it can easily seem to them that you're saying to just not be angry with someone--that it's not ok to be mad at someone who did something mean to you. You have to both give an outlet for their anger, affirming that it's ok to feel that way, and give them a way to respond maturely. Just giving how you want them to respond leaves the emotion sort of trapped and them conflicted about what to do. If it gets too strong, they'll default to what they want to do, which is probably scream and/or deck the other kid.

Has he seen Inside Out? He's at a great age to watch that and use it as a springboard for more conversation about which emotion is in charge.

 

[thrivenotjustsurvive]

@bachjazz thank you this is so helpful

 

[stephcooper46]

@thrivenotjustsurvive I don't understand why people feel it's okay to use a birthday party as a disciplinary tool. A mom did this with her daughter who was invited to my daughter's party and my daughter was very upset that her friend was not coming after all. As the hostess, I was extremely irritated, it is a social engagement and illness or an inability to behave properly at the party are the only two valid excuses to not attend when you have RSVP'd yes, IMO.

Your planned out not working out is another indicator that this is a poor strategy overall.