Daughter is well trained

I have a huge tree in my front yard. Well, used to. It's been looking unhealthy and this storm has decimated it so it's coming out. The neighbors' across the street fell on their car a couple years back.

I woke up last night to branches falling and decided I didn't want my daughters sleeping on that side of the house. I went to the oldest (7) in the top bunk and shook her awake and told her to sleep in our bed on the opposite side. She grumbled groggily and didn't really respond. I gave her our family "emergency code word" and she sat bolt upright, eyes wide. "Go sleep in my bed," I said. "Why?" she asked. "Just go." She quickly lept down from her bunk and got in bed with her Mom.

The drilling we do with them apparently works well. Need to work a little more because they're supposed to be trained to act without asking questions.

Cool! I need to try that. The only way I can roll my son out of bed in the middle of the night is to... roll him out of bed.

Among everything else, it's nice to have those parental moments of "Oh, they DO listen."

I don't want to throw cold water on your celebration, but if you have a family energency code word and used it, your daughter's response should not be "Why?" but immediate compliance with the instruction she just heard given right after the code word.

Or as my Drill Instructor said, "When I tell you to jump, you can ask 'How high?' on the way up."

I'm happy that I am not reading that the tree crashed through the roof during the time you were having that conversation with her. But those seconds could have been the difference between being safe and being hurt. Wasn't that why you worked up a family emergency code word? Getting kids to understand why they must respond immediately can be scary for them. But if you explain why they must obey immediately as parent/protector they will probably be OK - expecially as opposed to your assuming the role of parent/drill instructor when explaining it to them.

stay safe.

skidmark said:

I don't want to throw cold water on your celebration, but if you have a family energency code word and used it, your daughter's response should not be "Why?" but immediate compliance with the instruction she just heard given right after the code word.

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Thanks for your concern. Please note from the OP:

"Need to work a little more because they're supposed to be trained to act without asking questions."

She reacts much more quickly during waking hours and doesn't ask questions. This is the first time I've had opportunity to wake her up with it. Considering she came out of basically a dead sleep, asked one question WHILE she was moving in fractions of a second, I still think she did pretty well. She's 7, not a SEAL (yet). "Hanna" may be a parental how-to in my house, but even that girl is 16.

skidmark said:

Getting kids to understand why they must respond immediately can be scary for them. But if you explain why they must obey immediately as parent/protector they will probably be OK - expecially as opposed to your assuming the role of parent/drill instructor when explaining it to them.

Click to expand...

Yes, and that's what we went over when we put the code words in place. We drill regularly and debrief on their actions. When we debrief I drill them NOT to ask "how high" on the way up. We've had to use the codes on more than a couple of occasions and they do better every time. They also have default actions to perform if they don't get instructions.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a man that has a plan and trains on how to put the plan into practice.

Keep it up!

And Hanna was a wimp!

stay safe.