Question
Our six and a half year old is not getting her responsibilities completed on school nights. She is in school all day and then goes to an after school program for a couple of hours (we both work). In the car on the way home, I remind her that her job when we get home is to empty her backpack, and then she can go play. Most of the time, we get home and she does not do this. She pets the dog, tells me about her day, etc. I remind her about her backpack, and she starts on it, then gets distracted again. We have started giving her a single warning, and after that, the consequence is that she goes to bed right after dinner. This rarely results in her getting her job done, and when we tell her she is going to bed right after dinner, she screams and cries (and often winds up being sent to her room until dinner). I wonder if some of this is exhaustion - all day school plus after care - and we need to find a different approach (such as giving her 10-15 minutes when she gets home to calm down and make the rounds before she takes care of her backpack). But I worry that maybe I am being too soft, and we need to stick with our original rule about getting this job done as soon as we get home. I'd love some guidance on the best way to handle this!
