Actually cutting your trip short because of kids misbehaving

I have cut our last day short. Boy was that a mistake!

My son, maybe 2 to 3 at the time, was playing in the Bone Yard sand box in Animal Kingdom. There are a million kids around and he threw one of the shovels. I was pretty upset about this because he could have easily hit another kid with a shovel. So I told him if he does that again not only are we leaving the park, but we are going straight to the airport. Well that little mongrel picked up another shovel, looked me right in the eyes, and chucked it across the sandbox. I was so LIVID! So I scooped him up and carried him kicking and screaming to his stroller, where I proceeded to push him (still screaming) to the car, and we went to the airport. Now here's the best part. It was around 11:00 am when we arrived at the airport, and our flight wasn't until 8:00pm!!!! We were so early we couldn't even check in our bags. So we sat in one of the hallways for HOURS trying to entertain an ornery 2 year old. We basically tortured ourselves for an entire day because I had to carry through with my threat.

I've learned to breath first before doling out threats because if I don't breath I naturally jump straight to the nuclear option which usually ends up just punishing me for my sons stupid behavior.
 
I don’t think I would cut a trip short but last trip I threatened my 5 year old if he didn’t behave he would have to go back to the room and sit there with no tv or tablet. And he looked right at me and screamed “Disney world is stupid!” as loud as he could and he had to go back to the room with my husband which sucked bc it was our only Epcot day and we had just gotten done with breakfast but he fell asleep on way back to Resort so I guess he was just exhausted!
 
Would be ok if you had one child and if you had an endless supply of money and the trip wasn’t something you worked hard fir and saved for .
Most certainly there would be consequences when we returned home or if the older kids were the ones misbehaving as that would carry more weight anyways..
Little ones perhaps no pools that evening ..
Unless they murdered someone I can’t foresee me ever cutting my hard earned vacation short
 
I agree with the rule to never make a threat you're not willing to carry out. Mean what you say, or what you say won't mean anything. Fortunately, I have not had to make the threat of cutting a WDW vacation short, but we have left some places "prematurely."
 
This thread started in 2007. Clearly kids haven’t changed, lol.

We’ve never had to consider leaving, based on bad behavior.
He was always a good traveler, great in restaurants etc. lucky!
 
Would be ok if you had one child and if you had an endless supply of money and the trip wasn’t something you worked hard fir and saved for .
Most certainly there would be consequences when we returned home or if the older kids were the ones misbehaving as that would carry more weight anyways..
Little ones perhaps no pools that evening ..
Unless they murdered someone I can’t foresee me ever cutting my hard earned vacation short
That’s me. But I also wouldn’t threaten it. I’d do like a pp said & go back to the room with other consequences etc.
 
No, because we fly down from MA, this isn’t an option.

I have taken the kids from ages of 4 and 2 up to 14 and 12. I think the worst was probably the pre-teen trip in 2016. When they were little kids, I could tell when they have had enough, and never spent more than 3/4 of a day in the park with lots of breaks. The elementary age trips were non-eventful and we could do more as their endurance grew with age. This last trip, my daughter was being well....14. The first few days of the trip, she was super moody, then she had a crying fit at one point apologizing for “being horrible”, and then she was fine after that. So I considered that a win overall, lol. We also always travelled in the fall, and avoiding the heat really helps.

I use humor a lot in parenting, and I gave my kids plenty of warning before the trip that if they misbehaved, Mom would turn into the Incredible Hulk and rip their arms and legs off. Whenever people started to get cranky, I would say “I am feeling angry....you won’t like me when I am angry”. Kids would chuckle and usually whatever they were arguing about faded away.
 


I've never had to do it on a trip, but I have had to remove a child from a restaurant a time or two. Both my kids are adults now and I had to do it with my DGD a few years ago. I asked her Daddy if it was OK, then took her physically outside where we sat on a bench until she calmed down. Then we had a heart to heart until she was good to go back in. Never had to do it a 2nd time. All it takes is me saying "Does Grandma need to take you outside?". It worked so well that her aunt, my daughter, will say "I'm going to tell Grandma." and it stops the bad behavior immediately. We laugh about it frequently.
 
These stories are great!!! I must be really lucky. My kids could be as rotten as can be at home, but the minute we went on vacation, they were golden!!! I guess they had so much fun on vacation that they didn’t need to misbehave. Most of them are grown now but I can see DGS4 and 3 being a handful on vacation. Don’t know if I would want to tackle that!!!! I have hard enough time keeping them semi in line at home. We have different rules than mom and dad (they have none at home) and you would think that they would get it by now because we watch them several days a week
 
Wow....just read back on this thread since it popped up and I posted on this back in 2007 in reference to one of my twins misbehaving at dinner when she was 5 years old and she is now 18. I am laughing because she is still the one that has given me the biggest run for my money of all my kids. Time really does fly though...fun reading back on the stories.
 
We have a 2.5 year old and a 9 week old. The oldest was at Disney when he was 18 months old so we never really had to deal with that issue as he wasn't old enough to "decide" to behave better. But we do have a plan for the next trip when he will be 4.5. We plan to give him a warning that he will be returning to the hotel if it continues, that Mom and Dad have been here lots before so we have no problem with one of us leaving the park and the other staying there with his brother. We will also tell him that we came to have fun as a family and that we would be really sad if he had to leave and miss out because of his behaviour.
 
I also find that if you consistantly follow through with consequences for bad behavior at home and in general then they don't have any reason to doubt you will on vacation.
TJ

This!!
I hear so many pointless threats and 'counting' coming from parents that I can see why children don't take them serious. Why should they? The parents don't really mean it!

As my mom always told us - 'Say what you mean, and mean what you say' - follow through on your words. That's the biggest problem that I see with parents today - always threatening, but little action!

Be consistent! My children knew dh & I meant it when we corrected them - would never have made the threat of ending a vacation though - I could never have meant it, emotionally or dollar wise would not have been feasible for us.
 
This!!
I hear so many pointless threats and 'counting' coming from parents that I can see why children don't take them serious. Why should they? The parents don't really mean it!

As my mom always told us - 'Say what you mean, and mean what you say' - follow through on your words. That's the biggest problem that I see with parents today - always threatening, but little action!

Be consistent! My children knew dh & I meant it when we corrected them - would never have made the threat of ending a vacation though - I could never have meant it, emotionally or dollar wise would not have been feasible for us.

Yep--the consequences can be stuff other than leaving early too. After one of my little ones pushed his brother while out trick or treating, he had to let his brother choose a candy from his bag, and I made clear that any fighting, pushing, yelling or other naughtiness would produce the same result. That sure nipped it in the bud!
 
I've never cut it short, but I've left earlier on our last day a couple of times. Never to punish anyone, though. Except maybe myself-- lol! I left first thing in the AM on the last day of my birthday trip this year because I was stressed about "damage" I inflicted on my car. I definitely regret it. My poor car, I ripped off part of the bumper cover pulling away from a parking spot at CBR. We woke up, had breakfast, went to wal-mart, zip-tied to bumper onto the car and drove home.

In the end, it only cost me $100 to re-attach, and it was perfectly safe to drive home with (I called 3 body shops up in Orlando for opinions, as well as my body shop guy down in South Florida) We were supposed to go to Universal. I regret it. I should've just enjoyed my day and worried about it later. It ended up being so minor.
 
One of my twins listens fairly well and the other...well lets just say...less well. Taking away an iPad for a day gets each of their attentions but sometimes I can imagine a case that the defiant twin (she’s currently 6) could lose her iPad until like her 30th birthday and then I would be stuck trying to figure out another attention getter. She has moved the count to three weeks without her iPad one time. That’s the record so far and each of those days she moaned the loss of her iPad.
 
Not a parent, but the key is the follow through. I have watched my BFF have to do that a few times with her boys. Last year, the younger one was acting out and picking on the older one, and as result, he did not get to go to Disneyland that night for a fun evening out. We live local and can go just for an evening. So we did things with the older one that we could not always do when the little one was with us including his first ride on Space Mountain. She has also had times she was thinking of letting them go into a store at Disneyland and pick something out and they lose it when they act out. She threatens and then follows through if the attitude or behavior does not change.
 
We had a Disney trip with my family and my aunt's family back when I was a kid where my uncle ended up leaving a few days early with my middle-school-aged cousin. But they knew it was a possibility from the very first planning stages of the trip, as he had some special needs and they weren't sure how well he would handle the stress and overstimulation of the trip. As it turned out, after a couple days, it was just too much for him, and he was started to get really overwhelmed and was acting out because of it, so he and my uncle flew back home a couple days early. It wasn't done as a threat/punishment, just as an acknowledgement that he really couldn't handle the trip anymore and it would be best for him to go back to the familiarity of home a bit early. My aunt stayed at Disney with my other two cousins for the rest of our scheduled time, though, so at least the whole family didn't have to leave.
 
As others have said we too haven't cut an entire stay short. Last trip this is what we did with our son. He was misbehaving so we moved to quiet area (or leaving the front entrance of the park works) found a bench and did a timeout. We told him if he didn't start behaving we would be leaving the park for the morning (we would have said for whatever block of time we were in but this occurred in the am). That worked for about 10 minutes after the timeout ended and the behavior started again so I (wife stayed behind with daughter in the park) took him to the hotel. At the hotel we had "homework" (math sheets, etc.....) that needed to complete before he could earn going back to the parks. We wound up using this technique twice during our 7 night stay. the second time the timeout worked as he knew the next step was going to the hotel and losing time in the park.

I found the hardest part was getting over my own disappointment when we left the park as I missed some of the fast pass attractions we had scheduled. I won't lie if we had a fast pass for something like Pandora FOP I would have probably stayed (or come back) and then gone to the hotel and no I wouldn't have let him ride, that would have been part of his punishment.
 
I did a time out with my son - I took him away from our group and sat him on a bench near a restroom. A gentleman heard me speaking to him and said something like time outs aren't allowed in Disney World. Sorry, but my son needed to regroup.
I didn't threaten my four year old daughter at the time, but I clearly overscheduled things. I did not realize (first trip for kids) that she'd tire so much. She became a crank that we never saw before! So, we went back to the hotel earlier than planned and canceled a fireworks cruise. I knew it would be a disaster so choose to avoid it instead.
 

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