Consequences: instruction in Positive Discipline

Though generally, a Positive Discipline fan, I am extremely wary of consequences. Truly natural consequences, are obviously ok: a child that refused to take a jacket along might as well get wet in the rain. I no longer carry a change of clothes for Lily, so should she choose to get her pants wet on the playground, she gets to play in them and then complain of cold bottom.
 
But consequences of the form "If you don't pick up after yourself, there won't be TV time" are very difficult for me to say, implement or be consistent about. There is no question that this is me imposing my ability to take things away from a child, using my power over him and whatever force is necessary (the force I have plenty of because I am four times bigger!)

I was further cautioned against the idea when I started hearing Alex try to apply a similar strategy with his little sister.  "Lily, if you don't give me this toy, I will take something away from you!" Ouch! As I suddenly pulled back from using "threats" of any sort, he plunged ahead, recognizing their effectiveness. "If you don't do this, I will hit you!" Now I knew, I had to intervene.  We had a long talk about bullying: "making another person do what you want by scaring them." He understood and we quickly abandoned this tactic.

I recently wrote about a challenge ahead of us: cleaning up.  We are moving into a new home and would like to keep it clean and beautiful. Alex is ready to be able to pick up after himself and will do so when asked with rare exceptions. Offering help will always win his cooperation.  Lily... well... let's just say, she discovered, terrible twos are not nearly as much fun as terrible threes over a month early! Right now, she resists any direction she does not like. And because cleaning up is a particularly difficult issue for me to teach, it is charged with emotion and conflict.  I have made a decision to introduce some basic consequences in order to prevent conflicts, power struggles and mommy melt downs. So I spoke to Alex, giving him what turned out to be a lesson in logical consequences accessible to a five-year-old.

 "Do you remember our discussions about bullying?" I began. "We don't want to scare a person into doing what we want.  However, occasionally, there are consequences to one's behavior that we have to point out.  I might remind you to get a jacket and explain that the consequence to not doing so is getting wet. In the case of cleaning up your work, well, if we never did so, our house would eventually become so messy, we could not find anything in it, and hate it because we would live in a pig sty. So I might choose to break this big consequence up into smaller ones: no relaxing play time, till your work is done and other things are put away."  He said it made sense.

"The idea," I continued the key point, "is that I don't want to scare Lily, I am simply letting her know that there is a problem with failing to do what she needs to." I pointed out some consequences that exist in the adult world, such as late charged. He was beginning to understand the notion, I could tell. "To recognize consequences, you have to keep in mind that they have to make sense.  Let's play: bullying or consequence!"  He was, of course, delighted.

"If you don't finish your dinner, I won't love you!"  "Bullying!" he responded immediately.  "Yes, saying I won't love you is never ok.  It is always bullying and I would never do that."

"If you don't eat your dinner, there won't be any snacks after." "Consequences!" (We used to be in the habit of eating ten popsicles instead of dinner!)


"Here is a tricky one: if you don't eat your dinner, you cannot have play time."  He thought a long time.  "Consequence?" I was glad he hesitated.  This is a tough one.  "Sort of. Remember, I said, consequences had to make sense.  What does eating dinner have to do with play time?"  

We went through a few more. I explained that he could, too, use consequences, within the scope of things that made sense for him to do. He could tell Lily that if she did not play appropriately with his toy,  he would not be willing to share it. That if she did not give him the space he needed, he would go to his room and close the door.


And I added one more important point.  "Before resorting to consequences, always try to work it out with simple words: 'Lily, I need more space. Can you please scoot over?' Consequences are about teaching, not scaring. This means, after a while, they become unnecessary as you learn about them. They are predictable, reasonable and respectful." 

In the end, Alex got a firm grasp on the idea of logical consequences and how to apply them, but more importantly, so did I!