Parenting Tip of the Day #7- Choose your consequence

When a child misbehaves it is a frustrating moment for everybody involved.  It is then your job to come up with an appropriate consequence, follow through, and be sure you take some time to offer forgiveness and restore the relationship after it’s over.  Sometimes it’s hard to know what an appropriate and meaningful consequence would be, so I’ve got a shocking idea for you:  Ask your child.

Here’s how it works-

Your son decided to sign his name in crayon on the wall.  While you are impressed with his newly developed spelling and fine motor skills, he knows he shouldn’t have done it and now you need to give him a consequence.  First of all, be brief in your pre consequence conversation.  If you can keep it to one sentence, that’s ideal.  Then give him the opportunity to pick an appropriate consequence or let him pick between two consequences you think are equally appropriate.  After the consequence is over, make sure there’s forgiveness and appropriate restitution if necessary.

This is what that process might look like-

Mom:  Josh, you know we don’t color on the walls.  What do you think would be a good consequence so you remember not to do that again?

Josh:  I could clean up the baby’s room.

Mom:  Sounds good.  After you pick up the baby’s room you can help me clean the crayon off the wall.

Mom: (after the baby’s room is cleaned)  Josh, it’s great to write your name on paper, but what would happen if everybody colored on the walls down here?  That would make a pretty big mess, right?  Do you know what?  I love you when you make good choices and I love you just as much when you make bad choices, but my hope is that you won’t make this choice again, okay?  Now let’s clean this off together.

You might also have this same scenario, but if the child isn’t picking an appropriate consequence or you don’t want to go through the process of having him think through one you can offer two choices-

Mom:  Josh, you can either have no tv for the rest of the night or you can help me clean up the kitchen after dinner.  Which do you choose?

The rest of the scenario should play out about the same way.

So why let your child help pick their consequence?  One of our major goals for our kids is teaching them that their actions have consequences.  When we pick the consequence (which I often do), they may direct their anger at us because we are the implementor of the thing they don’t like.  When they come up with their own consequence, we make it easier for them to direct their frustrations in the appropriate direction- their own actions.  I know this from living it.  My mom would sometimes go this route and I remember that I would feel so conflicted- I wanted to be mad at her because I had to stay in my room, but I really could only be mad at myself because it was my own idea in response to my own bad decision.  My mom is kind of a genius.  Kids are also way more creative than we are, so you may be pleasantly surprised at what kind of consequences they come up with.

Is this what I do 100% of the time?  Nope.  I have my go-to consequences that seem to work best for each kid, but this is a trick I can use when I need to shake things up a little.  I find it to be most useful for my really sensitive kids when we’re not in a heated moment.  Hope it works for you!