Once you have reasonable expectations for your child it is important to make sure your child understands exactly what you expect, and what the consequences will be. I believe children should know before hand what is expected, it doesn’t seem fair to unexpectedly drop consequences on them. So when all is calm sit down and lovingly look into your child’s eyes and explain in simple terms what you want, and what the consequences will be. For example, “Before you can play with Tommy your room needs to be cleaned, that means put your clean clothes in the drawers, dirty clothes in the hamper and toys in the toy box. When that is done you can play with Tommy.” You can ask your child to repeat back to you what is expected. Depending on the age of your child you can make a list of the items, or a poster with pictures of what is expected. Obviously for young children you will have them do only one thing at a time. Now your child knows what is expected and what will happen when she does/doesn’t do what is expected. It is now her/his choice.
Here’s another example, if your child is whiny and disruptive at dinner you can calmly let them know that you don’t want to be around this behavior, if they continue behaving that way they can go to their room. When they decide to use a “nice voice” you would love to have them return and join you for dinner.
You want to use natural consequences whenever possible. If your child routinely has trouble getting up for school in the morning and misses the bus, the natural consequence can be they can walk to school (with you following closely to make sure they’re safe, depending on their age), or use their allowance to pay for a taxi.
When there are no natural consequences make sure the imposed consequences are reasonable and short term. The examples I gave above I would consider “reasonable and short term.” To tell the child that missed the bus that they would have to walk to school for a week might be unreasonable. Taking away a privilege for a week for a minor offense can cause the child to become angry, resentful and take away motivation for behaving for the rest of the week. The object is to teach our children that there are consequences for behavior and to instill self-control in them.
The younger the child the more important it is for the consequences to be immediate, you want the child to associate the consequence with the behavior. For example if your toddler is not playing nicely he/she can be removed from play for a short time.
This method works for most children, if you find it’s not working for your child there may be other issues going on such as attention or learning problems.
Sometimes it’s hard to come up with reasonable consequences, so again, I encourage you to talk with your spouse, other parents or teachers. If you have specific questions regarding behavior or natural consequences post a comment or drop me an email and I’ll get back to you.
I also recommend reading the books, Raising Great Kids or Boundaries with Kids by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend.
No comments:
Post a Comment