There is a certain art to deciding just what will happen to your kid(s) when they get in trouble. It’s difficult to get right but if your hope is to have your kids listen to you and to respond to the imminent threat of what you have in store then it’s something to spend a little time focusing on.
First off, it’s probably a good idea to refer to it as “consequences”. A punishment implies an external locus of control. When a child is getting punished it’s because someone else is doing something to them. Misfortune is being visited upon them. But a consequence is something you bring upon yourself. You’re not being punished, you’re just reaping what you have sown. It’s a semantic difference, but might help get you in the right headspace for crafting suitable consequences.
Janelle and I used a pure carrot and stick style approach to consequences. We would just grant or withhold things that the boys liked to do. Not listening? No iPad. Hitting your brother? No TV later. Didn’t clean up your stuff? No dessert. Each of these items may work from the pure negative incentive standpoint — but if you think about it, none of them make sense. There’s no real rhyme or reason to it, which gives enforcement of house rules an arbitrary feel. These are known as illogical consequences, because, well, they aren’t logical.
Logical consequences are basically consequences that are thematically relevant to the crime in question. I’ll give an example with Joshua from a week or two ago. We’ve been trying to work on his not using his hands with his friends too much during recess at school. Historically this would be something that, if a note came home, we would just tell him he can’t play iPad. Again, illogical. Well, this time around I took a different approach.
“Joshua, which one of your school’s character pillars does using your hands on your friends deal with?”
“Respect.”
“Right, that’s a good one. And what are you trying to do by following all the pillars?”
“Be a good citizen.”
“Yeah, so, since you chose to not be a good citizen at school today, I think when we get home you should spend some time showing me how you can be a good citizen. So, what do you think you could do that would mean being a good citizen?”
“I could do the dishes!”
This was a logical consequence because it followed a clear line of reasoning. The effects were directly related to the problem. There are a couple of corollaries to mention here. First is that this was a consequence that I didn’t come up with. Ultimately what was chosen was Joshua’s choice and I just put my stamp of approval on it. Second is that he was legit excited to do the dishes, so that’s a bonus. Third, and perhaps most important to note, is that this consequence is not intended to be punitive. It is intended to prompt reformation. Too often we pick things intended to make our children pay, not to make them change. Take our usual go-to punishment: taking away the iPad. It has nothing at all to do with what he did wrong. It was essentially just a thing we did because kids aren’t supposed to be allowed to just get away with things.
The holy grail in discipline are known as natural consequences, but they’re a bit harder to pin down. They’re probably less something you’d use in a “punishment” kind of scenario and more just you not sweeping in to rescue your kid all the time. They didn’t bring a raincoat to school? They’re going to get wet. Forgot their homework? Their teacher will talk to them about it.
I find that the best way to combine a logical consequence and a natural consequence is to establish certain standards. Work with your kiddos and talk about, for example, what time everyone should be ready to go to leave the house in the morning. We have settled on 6:55. Before the boys can play on the iPad in the morning they need to have gotten dressed, had breakfast, packed their things into the car and gotten their shoes on, and then they are clear until 6:55. If they cannot turn the iPads off at 6:55, then they do not get to play them later in the day. For me, what makes this a sort of natural-consequences hybrid is that if they aren’t ready on time or don’t comply we can essentially play the “Hey kiddo, I’m sorry you’re upset. I’m sad you won’t get to play later, too. But… we all agreed awhile ago that the clock sets the rules and it’s past 6:55. Next time you can make some better decisions to get all set on time.” Basically, it’s not us, man, it’s just the way it is. (And by the way, you helped set this particular rule.)
A final note on punishment deals with duration. Length of punishment should scale with age. This probably makes sense, but still bears mentioning. Kids have memories like goldfish. If you take away TV from a 5-year-old for a week, by day 3 they have no idea why they are still in trouble because that action is ancient history for them. For littles, you’re looking at 24-hours. When you start getting into the pre-teen realm then you can start talking in the week range. And it’s basically open-season on teenagers. Though, I’m not even going to attempt to start spouting off on how I would discipline a teenager. Check back in 7 more years for more posts about how I still don’t know what I’m doing.
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