Ken West: Allowing children to experience consequences

“Every generation must learn that the stove is hot,” grandparents remind us. Parenting experts agree that natural consequences provide the most helpful experiences for teaching children to make better decisions. For natural consequences to work, parents must stay completely out of the situation. No protecting the child from the consequences of bad decisions. No punishing the child afterwards. No “I told you so” lectures. The consequences are the teacher.

Rudolph Dreikurs was the master at teaching parents to use natural and logical consequences. Permissive parents experience the most difficulty using natural consequences. To be effective, parents must develop the courage to allow their children to deal with the consequences of their behavior.

Examples

If you were a life guard, you probably recall how many times you told unruly children not to run by the pool. When did they finally stop running? Usually, it took a hard fall to teach them. Experience is our best teacher. Here are a few examples of natural consequences.

• Eating — I’ve never seen a picky eater who did not have someone trying to make him eat. At least one parent is too involved. If you have endured a long-term problem, clear the house of snack food. Tell your child that dinner lasts 30 minutes (or 45) and afterwards the table will be cleared. If your child doesn’t eat, the natural consequence is hunger. While training a child, don’t be permissive and reheat food or provide snacks later in the evening. Nicely report, “Breakfast is tomorrow morning.” You will notice that within two weeks most children will choose to eat better. Hunger also teaches children who chronically forget their lunch or lunch money to remember.

• Sleeping — One of the first assignments family therapists give parents is to allow children who can tell time to manage their own bedtimes. Teach them to set an alarm clock. Tell them that their job is to get up when the alarm rings. At first, they will manage poorly.

After staying up too late, they will suffer in school the following day. Because of this natural consequence, the next night they usually go to sleep earlier. After two weeks of experimenting, children usually learn that being exhausted is too self-punishing.

• Losing things — Whenever you see a child constantly lose things, there is usually a parent finding them for him. (Similarly, whenever there are extremely messy children, you usually find a parent cleaning up for them.) What is the logical consequence for losing something? Exactly. You don’t have it. So, if a child has a chronic problem with losing things, let him do without what he loses: a baseball glove, his homework, or whatever is lost.

Whenever you are dealing with misbehavior that is repetitive, consider using natural consequences. If the consequences are not too severe or too distant in the future, allow your child to experience them. Your role is to stay quiet and out of the way of the teachable moment. Your child’s role is to learn from experience.

West is a professor at Lynchburg College. His book, ‘The Shelbys,’ has been translated into Indonesian and Czech. Readers may write to West in care of The News & Advance, P.O. Box 10129, Lynchburg, VA 24506.