Truth and Consequences

There’s hardly a principle that is more important to me as a parent, and perhaps on a related note there’s hardly a lesson t

hat is more frustrating to have to impart over and over again.  Maybe other parents out there are nodding their heads in weary agreement.

What is interesting to me is that it plays out in different ways at different stages of childhood.  We have 13, 11, and almost 3, so it’s a pretty wide range.  With the almost 3, connecting actions to consequences is paramount, because they are starting to learn that that is how life works, is not that it is a random interplay of their behavior and various responses from the universe, but that choices they make have ramifications.  We have largely phased spanking out of our repertoire, so we have to figure out a lot of different ways to get Asher to understand and directly feel the consequences of his actions.  Sometimes he doesn’t make the connection.  And sometimes he does, but it doesn’t help him to not do the wrong thing the next time.  How frustrating this is!  And yet this is the learning process at that age.      

With the 13 and 11, our general philosophy is to give them lots of room, including room to fail, and then to use their relative sheltered situation (i.e. as opposed to when they are 18 or 24) to help them deal with the consequences of their mistakes.  Without getting into a whole lot of detail about their small or spectacular failures, that can mean everything from getting sent home early from their friend’s house to writing an apology letter to a fellow parent.   Jada and Aaron are good kids.  But they make mistakes, sometimes out of ignorance and sometimes out of willful meanness.  They need to be in situations where they are able to make choices, and hopefully there is a feedback loop that allows them to see that good choices lead to good things and bad choices to bad things.  But it is frustrating, and truth be told far scarier a process than what we are going through with Asher, because the stakes are higher and the amount of time between now and when they are truly on their own is much shorter.

I’m sure there are many who disagree with our approach.  Sometimes I disagree with it!  But I prefer it to either extreme, of either never giving kids room to make mistakes or alternatively not taking immediate action to impose consequences when they do.  So I am reasonably satisfied with our game plan.  Even if it exhausts and frustrates the heck out of me.