Teaching Children Through Natural Consequences
It is important for us as parents to utilize "Natural
Consequences" with our children as much as we can. Natural consequences
are a good way for our children to learn because the consequence is
directly related to a particular action (or lack of action) from our
children. Not everything our children do will have a natural
consequence, but for those things that do, let these consequences work
their magic! Listed below are a few examples of how
children can learn the consequences of their decisions.
Suppose your daughter leaves her bike in the street and it gets run over
by a car and ruined. The natural consequence for her actions is that
she no longer has a bike to ride. She may beg and beg for another bike,
and you may be tempted to buy her one. But then she hasn't learned the
very important lesson of taking care of personal belongings. One way
she can learn from this experience is to start doing extra jobs so that
she can earn the money to buy herself a new bike. After working hard to
earn a bike, chances are, she won't leave it in the street again!
Another example of natural consequences often occurs at the dinner
table. Our children know that if they choose not to eat their dinner,
they won't get anything else to eat the rest of the night. If they
complain later on, we remind them that it was their choice not to eat
dinner with the family and that the kitchen is closed for the night. The
next night they will be faced with the same decision and hopefully they
will remember the lesson they learned the previous night.
Allowing natural consequences to occur means not rescuing our child
every time them make a mistake. If we always "rescue" our children
every time they make a mistake, then we are teaching them to be
irresponsible! We have six children and it is a big job trying to
remember everything for each child.
Therefore, the kids are responsible for making their own lunch for
school and they are also responsible for getting their own jacket,
homework, backpack, and lunch when we leave. It is a simple request and
one that they are certainly capable of. If they forget any of these
items, then they will just have to suffer the consequences.
I will not continually run back to the school to bring forgotten items
(except perhaps in an emergency). Because of this, they almost never
forget their backpack or lunch!
Of course, we can't let children do anything that would harm themselves
or others. If a child keeps running into the street, we can't simply
say, "Well, if he gets hit by a car then he has learned his lesson!"
That would be ridiculous! But life gives us plenty of
opportunities to learn, and we as parents need to allow our children to
grow through these experiences.
Wendy Jensen
P.S. This excerpt was taken from our book "Positive Parenting Using the
G.O.L.D. Standard: Developing Discipline Without Yelling, Spanking,
Nagging, or Time-Outs!" For more information, go to:
http://www.FirstRateFamily.com