Today we are going to discuss consequences. We will specifically discuss the purpose of consequences.
Most parents, most people get the purpose of consequences wrong. They use consequences as punishments and as a way of discouraging unwanted behavior. Unfortunately negative reinforcements, like consequences, are very poor motivators to change behavior.
Consequences do not work that well.
That is not really what the purpose of consequences should be used for. What you use consequences and punishments for are two different things. The first is to establish boundaries, because children need to know that there are boundaries, that they have limits, and that the consequences establish the idea of a limit.
If your child does one thing, it is okay, but if they go further, it is not okay. If they do this it is fine, but if they do something else they get punished for it.
This establishes a boundary upon which they are not allowed to cross. That is one purpose of consequences, to establish boundaries for your child.
The other thing you can use consequences for is to motivate a change in behavior. You can do this by motivating positive action and that really depends on how you design the consequence.
For example, if your child does something wrong you do not give a time based consequence such as, you can’t watch television for six hours; but do give a motivation, action based consequence.
For example, you can’t watch television until I see for three hours that you do not talk back to me. This will encourage the child not to talk back. If a child is coming home late from school you might say this, “you can’t play with friends or have friends over until for five days you come home on time from school.”
This is different than saying or insisting the child wait for a time, such as you can’t have friends over for five days. This motivates the child to correct his own behavior. The advantage of that is that your child will get used to doing the proper action. So you will be using consequences to correct the behavior rather than just punish the behavior. This is a great way in which you can get a behavior change from your child or teenager.
