By Genevieve Simperingham
Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent than the one derived from fear of punishment. ~ Gandhi
When requests, limits and boundaries are repeatedly asserted by a parent or teacher with the threat of enforced consequences, it tends to cause children to feel stressed and defensive and is no more effective in gaining genuine listening, calm communication and willing cooperation in the long run than it would be from another adult.
“If you don’t clean your room, I’ll take away your favourite toys/ devices for a week.”
“If you fight with your sister again, you won’t be allowed to have your friend come to play.”
“I don’t want you to…and if I catch you doing it, I’ll make you…/you won’t be allowed to…”
In a moment of frustration, it’s of course very tempting for parents to gain the cooperation they need by using either a carrot or a stick. And when it appears to actually work, parents can be unaware that there’s a big price that they’re paying on a daily basis, and the biggie is that this tends to lead to endless power struggles and hence a less cooperative child. To better get what’s happening for the child emotionally and the reactivity it creates, it helps to reflect on how we feel when someone aims to gain our cooperation through threats. It doesn’t feel very good. When a child carries the fear that their parent can threaten them with an unpleasant consequence, it creates a tense and emotionally insecure environment for children to live and learn in. This tension and consequent insecurity can greatly reduce a child’s drive to follow their parent’s guidance and greatly increase their tendency to be resistant or rebellious and reactive.
What’s the difference between imposing a consequence and a natural consequence?
Imposing consequences is often referred to as “logical consequences” or “natural consequences”, yet if the intention is to motivate using fear or shame, then it isn’t a natural consequence, the emotional impact makes it completely different. If a child forgets their lunch box, they may experience the natural consequence of becoming hungry or will need to ask for some food. If they grab the toy from the baby and the baby cries, they see their sibling’s upset. The child can clearly see that the consequence created was their own doing. Imposed consequences, on the other hand, cause a child to feel criticized and controlled.
So if a parent doesn’t impose a consequence when a child steals or lies or hits, how will they learn?
Imposed consequences are not necessary or helpful in helping children understand and respect other people’s boundaries. Imagine if the child was supported with kindness and love to sit and have a genuinely open conversation with the person they, for example, stole an item from, maybe a sibling or a relative. The parent reassures the child that “we can work this out”. The parent sits with the child as they hear how stealing the item affected the other person, perhaps they hear about the person’s attachment to the item or other ways that they were affected by the loss and the child is also given the chance to express their thoughts and feelings. If no punishment or solution is imposed, a child is much more likely to feel and express remorse, to freely make amends and will, in fact, gain much more satisfaction and confidence in making amends when it comes from their own free will.
In this second scenario something much more valuable would likely be learned from the situation. Hopefully the child’s thinking and sense of empathy would have been expanded to truly get the effects of stealing on another person. Something that often surprises parents when they facilitate this kind of conflict resolution is that the combination of the emotions stirred by the situation and the parent’s loving support often results in a child opening up about what’s been really bothering them that was previously all bottled up inside and resulting in them acting out.
Child’s behaviour results in an action which the child doesn’t like.
Sometimes it’s a grey area in that the parent needs to take action that will affect the child because of the child’s behaviour, like perhaps they need to leave the audience of a performance because the child is unable to be quiet enough. The parent can frame this as a punishment to the child; “We had to leave because you were so disruptive, why must you make life so difficult for everyone!” Or they can frame it as the natural consequence; “We’ve come outside because people around us couldn’t hear the performance because your voice was too loud and you weren’t staying in your seat. We can go back in if you an reassure me that you will sit quietly beside me or on my knee and only whisper. What would help you sit quietly do you think?”
As a natural consequence of eating healthy food, we feel better…
…When we eat junk, we don’t feel so good. When we meditate, we feel calmer, when we stay up too late, we feel tired and frazzled. Truly natural consequences are the direct results of our actions, which are much easier for us to learn from than consequences that someone else imposes with the intention of trying to make us learn.
Similarly, it’s well understood that it generally takes a person much longer to recover when a trauma occurred through an act of deliberate harm as opposed to incidents where no harm was intended. Children thrive when guided with love, rather than fear.
I hear a lot of questions from parents in my work, and “what’s wrong with imposing consequences?” is a very common one. Here’s a fairly typical question that was recently shared by a parent:
“How will they learn if there are no consequences? Just like in life, there are consequences to your actions. If you steal, you can go to jail or if you lie at work you might get fired. In school, if a kid fights with another kid, they get detention. I feel like if I don’t allow natural consequences my teenage son will never learn that there are consequences to his behaviour in the real world.”
It’s interesting that when asked this question, the focus is nearly always on the repercussions to the person crossing another person’s boundary. If a person steals, the real consequence that needs to be connected with to bring about change relates to how the person was affected by something being stolen from them. Maybe they felt shocked, sad, disappointed, there may have been a financial consequence for them, which may cause them stress and possibly have other knock on effects on their family. The adult sent to jail or the ten year old who is put in time out and grounded for a week may learn to avoid future punishment by either not stealing or getting better at not getting caught, but have they truly gained help in developing their social conscience and integrity?
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