These illustrations are based on A Parents' Guide to Child Discipline, an instructional book by Rudolph Dreykurs M.D. and Loren Grey Ph.D. They emphasize a “hands-off” approach, which has been proven to be most effective when dealing with conflicts due to poor behavior, lack of responsibility, and other miscellaneous issues. The authors stress four important general rules:
- All conflicts must be solved through mutual respect, except fighting or giving in, which require a logical alternative.
- Pinpoint the real issue, underneath arguments, unfair treatment, insults.
- Conflict can only be resolved through agreement.
- Resolution must involve a shared responsibility in decision-making and the participation of those involved are REQUIRED to solve a conflict. Cooperation has to be won (not demanded).
More Information About Punishment and Logical or Natural Consequences
Punishment is the old way in which parents raised their children. As a result many of today’s children are still exposed to this brand of parenting. Punishment involves imposing penalties on those who break the rules or do not attend to their responsibilities. It is retaliatory rather than corrective and serves to force rather than engage the cooperation of children. The result is often clever deceptions on the part of the child, training them to work around rules, viewing parents as powerful dictators.
When parents give up attempting to dominate their children and seek to also avoid the pitfalls of permissive over-protectiveness, regarding how to make good decisions, they will find the concepts of democratic parenting very useful.
Punishment involving scolding or spankings do not effectively teach children to obey rules, but work to motivate the child to get even or to find some way around them. Democratic parenting seeks to gain the cooperation of the child by allowing them to make choices in regard to dealing with rules by being held accountable for making wrong behavioral decisions. When the child makes a wrong choice, the parent takes action as opposed to talking, punishing or letting such behavior go unattended. Talking only educates the child on how to evade responsibility; punishment only builds resentment and permissiveness through over-protection yields only feelings of inadequacy.
Taking action, however, allows the child to make proper decisions through experiential means. When a child is raised and exposed to logical or natural consequences, the child learns to do the right thing, through a fair and respectful educational experience. This is where misbehaviors are simply recognized as mistakes rather than labeling the child as being “bad.” Exposing the child to having to deal with the consequences of their mistaken choices, educates the child into making better behavioral choices. When such actions occur the parent can stand by as a friend because the child does not feel personally defeated.
The principle at play involves the fact that no child will willingly do what the child believes is harmful to themselves. The reason behind why children do so many things which are harmful is that they at those times believe mistakenly that a particular behavior is the best way to get what they desire. If a child trips going down steps or breaks a toy out of carelessness, the child quickly learns to be more careful and to avoid such failures and to give sufficient attention to avoiding causing such an outcome.
Learning the connection between proper behaviors through experiential means is a natural form of conditioning that teaches personal responsibility. Logical and natural consequences allow the child to experience the unpleasant results of their own actions, but the result is more or less arranged by the parent. Such exposure to behavioral mistakes can be annoying to the child, but remain unharmful. In fact, being thus exposed to a logical or natural consequence serves to allow children to develop improved decision making skills to serve their best interests.
Logical consequences is where parents in a friendly manner offer the child a free will choice regarding their behavior and impose a logical consequence should the child fail to make the proper choice. An example of such could take place as follows; let’s say that a parent wishes to teach the children to pick up their toys after play. Should the child choose to ignore such a task the parent could take action rather than scold or bribe the child. This can be accomplished by the parent picking up the toys and placing them in an off-limit box. The parent could then charge the child a fee, paid out of their allowance, for return of the item. The child will appreciate the connection between doing the task requested and of placing the mother in their service. This approach instinctively will result in the child making a better choice.
Natural consequences simply involve allowing the child to deal with the way life really works. When they make errors in behavior they will then have to deal with what happens naturally. An example of such a situation could be applied if a child were to step into a mud puddle and got their shoes wet. The parent could choose not to scold the child, but when the child seeks to go out again and their shoes are not yet dry, explain that they could not because their shoes are still wet. Such a decision simply makes sense and should simply be conveyed in a friendly matter of fact way, like, “I am sorry, but your shoes are still wet.” The child will understand and have learned to watch out for puddles.
It is important to understand that the application of these methods are not punishment but that the consequences of inappropriate choices. Such consequences should be imposed in a friendly voice and the ACTION taken happens in a matter of fact manner.
In an effort to better capture the flavor and mission that parents need to understand while applying natural and logical consequences, I will share an informative quote found in the literature. This gem appeared in a book titled, A Family of Value, written by John Rosemond.
Grandma's advice reflected a body of traditional understandings that had been implicit to the rearing of American children since before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. These understandings constituted America's child-rearing model, or paradigm. According to that paradigm, a parent's primary responsibility was seeing to it that his or her children were endowed with those traits of character that constituted good citizenship: specifically, respect for persons in positions of legitimate authority; a willingness to accept responsibility for one's own social behavior as well as for assignment from authority figures, and resourcefulness, a hang-in-there, tough-it-out, try-and-try-again attitude toward the many challenges of life. Respect, responsibility, resourcefulness: I refer to these timeless values as the "Three Rs" of child rearing.
The teaching of these values began at home. Respect was developed first towards one's parents, whose responsibility it was to command (not demand) it by being authoritative models and directors of proper moral behavior. Having been successfully "rooted," respect extended outward to include other authoritative figures--teachers, police, lawmakers, employers--then further still to include every honest, law-abiding person regardless of background or station in life. Finally, this respect would come full circle back to the child, now perhaps in his or her late adolescence, as a relatively mature sense of self-respect. It is, after all, a scriptural truth that in order to achieve respect for self, one must first give respect away, not selectively, but universally. To "love thyself" you must first "love thy neighbor" and "love thy God". In the final analysis, then, self-respect is something earned, not something that can be either learned or given.
Responsibility was learned through the doing of chores in and around the home. These acts were to be selfless; in other words, they were not compensated with money. The child was to do them because, and only because, he was a member of the family. As such, he shared in the family's work as well as its bounty. Through the doing of chores, the child learned the value of contribution, a prime tenet of good citizenship. The child's contributions to the family uplifted not only his own values within the family, but also the value of the family to him. This sharing, this mutuality of value, bonded the child to the values that defined the family, thus forming A Family of Value.
Resourcefulness--the ability to do a lot with relatively little--was neither earned nor learned, but rather brought forth. It is, after all, every child's nature to be resourceful. It is not human nature to be respectful or responsible, but resourcefulness is a different matter. To bring forth the resourcefulness of a child, parents of not so long ago provided the child with everything he needed along with a small--very small, in most cases--amount of what he wanted. In short, they said "no" more often than they said "yes". Thus "creatively deprived," the child had to learn to solve problems on his own. He had to do his own homework, occupy himself, solve his own social conflicts, and so on. He had to invent solutions to problems in these areas because adults, for the most part, would not solve those problems for him. Adults wanted the child to learn to "stand on his own two feet"; therefore, they were quite conservative when it came to letting him stand on theirs.