Consequence Parenting Is A Just-In-Time Quality Improvement Program For Children

Consequence Parenting is the ability to provide clear cause-and-effect guidance to your children in the here and now of everyday living.

Consequence Parenting is to show your children the natural consequences of their attitudes and actions, in real time, so your children can form healthy patterns of happy living as they connect proper actions with happy outcomes, and harmful actions with unhappy outcomes.

Disciplining Children is to teach them what works well and what doesn’t work well in the formation of a happy life. I use the word formation intentionally here, for as parents we are helping our children to form the good habits that will help them to be good children now and responsible adults later that they are meant to be.

We will return to this theme a little later.

Consequence Parenting is to provide a negative outcome to our Fighting Children, as closely in time to the negative event as possible, to help our children see that negative behaviors bring about negative outcomes.

Creatively providing a cause-and-effect lesson just at the moment a childhood action occurs will ensure that lesson is better taught and better remembered by your children. Parents need to be on the lookout for these effective teaching moments throughout their children’s busy days.

As parents we must help our children to instinctively realize that good begets good, and bad begets bad.

It is our Parenting Style as much as any other factor, especially in a child’s early years, that determines how our children behave and view the world around them.

If you don’t like the results of your parenting efforts as seen in the lives of your children, then you may need to change your parenting style, your approach, your level of commitment and the amount of time you spend on your parenting efforts to change the results to something you prefer better.

There is one truth that is for certain: You cannot expect to do exactly the same things you have always done and hope to get a different result than what you have always gotten.

Putting it another way (one that our young children would appreciate): If you want a different cookie, you must change the recipe you are using.

The same truth holds true of parenting and of parenting results.

Consequence Parenting is to understand that the results you see in the lives of your children are a direct result of your own parenting efforts (or lack thereof).

Spinner Of Clay - © Dean Croshere

Our children come into this world as a soft, pliable lump of human clay.

We as parents have the awesome privilege and responsibility of having a direct hand in the forming and development of another human soul. We help to form and mold our children by what we teach them and how we teach them.

Our parenting influence leaves a lasting impression in the clay of our children’s lives.

Consequence Parenting is to realize that children are more teachable while they are still young and impressionable, just like it is easier to shape a clay pot when they clay is soft, new, and impressionable.

Once the clay of our children’s lives starts to harden, then their attitudes, beliefs, and actions all start to become harder also. Repeated actions over days and months and years leads to habits that will either help or hurt, make or break our children and their chances to live successful and happy lives.

Our Children’s Behaviors are a result of the examples we give our children by the way we live, as well as a manifestation of how much care and effort we put into the parenting process.

And remember, our children start out as blank sheets of paper (as it were) just waiting for us as parents to start the impress process upon them which will help them become the people they will one day become.

As stated above (yet it bears repeating – as all important ideas do), it is easier to help mold a young and changeable child in his or her early years than it is to try and effect major changes in your children’s actions and attitudes once you are Parenting Teenagers.

Parents always have the ability to communicate and “get through” to their children, but it gets that much harder the older your children are, and the later you wait to start this all-important process.

Wait too long and some chances are lost to us forever.

Wise parents will act quickly to teach children both positive and negative cause-and-effect relationships, and how their actions will either help or hurt them now and later.

Consequence Parenting is to point out these cause-and-effect relationships to your children early and often, until they become an ingrained and integral part of who your children are.

Imagine all of the bad choices that will be avoided if your children learn early that Action A will lead to Outcome B. Helping your children think in this manner will be giving your children a gift that will last them a lifetime.

Just as it is easier to keep a garden free of weeds if you do a little weeding every day, instead of waiting until the weeds have overrun your lovely garden spot, so helping our children make correct choices and avoid negative habits and behaviors is easier and more effective if done a little bit every day.

If you neglect a garden you get a rotten garden.

If a parent neglects a child, chances are high that you will get a rotten child. (The sad part of this scenario is the child will pay for the parent’s neglect. Oh the poor, unfortunate child who isn’t benefited from proper and loving and timely parenting.)

Parents don’t have to move mountains daily to be good parents, but if you can interact with your children daily in a positive and teachable way, all of those tiny and natural interactions will lead to an avalanche of positive parenting results.

So a daily “Well done my child”, or the needed “Why would you want to do that? Let me tell you why that isn’t a good idea . . .” is the best insurance that Consequence Parenting will lead to happy and healthy children and families, as naturally and seamlessly as life itself.

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