Rules and consequences at home

What rules and consequences do you use at your home? What is your family's management plan? Do you follow that plan consistently?

Here is a simple plan that works for us. It is not my invention, but a combination of many things that I've seen work.

Rules:
We have two rules in our household that work for just about everything. They are:

1. Be kind.
2. Follow directions quickly

Rules are only effective if they are taught. What does it mean to be kind at the dinner table? You actually need to pretend to be one of your children and model what being kind looks like. What does not being kind look like at the dinner table. Then, you should model examples of things your children do that are not kind. You do all of this outside of the dinner time.

Then, you should ask your child to show you what being kind does and does not look like. (My nine year old daughter suggested that I write down this step. She said we normally do this and I had forgotten to include it in the post! She also wants you to know this is what we actually do in our home.)

If you have not taught exactly what you expect in a specific situation, it is not fair to you or your child to enforce a consequence for that behavior yet. Yes, keep your child safe, but don't give them a consequence unless they know they are breaking a rule.

One of the biggest mistakes we make as adults is believing that a child knows something because we talked about it.

Consequences

Time 1 the rule is broken - Warning
Time 2 a rule is broken - That's 2. OR I hold up the number 2.
Time 3 a rule is broken - Time out till child is calm + 3-5 minutes
If the time out is not taken as taught - After child is calm, child does an easy chore around house. (My 9 year old daughter thought you might like an example of a chore. One we do is cleaning the baseboard walls with a dusting cloth or sponge.)

Here are some things that do not work in the long run: They give you short term results at the consequence of longer term stress for you and your family.

  • Threatening - if you do that one more time you are going to have a time out.
  • Lecture - I told you a million times you are not supposed to  . . . 
  • Emotional reasoning - I'm so disappointed you . . . 
  • Should reasoning - You should know better than to . . . 
  • Bribing - If you do ____ (after the child has already started to resist ___) then I'll let give you ___. 

Does that mean I never do these things? Of course not! I'm not perfect. And my children have lived and survived. They are resilient! But, it is better to stick with your plan.

That being said, many people will tell you - have a plan and stick to it no matter what. As the mother of a child with a specific learning disability that affects communication, my spouse and I have had to make adaptations. What might work for 90% or more of children might not work for my youngest who has significantly slower processing speed than normal and who gets less access to understanding language the more upset she feels or the people around her feel.

So, adapt this for your family. If you like this idea, you can make it work for your own family.

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