The magic of logical consequences

The other day my children decided to play the game "Tangled" in J and O's room. For Christmas M received a Tangled wig so they play this make believe game a lot. Well in the movie Rapunzel paints all over her walls because she can't leave the tower so what else is she to do, right? Can you tell where this story is going? So while they are playing "Tangled" the kids have this brilliant idea to color all over the walls in J's room!

After the walls are beautifully decorated, my husband walks into the room to check on the kiddos and sees all the crayon on the walls and when he asks them who was responsible the older two point to O and said he did it. Of course they blamed the 2 year old! My husband takes them at face value and starts disciplining O while M and J sit by and watch. I have yet to see the room and am thinking it is just a little bit of coloring . . .

While we are eating dinner J then tells us that he has to be honest and says that he also colored on the wall. M then fesses up as well. I am curious now about the coloring so I go back and look and it is blatantly obvious that it was not the 2 yr old! Those stars are just a little too perfect, the word welcome on the door . . . I mean really the 2 yr old can't even draw a circle on purpose! Not only did I see who was responsible I was shocked at how much they colored on the wall, the doors, the dresser, and even the ceiling! I asked my husband if he actually looked at the coloring because then he would have known exactly who did it! We expressed to our children that we were very disappointed in them and that they would no longer be allowed to play in their rooms or have any art supplies anywhere but the kitchen.

M's a people pleaser BIG TIME and all I had to tell her was that I was disappointed and she was devastated where as the boys just thought it was fun. So I knew I needed a discipline for them to really understand that what they did was wrong. Well every Saturday we have a family fun day where we take our kids out for some fun activities and they have really come to look forward to this special time on Saturdays. So I decided that for family fun day the kids would have to scrub the crayons off of the wall, which is next to impossible with just soap and water.

Yesterday was the big day and when the kids woke up they came running in to our room and were anxious to find out what we were going to do for family fun day! I told them I had a big surprise for them and that they would find out after breakfast. While they were eating I started filling up a bowl with some dish soap and water and got out 3 washcloths. M is quick and the minute she saw what I was doing said, "Oh great we have to clean the crayon off the walls!" I was a little proud at that moment that she knew what the consequence was going to be, we do a lot of logical consequences at our house.

After breakfast I gathered the kids into J and O's room and handed them each a washcloth and told them that before we could have fun they had to get the crayon off the walls. In the beginning they thought it would be great fun, but after ten minutes of scrubbing the same spot and not having that crayon budge one bit they started getting frustrated. I left them to the cleaning while I ran to Walmart to pick up some magic erasers, because that is really the best and easiest way to get crayons off the walls. When I came back my husband told me that the kids were extremely frustrated and were repeatedly vowing that they would NEVER color on a wall again. After I gave them the magic erasers and worked with them the crayon was completely gone in fifteen minutes and we were able to have a fun family day.

I loved that I decided to not give them the easy way to clean it first, but instead had them struggle and work hard with no results. This way they learned that while it is fun to color on the walls it is not fun to clean up those walls and therefore are less likely to make that choice again.

J is so angry

J is my difficult child. He didn't talk until he was 3 years old and since then he has a hard time expressing himself and M and O do not always listen to his words so he physically attacks them. I do not believe in spanking my kids and literally the only times I have ever spanked was because one of my children were putting the other child in danger - for example one time M pushed J under the water in the bath when he was a baby and without thinking I smacked her while getting J out of danger. So last night J got mad at O and was suffocating him and then tonight M didn't play the way he wanted so he choked her so he got a spanking tonight and I yelled at him pretty good and then I thought well that was genius Kim, I don't want him to hurt others when he gets upset but when I got upset I hurt him. So I started thinking about what has been going on and how I can help him resolve this issue. He has never hurt another kid outside of our family ever and I doubt he ever will, but that is not a risk I am willing to take.

After doing some serious reflecting I realized that from the time J woke up this morning until he went to bed I don't think I spent more than ten minutes focused solely on him all day, he watched TV, he played video games, he went to school, and then he came home and watched more tv and then he hurt M and then we went to a friends house and he played with friends until it was time for bed. Looking back on yesterday it was similar minus the playing with friends part and I did spend more time with him but still not a lot and I honestly feel like his aggression is a cry for attention and he feels like he isn't being listened to so here is my plan:

1. I am removing all toys from the kids bedrooms - I have noticed that it is when they are playing in their rooms unsupervised that he tends to be the most frustrated and does the most hurting, we have a playroom and so all toys are going to be in the playroom from now on and whatever doesn't fit in the playroom is getting put away for now.

2. I am banning technology! Television is nice but it is too easy for me to allow one tv show to turn in to three hours and right now we have a television with dvr in almost every room of the house so for now no more tv or video games or playing on the phone. I will wait until my kids are in school or asleep to get on the computer or watch my shows because I need to be an example to them. I will text but no more checking Facebook or blogs or forums that I hang out at all day. All of that will be done at night or while they are in school from now on.

3. I am going to spend more time one on one with J and play with them more and supervise their playing more. If this was going on in a classroom setting I would be doing a ton of observations where I note what is happening before, during and after so that is what I am going to do at home - I am going to observe and then take what I observe and teach all of my kids better ways to handle situations that come up.

4. T and I are both going to work harder at controlling our own anger. This is not easily accomplished right now since T and I are going through some pretty rough stuff as a couple and I think it bleeds over into our parenting of our kids, plus I haven't had a solid 5 hours of sleep in who knows how long so that is wearing on me and I have less patience with my kids - but it is not my children's fault for any of those things so it is my responsibility to not take it out on them.

5. I am going to talk to J more about how he is feeling - a lot of time we get angry because of cognitive distortions (that is a blog post in and of itself) so I am going to figure out what cognitive distortions he is feeling and help him redirect his way of thinking.

Some of you might be thinking that this is a little drastic and a lot of work (my hubby said it was unrealistic) but you know what I can guarantee if I do these things every day that within a month at the most J will be a completely different kid. I firmly believe that when you choose to have kids you choose to sacrifice your time and wants and desires for their sakes and waiting to teach him how to control his emotions is only going to make things worse so it is time for me to put my life on hold a bit and focus more on him and his needs. I will keep you updated on how things progress!

Life Happens sometimes

Wow life sure has been busy over here, so busy in fact that I just realized today that I had not thought about or typed on this blog in a week! I try not to go too long between posts, however this week was M's dance concert so we had dress rehearsal at her studio on Monday, then technical rehearsal on Thursday, dress rehearsal on Friday and Concert on Saturday - thankfully J was done with basketball so I didn't have to worry about getting him to practice or games. I love having my kids in extracurricular activities BUT I am also extremely grateful that we don't have anything until September and then I am going to try to put J and M into the same gymnastics class and not mention the word t-ball or basketball to J and hopefully then life won't be too hectic! On top of that life with a 4 month old who has RSV has definitely made life a bit harder because we are doing breathing treatments for thirty minutes at a time several times a day. My sister in law is sending us some essential oils to try and I am hoping they work to clear up her cough and congestion because it is really bad and she coughs so hard she wakes herself up at night so I'm not getting a lot of sleep. And that is what life as a parent is about sometimes, busy!

So on to a parenting experience for you:

This morning we were getting ready for church and J accidentally knocked over my purse and a bag of Wheat Thins fell out of my purse. He was so excited and showed me, I told them that they were not to be eaten and to put them back in my purse while we finish getting ready for church. I expect my children to obey me so I then left the room and gave N a bath for church. After bathing her I heard the kids playing in a way that sounded like they needed to be checked on (you know the sound) so I found them hiding in my bathroom with their hands behind their backs and something in their mouth. I told them to show me their hands and when they did I saw that they had gotten into the Wheat Thins. So I said, "I guess since you guys chose to eat my snack out of my purse without my permission you don't need snacks at church today." Then I walked away from the sounds of utter outrage! My kids came chasing after me and were begging for one more chance to please show me that they could listen and I sad, "I already gave you a chance when I told you to put them back in my purse and not eat them, since you chose to eat them now I will not be bringing any snacks to church. You may have snacks next week as long as you don't make the same choice again." So M thinking she is smart says, "Well we are just going to beg the whole time until you give in." My response to that was, "That's fine with me, I am the queen of ignoring!" They then proceeded to beg, scream, plead, throw themselves at my feet and I proceeded to ignore them completely - face and all - while I finished getting everything ready to eat. After a few minutes M says to J and O, "She really is the queen of ignoring" and they stopped their attempts at changing my minds and guess what they survived the whole 3 hours of church without one snack! Well O had snacks in nursery but you know what I mean. And I can guarantee that they won't be sneaking things out of my purse again. That ladies and gents is how you give logical consequences and tantrums.Any questions?

from "I hate" to "I love"

In case you don't know this my family is very religious. We go to the LDS church and I serve in the primary (kids 18 months to 12 yrs old) presidency and my husband is the Elder's Quorum president (men over 18). We go to church every Sunday unless we are sick, we have family home evening after church every Sunday, we pray for every meal and at bed time and we also read our scriptures before bed. I am not telling you this to brag or to say look at me but simply to give you a picture of how our family functions in relation to teaching our children about religion.

If you have been reading this blog you know that J, my almost 5 yr old, is my difficult child and has been from birth. In our church the children begin going to nursery at 18 months - which every parent can't wait for because it means you can actually hear a lesson every once in a while in church! Well when J started going to nursery he would scream like he was dying and physically attack the nursery leaders for about 10 minutes straight then he would calm down and play. We had an amazing nursery leader who let me know that if she couldn't handle him she would gladly bring him to me and she never did. It took until he was 2 1/2 yrs old to finally walk into nursery without screaming and the reason for that was because I did the number one thing parents should never do . . . I BRIBED HIM! I told him that if he walked into nursery without crying and without attacking the teachers he would be able to pick out the movie we watched that night but if he cried or hurt the teachers I would let M pick out the movie. He was old enough at the time to start not liking the "girl movies" i.e. the princess movies so this worked wonders!

One day out of the blue he told my husband and I that he hates church and he hates Jesus - he was 3 at the time. I was shocked! What 3 yr old hates Jesus? I had never met one and I was very worried. I know how important the early years are for children and I didn't want him to hate church as a child because I knew it would only get worse the older he became. So my husband and I talked about it and we both agreed that the last thing we wanted to do was to force the church on him and try to force him to love the Savior. We went about this by not overreacting every time he told us he hated church or Jesus, we just said that's o.k. or ignored it a lot of times. He would refuse to pray but we did require him to kneel with our family to show respect. We took him to church every Sunday because as a family we attend church and as long as he lives under our roof he will attend church. Then one day I asked him why he hated Jesus so much. I was humbled by his answer, he told me, "I hate Jesus because I don't want to have to die on the cross like He did." At church the kids learn about how the Savior died for us and he took that to mean that we all had to die like the Savior and that scared him. We talked to him about how Jesus died for us so we don't have to die like he did. I didn't go too much into death and resurrection because he was only 3. From that moment on he started to begin to like Jesus a little more, it wasn't an immediate change but gradually over the next two years he has come to the decision on his own that he loves Jesus and the church and the scriptures. He is now the one to remind me about saying bedtime prayers, and about reading our scriptures and he says some of the most humbling and amazing prayers! In fact tonight we went to Sonic for dinner and I bought the kids a cherry slush and asked them to add real cherries, when we got home and he saw that they gave him 3 cherries he immediately told me that he had to say the prayer for dinner and in his prayer he thanked Heavenly Father not only for the dinner but that we were able to go to Sonic for dinner and he thanked him for his "3 cherries in his slurpee." He will take the time to thank Heavenly Father for everything he did that day, anything that he received from anyone, and for each person in our family without being coached on what to say. The other night he also got scared in the middle of the night and came running into our room crying. When I asked him why he was so scared he told me it was because he couldn't see his Jesus statue. He told me that when he can see Jesus in his room he isn't scared! What faith and what love all from a child who 2 years ago HATED everything to do with that.

So how does this apply to you? From watching him grow over the years I have learned the value of three things. The first is to be an example to your children. I could have told him that the church was good and that he had to love the Savior and never did anything myself to show him that I loved the church and the Savior. Instead I made sure he knew I felt that way by living the Gospel. The second is the importance of exposing things to children over and over and over until they like something. The third is patience and consistency, I guess that is four - but I knew that J wasn't going to change his mind overnight so I had to be patient and trust that I knew I was doing the right thing and that eventually he would figure it out for himself! So let's say your child hates eating vegetables and literally refuses to eat them but you as a parent know that vegetables are healthy and that our bodies need those nutrients what can you do? The first thing is to be an example, make sure your kids see you eating the veggies and enjoying them and second put them on their plate every night for dinner and tell them they have to eat at least 5 peas to get dessert, and eventually over time they will eat their veggies without a fight and may even love them! Oh I also learned one more thing - don't make it a fight! I didn't fight with J about his feelings, instead I told him how I felt about his feelings, i.e. "I am sad to hear that you don't like church" and then told him what was expected of him, i.e. "we go to church every Sunday and even though you don't like it, you still have to go." So whatever trial you are struggling with hang in there, be patient, be an example, be consistent, be loving, and eventually your child will learn to love it.

How to give logical Consequences

Ok now that you understand what a logical consequence is I am going to explain to you the best way to give a logical consequences. The first thing to remember is that you are not trying to punish your kid, but are teaching them to accept responsibility for their actions. This is key because when our goal is to punish our kids we tend to have the attitude of "I'll show them whose boss" and when we look at it as a way of teaching we are kinder, and tend to be more respectful to our kids and for me I find it easier to come up with consequences when I am using it as a teaching moment.

The next thing that is key is to be respectful, when you are yelling the consequence at your kid they are probably feeling unloved and like their opinion doesn't matter. I am far from perfect, but I try really hard to not yell at my kids - but I am the first to admit that when I am really frustrated I do yell but you will also always see me apologize to my kids for yelling at them and telling them that it is my fault I yelled not theirs.

On that note it is all about the approach and the way you phrase a logical consequence that makes all the difference. Take a look at the two different approaches to the following misbehavior.

Misbehavior: Jill leaves her toys lying all around the house and doesn't pick them up.
Approach 1: Mom says "Jill, pick up these toys right now or they are going in the garage!"
Approach 2: "Jill, you can either pick up your toys yourself or else I am going to pick them up and put them in the garage. It's up to you."

Which approach do you think is the most effective way to give a logical consequence - the second one! You always want to use either/or choices or when/then choices because it puts all of the power in the kids hands, which is where we want it to be! An example of a when/then choice would be: Johnny wants to play outside but his room is a mess so you say: "when your room is clean then you can go outside and play."

We also want to involve our kids in choosing the consequences as often as possible. My in-laws did a form of this when their kids were growing up and it made for some pretty hilarious stories. Here are a few of them that you might find amusing as well:
1. My sister in law said that if she didn't clean her room her mom could poor water on her head. Some friends of hers were going to the mall and she wanted to go, even though her room wasn't clean, and as she was walking out to the car her mom came running out with a pitcher of water and dumped it on her head in front of her friends - she then chose to clean her room.
2. My brother in law said that if he didn't clean the bathroom he would sleep in the bathtub, he didn't clean the bathroom so to the bathtub he went to sleep!

Now those aren't really what a professional would call "logical consequences" but they worked for that family, and that is what matters most. None of us have cookie cutter lives and what works for my family might not work for yours, the important thing is that you find a way that does work and teaches responsibility not punishes!

Which brings me to the next step - ONLY GIVE A CHOICE YOU CAN LIVE WITH! It doesn't do you any good to punish yourself with the consequence given to a kid. I have a friend who always threatens their kid "either do this or you don't get to go . . . " and all that does is punish both a kid and a parent because now the parent doesn't get to go either! If you can't live with a messy house don't give them the consequence to not clean up after them, if you can't handle your kids going to bed without dinner don't give them that as a consequence.

Finally make sure you always follow through because your kids are going to test you! State the consequence one time and then if they choose not to do what is expected dish out the consequence. Kids will test you to see what you are going to do all the time, they want to know how much they can get away with so if you tell them that when their room is clean they can go outside and play, but you get tired of them crying about cleaning their room so you cave and say fine go play outside - well guess what next time they are definitely not going to clean their room. Now on the other hand if you say, I know you don't want to clean and that's o.k. it just means you can't go outside then depending on how badly they want to play outside will determine how quickly their room gets cleaned. I always reinforce to them when giving their consequence that they chose it, not me and that I am not the bad guy and hopefully the next time they will make a different choice. In this way I am not the bad guy, I am just the enforcer of rules.

Natural and Logical Consequences

This morning when I woke up I looked at the clock and saw that it was 8:00 and I thought wow my kids must be playing so nicely since they let me sleep in so long - usually I am being woken up at 6:30 with demands of food, tv, diaper changes, cuddles, etc. So I come out of my room and the first thing you see when you turn the corner from my room is our playroom which is still spotless so I am really impressed with how well behaved my kids have been this morning, then I turned the corner again and this is what I see . . .


At this moment I just stood there and thought "Oh wow! Huh, not what I expected" What you don't know by seeing this is that there was a tie on the doors of the game cabinet to keep this mischievous 2 yr old out of the game cabinet. What I didn't know was that he could bypass that tie and still manage to get into the games and puzzles, and when I say get into I actually mean dump the games everywhere! This mess is actually a lot bigger than the picture shows because there were literally games and puzzles strewn across my entire living room.

At this point I have a couple options as a parent in regards to disciplining O for the huge mess he made. 1. I can spank and yell at him and really show him who is boss (while also teaching him that when people do things we don't like it is o.k. for us to hit and yell at them and encourage him to feel unloved) 2. I can have the attitude of saying well he is 2 and that's what 2 yr olds do so I will just send him off to play and clean it up myself (which teaches him to not take responsibilities for his actions and that he can make as big of a mess as he wants and mommy will just clean up after himself) or 3. I can come up with a consequence that fits the crime and will teach him responsibility, still feel loved and will last him a lifetime. I obviously chose option 3, which is to have O help clean up the mess he made and not be allowed to play until the entire mess is cleaned up.

If you were ever to spend a day with me at my house you would see the use of a lot of what "experts" call natural and logical consequences being used. I do not believe in time-outs as mentioned in a previous post and I do not believe in the use of physical discipline (spanking, slapping, kicking, etc. etc.) Sure those methods work to instill fear in children and teach them to obey or else . . . but why not teach them to make good choices because that is what is the right thing to do and also teach them that when they make bad choices there are consequences that make sense and that they can understand. There are a ton of great parenting books out there that explains this concept and one of them is called "Parenting with Love & Logic" by Foster Cline and Jim Fay and they have an amazing website full of helpful advice that you can check out here.

The basics of logical and natural consequences are simple to understand but not always easy to come up with. My sister in law told me once that she has a lot of friends who call themselves love and logic dropouts and I think the main reason for that is that this is a hard way to be a parent - not hard in the sense that it is impossible, but in a sense that you as a parent HAVE to THINK beyond the reach of your arm (or wooden spoon for my wooden spoon motivators out there) and be involved as a parent. How hard is it really to send a kid to time out? Not very, sure it might take up a few minutes of your time to make sure the child stays there and you have a nice little chit chat afterwards about why they are in time out and then it is done. How hard is it to spank a kid, actually really easy just reach out your arm and swat them until all of your anger is relinquished and they are properly demoralized and you can get right back to whatever it was you were doing before the child interrupted you with their misbehaviors. But coming up with consequences that fit the crime are a lot harder but also a lot more effective in teaching kids how to properly behave. So what do I mean when I say logical and natural consequences?

According to Active Parenting by Michael H. Popkin (by the way I LOVE this book) a good definition of logical consequences is: "discipline that is logically connected to a misbehavior and applied by an authority to influence a child to behave within the limits of the situation." Now you might be saying, huh? to that definition but basically when you think of logical consequences think of the Law of Moses - you stole something so they cut off your hand, you lied they cut out your tongue - only not as severe as cutting off our child's limbs!

Here are some examples of logical consequences:
Children are arguing over what to watch on tv so no one gets to watch TV
Child makes huge mess in living room, child cleans up huge mess in living room
Child refuses to clean up toys, child's toys get taken away until they can show that they can clean up their toys
Child hits brother, child has to help brother feel better
Child refuses to eat what is made for dinner, child doesn't get to eat dessert and may possibly go to bed hungry.

The main idea is to make sure it fits what they did wrong, if they aren't eating dinner what sense does it make that their punishment is to go to the room for the rest of the night? It makes more sense to say o.k. you don't get to eat anything else later. I don't believe in making a child sit at the dinner table all night either when I am done eating my dinner my kids may also get down from the table and the food gets put away and if they ask for a snack later all I have to say is "did you eat your dinner?" and if the answer is yes then they can have a snack, if the answer is no then they can't have a snack but I can reheat their dinner for them at my earliest convenience. Does this make sense to you? Do you have any questions? I know I also mentioned Natural consequences but this post is already long so I am going to save that for another post. But please leave your thoughts on logical consequences, and it would be great if you put examples of what logical consequences you use in your house if you use them!