DISCIPLINE THROUGH CONSEQUENCES
Discipline Through Consequences
Effectively disciplining teens – or children of any age – relies heavily on one parenting skill: Consistently using positive consequences to reward and reinforce good behaviors and using negative consequences to correct and decrease misbehaviors.
How does this apply to where teens are and what they want and need? Well, broadly speaking, teens want more freedom. And parents hold the key to that freedom and all the privileges that go with it.
Some people misunderstand how using consequences changes kids’ behaviors. Isn’t it a bribe if you give a teen something for doing what you want him or her to do? The answer is yes, but only if you provide the reward before the desired behavior happens. Consequences are given AFTER a teen uses a behavior you want to see or refrains from using a behavior you don’t want to see. It’s an “if… then” arrangement: “If you clean your room when I ask you to, then you can go out with your friends Friday night.”
And for the most part, the consequences and privileges you can use are free. You don’t have to go out and buy your teen a new video game or a new pair of jeans every time he or she uses positive behavior. You simply create a batch of positive (and negative) consequences your teen earns, depending on his or her behavior.
For example, when your son brings home an impressive report card, he gets to stay out an extra half hour on the weekend. If your daughter cleans her room without prompting, she gets an extra half hour of computer time to chat with her friends after supper.
From TV time to sleeping in on weekend mornings, the only limit on the positive consequences you can use is your imagination.
The flip side of this, of course, is taking away privileges as a consequence for negative behavior. Which means that if your son bombs a test, he should lose video game privileges for a reasonable amount of time.
When you have to give negative consequences, do it without emotion or anger. Remember the last time you got a speeding ticket? The officer who pulled you over wasn't emotional. He didn't yell at you. Instead, he was very matter of fact. He told you what you did wrong and wrote you a ticket. This is a great model for disciplining teenagers. A dispassionate delivery helps avoid situations where getting angry or raising your voice takes away from the effectiveness of your discipline or damages your relationship with your teenager.
Keep in mind that while you may deliver discipline dispassionately, your teen may not respond in a similar manner. After all, it's natural to be upset when you’re on the receiving end of discipline. That being said, if your teen’s response escalates into being aggressive or noncompliant, stay calm and simply increase the consequence to address the additional negative behavior.
One more thing: Make a point of catching your teen being good. Looking for positive behaviors and giving positive consequences when they happen is one of the best ways to ensure your teen continues to use those behaviors and they become the norm. Teaching social skills and modeling the behaviors are other ways to reinforce positive behaviors in your teen.
Teaching Activity
Develop a Consequence Menu
Setting clear expectations for your teen’s behavior and giving them a voice in the consequences (positive and negative) those behaviors can earn is a great way to make your consequences more effective. Here are some tips for working with your teen to create a mutually agreed on list of both positive behaviors and negative behaviors and the “teen appropriate” consequences that go with each one:
- Set expectations for your teen’s behavior you know they can meet. Make these expectations appropriate for your teen’s age and developmental level, and consistently enforce them.
- Work with your teen to come up with a list of positive and negative consequences for certain behaviors. That way, your teen knows exactly what will happen when he or she behaves a certain way.
- Make sure the “size” of a consequence – positive or negative – fits the behavior it goes with. For example, grounding your teen for three days because he take out the garbage when you asked would be too harsh of a negative consequence for that misbehavior; likewise, letting a teen stay out until midnight on a school night would too much of a positive consequence for completing that task.
Once you and your teen have completed the list, post it somewhere prominent so it can (refrigerator door, your teen’s bedroom door) serve as a daily reminder for both of you.
Social Skills
Accepting a Negative Consequence or Criticism
It may be easy for parents to give their teen negative consequences for inappropriate behaviors, but it’s not always easy for a teen to accept them. In fact, trying to address and correct a teen’s negative behavior through consequences can set off a whole new string of inappropriate behaviors, if the teen hasn’t learned the skill of accepting a negative consequence (or constructive criticism). Teaching your teen this skill ahead of time is the key to helping him or her understand that there is a cost to not following the rules or meeting expectations, and to making consequences effective in changing a teen’s behaviors for the better. Here are the steps:
- Look at the person. This shows you are paying attention.
- Say “Okay.” This shows you understand what the other person is saying.
- Don’t argue. Accepting a consequence without arguing shows you are being mature and that you can accept responsibility for your behavior.
- Follow through on whatever consequence you receive. This shows you are willing and able to learn from your mistakes, and will try to do better next time.