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Empower and Protect Your Child:The Power of Logical Consequences
by: Kelvin Gott

School is back in session, which, for many of our children, means that exposure to threats and intimidation instantly doubles or perhaps even triples. And that’s just from the educators.

“Get to class or time or else.” “Do your work or else.” “Remain seated on the bus or else.” “Be quiet or else.” “No eating or else.” “Stand up or else.” “Get in line or else.” to highlight some old favorites. And let’s not forget about the implied threats and the nonverbal intimidation – Good grades or else your life will be awful. Get a grip on your attitude or else. Only losers show up late, forget home work, talk back to teachers, daydream, fail to listen the first time. Negative vocal tone (sarcastic, harsh, disgusted, angry etc.), heavy impatient sighs, rolled eyes, isolation (teacher avoids contact and conversation thus conveying disdain). After a week or two like that, is it any wonder your weekend might get off to sloppy start?

What’s a dad to do? Many just say “Deal with it.” and pass on. This approach, while convenient and time saving, fails to insulate your child from the assault on his/her self concept and worse it allows you to miss out on a great relationship building opportunity. Other parents might swoop to the defense of their kids, confronting the heartless bureaucracy and demanding amends or verbally assaulting the perpetrators of these outrages to neighbors, friends, colleagues and perhaps even the children themselves. As satisfying as it might be, this too doesn’t do much for your child and might do a great deal of long term damage.

Consider an approach favored by the Love and Logic Institute of Jim Fay, Foster Cline and Charles Fay which has all sorts of great literature on this and other parenting topics. Remove the threats and punishments from your routine at home and replace them as often as possible with empathy and logical consequences. Empathy and logical consequences offer numerous benefits to child and parent alike while keeping your relationship in tact during what might be difficult moments.

Empathy – When your son or daughter goofs up, replace lecture, ranting and threat with empathetic responses like, “How sad for you.” “Bummer.” “I’ll bet that’s hard.” The Love and Logic Institute (www.loveandlogic.com) has a list of possible empathetic statements. Choose one that fits you and stay with it. Also, know that most empathy is conveyed non-verbally so some practice with tone of voice, volume, facial expression and other non-verbal cues is essential.

When you feel thoroughly rehearsed and little Sally gets home late for dinner, let her know how sad it is.

Empathy offers several key benefits for parent and child. First, when the child hears empathy in your voice, he/she may still become indignant but can no longer displace his/her frustration onto an angry adult. Second, when faced with an empathetic response, most kids start thinking about the trouble they have caused themselves and a thinking child is a wonderful thing. Third, empathy saves parent energy, strengthens self concept, and enhances long term parent/child relationships. It takes seconds to do, requires no ranting, raving, lecturing or begging, and allows your child to own his/her mistakes.

Logical Consequences – Truly a gift to kids as they ignite a decision making and problem solving process. This process is real world and by allowing a child to experience it parents send a huge non-verbal/covert message of trust – “This is tough, but I know you’re the kind of person who can handle it.” No words ever delivered by a father, no matter how eloquent, can have the powerful impact that one act of trust has. Additionally, logical consequences allow a child to work with a helpful friendly parent, to see an adult modeling problem solving, and to do his/her own judging. Try finding a more thoughtful gift at any price.

When you replace threats and warnings at home, you are insulating your children from their negative impact elsewhere. Kids who know that they are valued and trusted (lessons imprinted in their subconscious mind and in their self concept each time they endure a logical consequence) are strong enough handle the slings and arrows of outrageous bullying, learn from the experience, and move forward.

Below is a list of possible logical consequences to issues which commonly arise at home. Every home is different, every child is different and so you may need to tweak these or design some that are more appropriate for your personal needs.

Situation Consequence

Late for dinner - Get to eat at next meal

Won’t wear coat - Get to experience cold

Constant door slamming - Door to room gets removed
(wait ‘til she’s gone and really empathize when she gets home)

Won’t go to bed - Tired/uncomfortable next day (get ‘em up early –no naps)

Rude behavior - Adult won’t stay around

Talking back - Adult won’t listen (L&L has great one liners to help)

The key is to lead with empathy then bite the bullet and do the difficult thing; follow through. In each and every circumstance, it helps to remember that loving your child enough to set limits, though heart wrenching, provides him/her with tools to face the real world and is thus an act of true love.

So how does the entire process look? Sally is 30 minutes late for dinner. Lead with empathy when she arrives and notices the food has been put away.

“Oh, honey, dinner is over. This is so sad. What are you gonna’ do?”

Notice the first logical consequence here is that she is going to have to think for herself.

Sally, being a typical kid, replies, “I don’t know.”

Here’s a chance to be truly empathetic as you probably are sad that your child doesn’t know what to do. But, what are the logical consequences of missing dinner. Several leap to mind. Get your own dinner, pay some one to get you dinner, go without dinner.

So you say, very kindly, “It’s always hard not to know. Let me know if you figure something out or want help thinking of options.”

A second chance for her to think and this time you also send a covert message which screams, “I, YOUR FATHER, A MAGICAL PERSON IN YOUR LIFE, BELIEVE YOU ARE SMART AND RESOURCEFUL AND CAPABLE.”

Wait a minute, there are some major gaps here aren’t there? For example what if she decides to go hungry? That is a real world consequence of missing mealtime.

Ok, what if she decides that she likes eating alone and I want her to eat with me? Here’s a phrase, borrowed from Jim Fay.

“Oh, how sad, dinner is already over. Feel free to get here early for the next meal or to pay for any food you decide to eat right now.” Pretty logical eh? Food which I provide is free at dinner time but gets replaced at cost if it gets eaten later.

But what if she doesn’t have any money?

“Honey, will you be paying cash or using some of your toys as payment?” An IPOD might be good for a ham sandwich or two, don’t you think?

Don’t be surprised if Sally gets miffed. She has a limited frame of reference for dealing with the consequences of her actions. However she behaves, your reaction to Sally’s dilemma must always remain empathetic and must allow her to experience the consequences because when she does she is becoming confident and strong and real world ready.

Many parents talk about being unable to think of consequences that are logical on the spot (after all when upset we don’t do our best thinking.) In that case, the Love and Logic pros suggest delayed consequences which work like this.

“Oh Sally, how sad, I see you are late for dinner again. I’ve been worried and I need some time to think about what to do. I’ll get back to you when I have some ideas. Try not to worry about it right now.”

Now you can call a friend, listen to a Love and Logic CD or even email a consultant for advice. You’ve bought some time, modeled how thinking adults solve a problem and again provided your daughter with a real world experience void of the threats and warnings which so often assail kids today.

Foster Cline has created a sort of generic consequence that bears mention here just in case time passes and nothing logical comes to your mind. When Sally comes to see you for a ride to the mall, be sad and let the consequence drop.

“This is always sad honey, but I used my driving energy worrying about you when you were late for dinner yesterday. Don’t give up on me. Try me another time when I have more energy.”

No degrading threats, no demeaning warnings, just empathy and logical consequences, a Love and Logic formula preparing your child for life.

Kelvin Gott, has been an educator for more than 29 years and is a certified instructor in the techniques of Becoming a Love & Logic Parent. The father of four daughters is a regular Keynote Presenter for conferences, businesses, schools and leadership seminars around the Midwest. His presentations are always dynamic, humorous and thought provoking

For more about Raising Responsible Kids go to www.loveandlogic.com or contact the Kelvin Gott at kgott@d155.org