Free To Be A Joyful Mother

ADVANCED PLACEMENT – CONSEQUENCES

I.Natural Consequences
The idea of reaping what you sow. Let the natural consequences happen. We like natural consequences because we stay free to be empathetic. Be careful not to use this concept to give your child the guilties – let your yes be yes and your no be no. For example don’t say, “I’ll buy you that dress, just once again I’ll go without anything new for me.”

II.Imposing Consequences
This is an important exercise: Sit down and make a chart for EACH child based on these categories.
A. Things your child does not like to do.

B. Things your child likes to do that you can take away.

C. Things you do as favors for your child.
Examples: laundry, making lunches, ironing, driving to extra-curriculars…

D. Things that can be exchanged, like time, money, or energy.

E. See Consequences vs. Lecture Notes from the Fall for more details on this topic.

Personality Types:

Otter child – likes to have fun, the best consequence for an otter is to take away their fun. Your challenge as a parent is to find w hat that is – otters can usually make anything seem fun.

Golden Retriever – Compliant child, just wants to keep the peace and keep everyone happy. As a Golden Retriever parent, your biggest challenge will be staying consistent. You are great on empathy, but work hard at being consistent with your consequences.
Beaver – This is your perfectionist child. With this child because anything short of perfection is a failure to them, be careful to discipline with grace. Empathy is the MOST important things. Speak words of life over them as you discipline. For the beaver parent, you are great with consequences and empathy, but probably need to learn to let some things go or you’ll be consequenc-ing all over the place.

Lion – This child like the control and being in charge. Important with this child is remembering not to get into a verbal back and forth. Still bring consequences saying, “I love you too much to argue with you.” Getting into a verbal battle with this child will most likely result in them winning, because they are good at that. As a lion parent, you probably need to work most at your empathy – staying calm and delivering consequences with empathy.