June 18, 2024 • 37 mins
Episode Number: #26
Take the quiz to find our if your kid is Highly Sensitive
Description: In this episode of the Whole Parent Podcast, Jon delves into the concept of collaborative consequences, explaining why this method is a powerful tool for effective parenting, especially for highly sensitive children. As a strong advocate for the abolition of punishment in parenting, discusses how to differentiate between punishment and consequences and introduces the idea of working with children to set boundaries collaboratively. Through personal anecdotes and practical advice, Jon illustrates how this approach fosters a child's growth, understanding, and self-discipline.
Timestamps:
- 00:00 - Introduction to the Whole Parent Podcast and the highly sensitive kid quiz
- 02:24 - Definition and importance of collaborative consequences
- 03:53 - Difference between punishment and consequences
- 05:27 - Why punishment is ineffective
- 06:48 - Explanation of consequences and their role in teaching
- 07:29 - Steps to implement collaborative consequences
- 11:58 - The importance of seeking a child's input
- 13:44 - The significance of a child's buy-in in the discipline process
- 16:10 - Long-term goals of using collaborative consequences
- 17:37 - Personal example: Collaborative consequences for cleaning up messes
- 26:18 - Personal example: Collaborative consequences for managing screen time
- 32:52 - Conclusion and final thoughts on collaborative consequences
- 33:09 - Call to action: Subscribe, rate, review, and join the email list
Key Takeaways:
- Collaborative Consequences: Involve your child in setting boundaries and consequences to ensure they understand and agree with them, which increases their effectiveness.
- Difference from Punishment: Unlike punishment, which is retributive and ineffective in the long-term, collaborative consequences focus on teaching and guiding children to make better decisions.
- Child's Buy-In: When children have a say in their own discipline process, they are more likely to adhere to the agreed-upon boundaries and learn self-discipline.
- Practical Examples: Jon shares real-life examples of implementing collaborative consequences in his household, providing a clear model for listeners to follow.
Resources Mentioned:
Recommendations for the Next Episode:
Calls to Action:
- Subscribe: Subscribe to the Whole Parent Podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
- Rate and Review: Leave a rating and review to help other parents find the podcast.
- Share: Share this episode with fellow parents who might benefit from learning about collaborative consequences.
- Email List: Join the email list to receive updates on new episodes and resources.
Contact Information:
- Email: podcast@wholeparentacademy.com
- Instagram: @wholeparent
- TikTok: @wholeparent
Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Whole Parent Podcast. We hope you found it insightful and helpful in your parenting journey. See you in the next episode!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jon @wholeparent (00:00):
Hello and welcome to the whole parent
podcast, so excited that you arehere with me today.
My name is John.
I'm at whole parent on all ofthe social medias and if this is
your first episode listeningafter you just took the now very
viral at least as it comparesto my platform highly sensitive
(00:21):
kid quiz, I'm so glad thatyou're here because this episode
is going to really, really helpyou.
If you are just a regular,casual listener, if you don't
know about the highly sensitivequiz I put out, this quiz is
your child highly sensitive?
Based on the last episode ofthe whole parent podcast about
highly sensitive kids, andthousands and thousands of
(00:42):
parents have taken this quiz andyou know they have learned
whether their child is highlysensitive and then gotten some
information about how they canparent more effectively as the
result, not only from thatpodcast, but also just in
general.
I'll be sending them more.
So if you're, if you're lookingforward to that, hey, I'm glad
that you're here listening in,but if you have a highly
sensitive child, I'll just tellyou right now what we're talking
(01:04):
about today is going to beabsolute gold for you.
You are in the right place andwe are talking about
consequences.
And if you don't know me verywell yet, you might not be as
(01:35):
surprised that I am talkingabout consequences as probably a
lot of other people on thisplatform are.
Why?
Because I am one of the biggestadvocates for the total
elimination of punishment inparenting.
So I am a punishment.
I can't say this stronglyenough.
I am a punishment abolitionist.
I wish that punishment would gosomewhere and never come back,
(01:56):
and so when we're talking aboutconsequences, today, we are
specifically not talking aboutpunishment, even though the way
that most of us use that word,along with the word discipline,
are usually used synonymously,right?
We use those three wordsinterchangeably.
We say discipline, consequence,punishment.
We say that those all three arethe same thing.
Well, they're not.
Not according to me and notaccording to so many other
(02:18):
amazing parenting authors andexperts who have taught me this
way of thinking about parenting,and so today, we're going to
talk about consequences.
We're specifically, though,talking about collaborative
consequences.
It is a subset of consequences.
It is what I believe to be thecream of the crop of consequence
parenting.
So if you have a kid over theage of even like three or four,
(02:40):
you can start to employ this,and I'll tell you I have an
eight year old, almost almosteight year old, as well as a
four yearyear-old and atwo-year-old.
Two-year-old we're not doingthis yet.
The four-year-old we'restarting to do this.
The eight-year-old we almostexclusively do this.
We don't do a consequence thatisn't collaborative at this
point, and if we do, it'susually a response.
It's my own issues, right, it'sme being reactive, it's me not
(03:03):
responding, it's me not doing mywork, and then I leverage a
consequence.
Usually those could even bepunishments, right, because I'm
not immune to it in any way.
Even though I'm superanti-punishment doesn't mean
that I don't default to some ofmy old, ingrained childhood
neural pathways and punish mykids.
Occasionally I do.
Usually, I just seek to repairthat damage immediately.
So the first thing that we haveto understand is what, how, how
(03:25):
are consequences and punishmentdifferent, and I'm not going to
talk about discipline today.
Discipline just means to teach,right?
So as I'm using this wordthroughout this episode, you're
going to hear me use the worddiscipline.
You can just sub it for theword teach.
That's easier for you.
I'm not going to get into likewhy we do that ancient Greek and
all this other stuff, but butyeah, just sub that so.
(03:45):
So if I say you're discipliningyour kids.
We're just teaching our kids.
That's all we're saying.
We're teaching them for thelongterm, we're helping them to
learn and grow.
So why is punishments aneffective ineffective form of
discipline, and consequences arean effective form of discipline
?
How are they different?
Well, fundamentally, the way inwhich I define punishment is
(04:05):
very different than the way inwhich I define consequences, and
actually, in looking andresearching this, I think I have
a pretty solid leg to stand on.
Punishment seems to be,according to dictionary
definitions of the way that it'sgenerally used in society, it's
a term that refers to taking anaction in retribution for
someone's misbehavior.
(04:25):
So if a person does somethingto harm someone else for example
, if someone steals something,if someone breaks a law, or if a
child does somethingproblematic they push another
kid down or they lie or dosomething else like that then a
punishment is going to thatperpetrator and saying I am
going to harm you in some wayand I know that a lot of you
(04:48):
just like sharpen, take a breath, stick with me, we'll get there
.
I am going to harm you in someway in order to send you into a
fear-based mind state.
I'm going to send your braininto a reactive, fear-based mind
state, so that you associatethe bad thing that you did with
(05:10):
the bad way that you feel rightnow.
And the idea from classicalconditioning is that if we do
this enough, our child will stopdoing that thing.
That's problematic and they'llstart or they will just stop.
That's the goal of punishment,so it's a reactive or
retributive thing.
Here's the problem that allmight sound effective.
(05:31):
We talk about the ethics andmorals, whatever later that
might sound effective.
What we know from research isthat it's not.
What we know from research isthat punishment is an
ineffective teacher, and I'm notgoing to get into why.
Today that's me going on awhole anti-punishment rant that
you guys can read about in mybook in a couple months, or that
you can go and listen toanother episode where I do that.
(05:52):
But just to boil it down intoone sentence punishment sends
your brain into a state where itdoes not want to learn anything
, not long-term.
It might learn don't do thatthing around this person right
now, but it's not an effectivelong-term teacher.
And so because of that,punishment does not work.
It doesn't work with adults.
We know this.
(06:12):
Criminal justice reformadvocates have known this for
years.
It doesn't work with kids.
It doesn't work with kids whocome from traumatic backgrounds.
The only kids who it seems towork on are the kids who would
have learned the lesson withoutthe punishment.
That's the great secret ofpunishment it only seems like it
works because the kids thatwould have learned the lesson
anyway learn the lesson.
(06:33):
So why is punishmentineffective?
Because it works against theway that your child's brain is
set up.
Your child's brain is set up toprotect them, to survive, to
connect with you.
Punishment interrupts that,disrupts that.
It's a terrible teacher, and sothat's why I'm anti-punishment.
Well, what are consequences?
Consequences are notretributive.
Consequences are designed tocreate a boundary around a thing
(06:56):
in order for your child tolearn over time why that
boundary consequence is in place.
And I'm not.
I don't mean to say thatboundaries and consequences are,
are totally the same thing.
They're not.
That's a whole nother episodeabout boundaries, but that's the
fundamental difference betweenthe consequence.
So a consequence does not haveto send your child into a
reactive brain state wherethey're terrified or anything
(07:16):
like that, or they're, you know,even even just feeling bad
about themselves.
Consequences don't have to dothat, and so because of this, we
get to deploy consequences indifferent ways, and I could have
.
I know I keep saying I'm goingto have another episode, I'm not
enough, they're upset.
I guess there's going to be alot of episodes of this podcast,
but I will do another episodeabout a little acronym that I
(07:37):
developed sometime in the futureabout deploying consequences
with younger kids, like reallyyoung kids.
But for kids four years old andup, I think we should be
looking toward a totalcollaborative consequence model,
especially, like I said, afterthey're eight years old.
We should, this is all weshould be using and that's very
(07:58):
weird for me to say that,because I'm usually an advocate
for, like you know, not makingthese grand statements about
like, oh, this is, you know,this is the only way to do this
or this is the only way youshould be parenting.
I really think that this is,that's how effective this is.
I am such a believer that Ithink that basically, always
with a child over the age ofeight, definitely with teenagers
(08:19):
, you should be exclusivelyusing collaborative consequences
.
So we've defined whatpunishments are.
We've said that consequencesare not that.
Well then, what areconsequences?
What are collaborativeconsequences?
Consequences are outcomes of anaction, and we can choose to
work with our kids, or we canchoose to deploy consequences in
(08:41):
a way that we're not workingwith them, deploy consequences
in a way that they that we'rewe're not working with them.
Essentially, what acollaborative consequence is is
when your child does somethingthat you deem to be problematic
in whatever way, and there's canbe a lot of reasons why.
Right, it's not good socially,it it hurts somebody else, it's
hurts themselves.
Right, they're doing somethingthat could lead to further harm.
(09:03):
Or it's against some value setthat you have as a family and
you want to instill that withthem.
Any of those things that theydo that violate in some way the
what's not okay part of you.
The first thing that you want todo is actually approach your
child with curiosity, not withan iron fist.
(09:26):
So we're not going to nip it inthe bud.
We're going to wait for ourchild to calm down, because
usually, when we stop our childfrom doing something, they're
usually pretty reactive, and soI'm not saying that you
shouldn't ever stop your childbecause it sends them into a
reactive brain state and thenthey don't learn anything.
What I'm saying isintentionally sending them into
a reactive brain state and thentrying to teach them while
they're in that fight or flightlimbic brain mode is ineffective
(09:50):
.
So instead, what you're goingto do is you're going to wait
until after the situation hasneutralized, everything's calmed
down, and you're going toapproach your child usually an
hour later or whatever withcuriosity.
You're going to say hey later,or whatever.
With curiosity, you're going tosay hey, so this thing just
happened.
What was that about?
(10:13):
Help me understand.
I want to know why you weretaking out the baking soda and
vinegar and pouring them allover the kitchen floor
indiscriminately.
Or I want to know why you tookthat toy from your little
brother and put it somewherewhere he couldn't get it, even
though it's his.
And what you'll receive backoften is an immediate just like
they get triggered again andthen they go off.
Then, okay, we got to waitlonger.
We got to have the conversationwhen we can have it in a calm
(10:35):
way.
Eventually, we're going to havethis conversation in a way
where your child is going to beable to identify for you why
what happened happened.
If they're able to, it mighttake some back and forth with
you.
This is going to be able toidentify for you why what
happened happened.
If they're able to, it mighttake some back and forth with
you.
This is going to be a longprocess.
Collaborative consequences are along-term fix.
They're not a short-term fixhere.
So that's what we're going todo and then, as a result, in the
(10:56):
long term, we're going to settogether a new boundary and a
new consequence to go with thatboundary, to prevent that thing
from happening again.
So how do we do that?
How are we going to go about it?
Step one we've already saidwe're going to, we're going to
approach our child, we're goingto wait until a moment when this
consequence is actually goingto be received well, and we're
(11:18):
going to be able to have aactual conversation about this.
Step two we're going to try andseek to understand what's going
on here.
Where is this coming from?
How are we moving?
How can we move forward?
Step three and this is very,very important we are going to
seek our child's input.
This is where most parents justthrow up their hands like, oh
(11:39):
no, I'm definitely not doingthis.
But this is the joy ofcollaborative consequences.
It's going to take somelearning for you too, probably,
but we are going to seek ourchild's input, not only on why
that thing happened, but also onwhat we can do as a family
between you parent, child tostop that thing from happening
again.
Let me explain why this can beso transformative.
(12:01):
Number one, the first reasonwhy this is so transformative
and people will disagree with meon this, but I am very
convinced of this your child,highly sensitive or not, but
especially highly sensitive kidsfor those who are listening to
this episode with a highlysensitive kid has a robust,
nuanced and complicated innerworld.
(12:23):
They have a robust, nuanced andcomplicated inner world Whether
they're two years old, fouryears old, eight years old, but
the older they are, the morerobust, nuanced and complicated
their inner world will be.
The truth is that many parentsdo not want to accept.
Your child knows themselves andtheir inner world better than
you do.
(12:43):
Now, that is not to say that youdon't know more than your child
.
It's not to say that you arenot more ethical than your child
, that you don't know more aboutthe world than your child, that
you don't know more about theirbrain, that you don't even know
, at times, more about thetriggers that lead to certain
outbursts and activities.
All of those things can be trueAt the same time.
(13:07):
You are not a mind reader.
Your child has thoughts thatthey do not voice to you.
They have neural pathways thatlead to outcomes that you are
not privy to, that you do notunderstand.
And because of all of this,because of this understanding,
(13:27):
what you have to appreciate isthat your child likely knows as
well as you what types ofnegative motivations or
boundaries could be put in placethat would prevent them from
doing the problematic thingagain.
Again, you don't understandalways why they did a thing.
(13:49):
Sometimes you will.
Sometimes you'll have toexplore that with them.
Right, your child hurts yourother child, or you know they
have siblings.
We talked about siblingconflict in a previous episode.
That's another great episode tolisten to.
We will get into the.
You'll see how collaborativediscipline and collaborative
consequences fit very well intothe paradigm that I talk about
(14:09):
with siblings as well.
But as we, as we are, you knowyou might have any situation
where one child hurts anotherchild and they don't know that
they're doing that becausethey're jealous or something
like that.
You might have to help themname that emotion.
Your kids are not expertstotally in emotional nuance,
even though they have a nuanced,deep and very complicated inner
(14:30):
world.
You might have to help them dosome of those things, but
ultimately they will be able toidentify what types of
motivations will work better forthem Not always, but often.
So your child knows themselvesas well, or better, at least as
it relates to their inner worldand their thought processes, as
you do, and a lot of parentsdon't like that, but it's true.
(14:51):
Your child has thoughts youdon't know.
Number two your child's buy-inin the process of discipline is
actually more important than anyof the consequences that you're
going to deploy.
Let me say that again yourchild's buy-in in the process of
discipline and consequences ismore important than any of the
(15:13):
consequences that you wouldotherwise employ.
What do I mean by that?
If you think a certainconsequence would be massively
motivating to your child, butyour child is staunchly opposed
to that thing, and you'rethinking to yourself well, yeah,
I know they are.
That's why it's going to workright, because they really don't
like it.
They're so against it that it'sgoing to work in that way, your
(15:34):
child's brain processes willthen just associate those things
negatively with you rather thanwith the action that you're
trying to disincentivize.
What do I mean by all that?
What I mean is when you getyour kids buy-in in the
discipline process, in thecollaborative consequences
process, you are way more likelyto get to the heart of the
(15:56):
issue.
Why?
Simply because you have theirbuy-in.
It's a brain hack.
It's a brain hack.
By involving them, by lettingthem become your co-teacher,
your teacher assistant in theirown learning, they are going to
be way, way more likely to dothat thing.
And then, number three what'syour long-term goal here?
Right, like.
What's your long-term goal ofany consequence?
(16:16):
It's behavior development.
It's teaching your child tomake better decisions going
forward.
You did this thing.
It was not a good decision.
Here's what happened as aresult.
Let's make better choices goingforward, right.
What better way to teach achild to be, in other words,
self-disciplined, to leveragethe proper remedies for whatever
(16:38):
action that they take, than tolet them start early?
I have this quote up behind me.
I talk about it all the time.
It's an Alfie Kohn quote.
It's children learn how to makedecisions by making decisions,
not by following directions.
Same thing is true aboutdiscipline, right?
Children learn to bedisciplined not by being
(16:59):
disciplined, but by practicingdiscipline themselves.
And so collaborativeconsequences are this wonderful
tool where you bring them behindthe curtain and you actually
allow them to speak into theirown discipline process.
So that is what collaborativeconsequences are.
That's why they're massivelyeffective.
Number one, because they yourchild has this rich inner world
and they're going to know how tospeak into that world better.
(17:21):
Number two, because by havingagency in this process, they
themselves are going to be moreinvolved, more desiring of it to
work.
And number three, because youreventual goal is that you don't
have to do this anymore, thatyour child's going to do this
and take these steps on theirown.
So that's how we're going toget to that point.
So now that we've kind of gonethrough what collaborative
(17:41):
discipline is and why, orcollaborative consequences are
and why they're effective, Iwant to give you an example from
my own life of two differenttimes that we have deployed
collaborative consequences.
One is a very specificdeploying of collaborative
consequences.
It was one specific iterationof this happening.
Another one has to do withcollaborative consequences
(18:03):
associated just to a generallike a general rule boundary
that we have in our house butthat was determined
collaboratively, and I'll tellyou exactly how we did both of
these and it'll kind of give youa model of how you can walk
through this and do this withyour own kids.
In the first one.
I'll talk about the moregeneral one first.
What we were noticing is thatour kids had a really, really
hard time cleaning up afterthemselves, cleaning up messes,
(18:24):
and it was just leading to a lotof kind of negative association
for my wife and I, because wewere just constantly cleaning,
constantly cleaning up toys,constantly cleaning up the
kitchen, constantly cleaning upcereal bowls and everything else
.
And the first couple of stepsthat we tried to take, I think,
were good.
Our kids were really young atthe time.
This is before we starteddeploying any of this type of
(18:46):
stuff.
We're just let's just get ridof some stuff, let's get rid of
a lot Seven eighths of the toysand that really helped.
But it didn't.
It didn't go all the way.
And especially as our kids gotolder our oldest got older it
became very clear that like itwasn't going to be enough, like
he had to contribute into theprocess.
And now you guys are saying well, how is this related to
consequences?
(19:06):
Well, guys, the consequence ofmaking a mess is that you have
to clean it up.
The consequences here are verysimple.
Right, this might sound headyand convoluted, but you know the
consequences of every action.
The consequence of cussing outyour boss is that you get fired
right.
That's probably a bad examplebecause it's a little bit too
close to punishment, but I mean,like it, it is right.
(19:27):
I guess the better examplewould be the punishment for not
showing up to work is that youget fired right?
Because because if you're notdoing a job, nobody's going to
pay you to not do that job.
I hope maybe in maybe in thework, work from home world, you
can just like not show up.
I've heard of all these storiesof people like having all these
programs that move, all thesemouses.
They have like four computerslined up and the mouse moves on
(19:48):
each one like every minute, andso then the they like work for
four companies.
They don't do anything.
Anyway, this is a longdiversion from our consequences.
Those people need someconsequences.
They need to learn that.
You know, or maybe that's aconsequence of the company,
right, the company has beentrying to cut on labor, blah,
(20:09):
blah, blah, and they're notgiving good benefits and they're
giving cheaper and cheaperwages, and so, and they don't
want to, you know, provide anysort of support to their
employees, and so the result istheir employees.
The consequence is that theiremployees don't want to work for
them.
And so they just kind of phoneit in, they quiet, quit, or they
, you know, fill out anapplication and then have no
intention of ever actually doinganything for them.
So, yeah, you could see how,when we get curious, all of a
(20:30):
sudden the consequences thing itgets a little bit more
convoluted, but it's simple,right?
So in our example back to ourexample like, we're talking
about parenting, we're nottalking about the state of the
American labor force.
In our example of kids, when ourkids were making messes and not
cleaning them up, we were like,okay, we have to move to some
sort of system here where ourkids contributed some way.
(20:51):
And so we pulled my son asideand we said, hey, what do we
need to do to make sure thehouse is clean every evening
before bed?
Do we need to, like, have atimer that we set we clean up at
the end of it?
Should we, you know, before wemove on to the next activity, we
have to clean up the activitythat we did before we, you know,
leave the kitchen.
We have to make sure thatthat's reasonably clean.
(21:12):
Before we go play with friends,we got to make sure, like,
what's going to work for you tohelp.
And he thought about it and hecame up with a solution At the
end of the night.
We're just going to clean everynight, right, we'll just have a
timer.
It goes off half an hour beforebedtime.
We just spend the last halfhour cleaning and then we'll go
to bed.
And we were like we don't thinkthat's going to work.
But rather than saying we don'tthink that's going to work,
(21:34):
let's not do it, we said he hasto be involved to clean up the
toys.
He's going to be pulling teeth.
So instead we said give him theagency.
Okay, that's how we're going todo it.
So that night, at that time,friends could play.
Usually friends can't playduring the day, they can only
(21:55):
play in the evening.
We kind of saw this coming.
He didn't.
Timer goes off.
I think it was actually thenext night.
The first night it was fine.
The next night went off and itwas like no, I really don't want
to do this now.
We're like hey, but we, we gotto do this, but we can make a
different choice for tomorrow.
So we held the boundary, weheld the consequence that he had
established, but it became very.
He did as fast as he possiblycould Went and played with his
friends.
He was very upset about it, buthe wasn't upset at us.
(22:18):
He was upset that he had notforeseen this, and so we said
okay.
Next time we sat down, we said,okay, we, that did not work.
So.
So what are we going to doinstead?
How are we going to keep thehouse clean without doing it in
the way that we did yesterday,because that didn't work?
So this is the collaborativeconsequences process.
We actually let him have buy-in.
He said well, I want you to tellme when you think would be a
(22:38):
good time to clean, because Ican never predict.
I don't do well with time.
So, self-awareness, right.
Like, not only are we teachingresponsibility, not only are we
teaching team values of makingsure the house is clean, not
only teaching holding boundaries, we're also teaching like, hey,
know your limitations.
He's like yeah, I don't do wellwith time, I don't want to
watch.
Like, when do you think weshould clean up?
(22:59):
And we're like yeah, so weshould probably, before we move
on to the next activity, justpick up what we're doing.
And he's like okay, but what ifthere is the scenario where I
want to come back to it?
Okay, how many times per day.
Do you think that'll happen?
Oh, that probably only happenedonce a day.
Okay, well, once a day we canleave something, but then if
(23:21):
we're going to go on to the nextthing and then we want to leave
that too, we got to go clean upthe first thing.
We can't just have multiplethings sitting out everywhere.
I'm still using that.
I'm still using that.
I'm still using that.
Okay, does that seem fair toyou?
Oh, yeah, seems totally fair.
Next day comes playing withLegos.
I'm still using these, but Iwant to go over here.
I want to do this thing.
We didn't hold an unrealisticboundary because he had made
(23:42):
that call.
No, I, I.
There are going to be timeswhen this happens and if that
had happened, we would haveadjusted right, like we wouldn't
have just been like no, hammerdown, we're absolutely no, no,
and under no certaincircumstances can we change this
.
We already have proven thatwe're willing to make some
adjustments and changes.
So he goes, gets his stuff,plays.
It Turns out that he did wantto do like a combined lego,
(24:03):
magnet, tiles, giant thing,really cool, really fun.
But when it's time to clean upall that, are you still using
the legos?
Yeah, I'm still using them.
Okay, well, we gotta clean themagnet house because we gotta
clean up one of these.
Okay, I'll do the magnet house.
We'll clean up the magnet house, leave the legos, goes on, does
something else.
Well, now he wants to dosomething in the basement and
(24:24):
it's unrelated to upstairs, buthe wants to leave that set up.
It's going to be an obstaclecourse or whatever.
Okay, well, remember, we'reonly allowed to leave one thing
out at a time, thanks to himself.
Okay, all right.
All right, this seems fair,this is working.
Goes upstairs, cleans up theLegos, comes back downstairs,
does the obstacle course At theend of the night.
That night, we had one thingthat was left out.
(24:49):
Whatever that thing was that hewas still using that.
We weren't necessarily that wehad moved on to something else.
He had one thing that's stillleft out.
It was so much easier to belike hey, let's just real quick,
go downstairs before you go toyour friend's house and just mop
this up, or we can do it whenyou get back.
Okay, let's do it when we getback.
Okay, he gets home.
Remember, we said that we weregoing to do this.
(25:09):
So we go down to the base andwe do this.
So this has become aconsequence in our own home.
When we make messes, we cleanthem up and mom and dad help.
We're not just like sittingdown and like letting our kids
clean the whole house Mom anddad help but there is a
consequence.
It was designed collaboratively.
The kid had input into it.
(25:30):
How are we going to make thiswork?
What's the consequence for notdoing it?
We can't move on to the nextthing.
How are we going to hold thoseboundaries?
So this is something that'scontinually happened.
So this wasn't one-off issuethat we had.
This was a continual problemand we set some boundaries and
these kind of are like.
You can see how boundaries andconsequences were kind of like
(25:50):
interchangeably using these ofour.
Like.
You can see how boundaries andconsequences were kind of like
interchangeably using these.
But the whole point here isthat it was collaborative, that
that in order we had to have acollaborative solution to the
problem that looked forwardrather than looking back and was
seeking to be retributive.
So so let's, let's go to thethe next example.
I want to give you one moreexample and then we're going to
call it a day on collaborativeconsequences and we'll come back
(26:11):
with another episode in thefuture more on on this topic,
more on discipline, because Iknow that this has been a really
good topic so far.
The second scenario of, orexample of, how we utilize a
collaborative consequence had todo with TV screen time and we
were having a really tough timetransitioning away from screen
(26:32):
time just really hard.
And so we sat down with my son.
It came time to be done withthe TV one day and he screamed
and he fought and he like threwthe remote across the room or
something.
He huge meltdown and we said,okay, totally get it, it's okay
to be upset, we'll talk aboutthis later.
Not like we'll talk about thislater, but we'll talk about this
later.
Because he knows we do thiscollaborative consequences thing
(26:55):
, we do this collaborativediscipline thing.
We'll talk about this later.
So we go off, we leave and wecome back later and we have this
conversation.
Hey, how are you feeling afterit was time to turn off the TV?
Oh man, I was so mad.
I was so mad at you that youmade me turn off my show.
I really didn't want to turn itoff.
It was right at getting to thegood part and I just didn't want
to turn it off.
And okay.
(27:16):
Well, what do you think wouldhelp in the future for you to
turn it off when it's time toturn off?
Yeah, just let me do whatever Iwant all the time.
That was the first thing thathe said.
Just let me do whatever I wantall the time, then I'll be happy
.
Okay, well, we can't do that.
That's not a solution.
So what's an alternative?
Give me a 10 minute warningnext time.
(27:37):
Okay, we'll give you a 10minute warning next time.
Two days later, same situationscreaming, kicking, fighting
after the 10 minute warning.
So we give him the 10 minutewarning.
He's okay, yeah, that's fine,10 minutes.
Is up, still freaking out.
So that didn't work.
What do you think we should donext time?
Give me a five minute warning,10 minute warning, then a five
minute warning, then then off.
(27:57):
Okay.
Next day, two days later, threedays later, whatever 10 minute
warning, five minute warning.
Kid gets right off.
Wow, that worked.
Yeah, it worked.
Okay.
Well, what should we just dothat every time?
Yeah, let's do that every time.
Lo and behold, a week laterwe've done it for a week.
It's worked.
It doesn't work.
Totally loses it Freaks out,throwing, doing all this stuff.
(28:18):
All right, so it stoppedworking.
Sometimes, something works for awhile, but then it stops
working.
So what do you think we shoulddo if that happens again?
Well, it won't happen again.
I.
If that happens again?
Well, I won't happen again.
I won't do that again, Ipromise.
Yeah, we get it.
We know that you don't thinkthat you're going to do it again
right now.
We believe you, believe yourkids, we believe you.
We know that you're not doingthis on purpose.
(28:41):
We know that you're not tryingto make our lives hard.
We know that you don't want todo this.
So what's the consequence,though?
Should we maybe like not do itthe next day?
Should we like put the remotesomewhere?
What do we got to do?
Well, if I do that, next time,I think I should have no TV for
a month.
A month, buddy.
(29:01):
That's a long time.
What if we just do like threedays?
No, not long enough, dad.
A week he said it like it waslike the end of the world.
Okay, a week.
Next time that happens, we'lldo a week.
He said it like it was like theend of the world.
Okay, a week.
Next time that happens, we'lldo a week.
We'll just take the remote away, we'll put it somewhere for a
week.
Cool, okay, let's do it.
Three weeks go by, two weeks goby, not an issue, not one.
(29:23):
He remembered I don't want tolose it for a week.
I set that boundary.
Then it happens Eventually,goes down some YouTube rabbit
hole and just started a videoafter the five minute warning,
freaks out, loses it, gets supermad, gets even more upset
because he knows the consequenceis coming Take the remote away.
Hey, so what are we going to doabout this?
(29:45):
We did not like pull it awayand hide it in that moment.
That's it right.
Like we didn't like yellanything, we just like let it be
.
And then the remote was gone.
He's like where's the remote?
The next day?
And we're like hey, buddy,remember we said a week and I
kid you not.
This kid was like yeah, Ithought that would happen.
Okay, I'm cool with that.
Where's my Legos, where's myblocks?
Whatever goes off in place?
(30:07):
Parents oftentimes call me aliar on the internet when I talk
about stuff like this.
They oftentimes call me a liaron the internet when I talk
about stuff like this.
Like no way, no way in hell,did your kid do that?
Is that how it went down?
That's exactly how it went downA hundred percent.
The reason that it went downthat way, though, is because he
had so much buy-in in theprocess and, by the way, like so
many parents get to that thefirst day, like, think about how
(30:30):
much success we had before weever had to run into that.
We had like literally over amonth and a half of like very
few, like two or three meltdowns, and each time it was like
let's reassess the process, andand maybe there was one or two
interspersed in there where wedidn't change the plan I'm not
talking about those, becauseit's not necessarily relevant
(30:52):
for this podcast episode, but,like those ones, usually it was
like okay, but he hasn't eaten,but he didn't sleep last night,
but like he just got hurt.
Like there was other stuffgoing on, and we tried to be
understanding of that, and thislashing out has nothing to do
with, like, the addiction to thescreen.
It just has to do with, or thedopamine letdown, whatever.
Like he, this is actually justlike unrelated, and so we're
(31:12):
understanding in those times.
We're not like every singletime he makes a mistake.
We're like okay, what's theconsequence going to be?
Like it's not like that.
Like you give your kids a lotof leeway, I think.
But once you do have to do thatand you have to set that down,
we're consistent, we followthrough and then we process, and
that process literally led tomy son being completely fine
(31:33):
with a very significantconsequence losing tv privileges
for a week.
Because he was the one who cameup with it, he was the one who
decided on it and then he wasthe one who was going to fulfill
it.
And when he got it back I thinkwe only did six days we weren't
like trying to get give it back, but like it's six days later.
It was like this he's he'slearned what he wanted to learn
(31:54):
from this and and like we hadsomething that we had to do and
he it was going to be a loteasier for him to watch it.
So we did it right.
We weren't like super, supercrazy about this, but we gave it
back to him.
We're like yeah, man, just likenext time, a week again sound
good.
That seemed like a long time.
Yeah, that's fine.
And it didn't like we went likesix months and every time he
would just kind of okay, I gotit, like it's cool.
(32:16):
And a lot of punishmentadvocates come on here and
they're like, yeah, but if youhad just done that the first
time, you would have like,eliminated all of them.
No, because you don'tunderstand.
He had to be the one wholearned how to set that boundary
.
How did this is what I want himto do as an adult.
This is what most adultsstruggle to do.
This is why they're obsessedwith their phones.
Right, like I am too.
Like if I could set limits onmy phone, like my son could set
limits on the TV, my goodness,my life would be better, because
(32:39):
that, again, is the ultimategoal.
So this is why collaborativeconsequences are so
transformative.
This is why they work.
And if you are sitting hereright now and going, this is the
way I want to parent, this isthe podcast for you, because
this is the type of stuff wetalk about.
If you have a highly sensitivekid, again, the imposition of
just like top-down authoritydoes not work with highly
sensitive kids.
It just does not.
It will not work.
(33:00):
You bring them in on thecollaborative problem-solving
process.
They're going to tell youthere's a whole inner world
going on there.
They're going to make it somuch easier on you.
So that's.
This has been an episode of thewhole parent podcast.
I always am supposed to saysomething at the end here about
subscribing to the podcast.
Go to the show notes.
You can look at all thechapters and stuff like that.
We're trying to do a muchbetter job with the show notes
now, and by we I mean me.
(33:20):
The whole parent is just me,all by myself and sometimes my
wife who talks to me about it.
But if you are interested inthis, make sure that you're on
the email list so that you canget email updates, not only
about new podcasts but alsoabout new stuff we have going on
.
You'll get like a link to thathighly sensitive quiz and stuff
like that those on the emaillist did or will, and yeah, you
can just connect.
It'll be a good time.
(33:41):
But anyway, that's been thisepisode.
Make sure you rate and review,subscribe on Apple and Spotify,
otherwise I'll see you in thenext one, take care.
Hello and welcome to the whole parent
podcast, so excited that you arehere with me today.
My name is John.
I'm at whole parent on all ofthe social medias and if this is
your first episode listeningafter you just took the now very
viral at least as it comparesto my platform highly sensitive
(00:21):
kid quiz, I'm so glad thatyou're here because this episode
is going to really, really helpyou.
If you are just a regular,casual listener, if you don't
know about the highly sensitivequiz I put out, this quiz is
your child highly sensitive?
Based on the last episode ofthe whole parent podcast about
highly sensitive kids, andthousands and thousands of
(00:42):
parents have taken this quiz andyou know they have learned
whether their child is highlysensitive and then gotten some
information about how they canparent more effectively as the
result, not only from thatpodcast, but also just in
general.
I'll be sending them more.
So if you're, if you're lookingforward to that, hey, I'm glad
that you're here listening in,but if you have a highly
sensitive child, I'll just tellyou right now what we're talking
(01:04):
about today is going to beabsolute gold for you.
You are in the right place andwe are talking about
consequences.
And if you don't know me verywell yet, you might not be as
(01:35):
surprised that I am talkingabout consequences as probably a
lot of other people on thisplatform are.
Why?
Because I am one of the biggestadvocates for the total
elimination of punishment inparenting.
So I am a punishment.
I can't say this stronglyenough.
I am a punishment abolitionist.
I wish that punishment would gosomewhere and never come back,
(01:56):
and so when we're talking aboutconsequences, today, we are
specifically not talking aboutpunishment, even though the way
that most of us use that word,along with the word discipline,
are usually used synonymously,right?
We use those three wordsinterchangeably.
We say discipline, consequence,punishment.
We say that those all three arethe same thing.
Well, they're not.
Not according to me and notaccording to so many other
(02:18):
amazing parenting authors andexperts who have taught me this
way of thinking about parenting,and so today, we're going to
talk about consequences.
We're specifically, though,talking about collaborative
consequences.
It is a subset of consequences.
It is what I believe to be thecream of the crop of consequence
parenting.
So if you have a kid over theage of even like three or four,
(02:40):
you can start to employ this,and I'll tell you I have an
eight year old, almost almosteight year old, as well as a
four yearyear-old and atwo-year-old.
Two-year-old we're not doingthis yet.
The four-year-old we'restarting to do this.
The eight-year-old we almostexclusively do this.
We don't do a consequence thatisn't collaborative at this
point, and if we do, it'susually a response.
It's my own issues, right, it'sme being reactive, it's me not
(03:03):
responding, it's me not doing mywork, and then I leverage a
consequence.
Usually those could even bepunishments, right, because I'm
not immune to it in any way.
Even though I'm superanti-punishment doesn't mean
that I don't default to some ofmy old, ingrained childhood
neural pathways and punish mykids.
Occasionally I do.
Usually, I just seek to repairthat damage immediately.
So the first thing that we haveto understand is what, how, how
(03:25):
are consequences and punishmentdifferent, and I'm not going to
talk about discipline today.
Discipline just means to teach,right?
So as I'm using this wordthroughout this episode, you're
going to hear me use the worddiscipline.
You can just sub it for theword teach.
That's easier for you.
I'm not going to get into likewhy we do that ancient Greek and
all this other stuff, but butyeah, just sub that so.
(03:45):
So if I say you're discipliningyour kids.
We're just teaching our kids.
That's all we're saying.
We're teaching them for thelongterm, we're helping them to
learn and grow.
So why is punishments aneffective ineffective form of
discipline, and consequences arean effective form of discipline
?
How are they different?
Well, fundamentally, the way inwhich I define punishment is
(04:05):
very different than the way inwhich I define consequences, and
actually, in looking andresearching this, I think I have
a pretty solid leg to stand on.
Punishment seems to be,according to dictionary
definitions of the way that it'sgenerally used in society, it's
a term that refers to taking anaction in retribution for
someone's misbehavior.
(04:25):
So if a person does somethingto harm someone else for example
, if someone steals something,if someone breaks a law, or if a
child does somethingproblematic they push another
kid down or they lie or dosomething else like that then a
punishment is going to thatperpetrator and saying I am
going to harm you in some wayand I know that a lot of you
(04:48):
just like sharpen, take a breath, stick with me, we'll get there
.
I am going to harm you in someway in order to send you into a
fear-based mind state.
I'm going to send your braininto a reactive, fear-based mind
state, so that you associatethe bad thing that you did with
(05:10):
the bad way that you feel rightnow.
And the idea from classicalconditioning is that if we do
this enough, our child will stopdoing that thing.
That's problematic and they'llstart or they will just stop.
That's the goal of punishment,so it's a reactive or
retributive thing.
Here's the problem that allmight sound effective.
(05:31):
We talk about the ethics andmorals, whatever later that
might sound effective.
What we know from research isthat it's not.
What we know from research isthat punishment is an
ineffective teacher, and I'm notgoing to get into why.
Today that's me going on awhole anti-punishment rant that
you guys can read about in mybook in a couple months, or that
you can go and listen toanother episode where I do that.
(05:52):
But just to boil it down intoone sentence punishment sends
your brain into a state where itdoes not want to learn anything
, not long-term.
It might learn don't do thatthing around this person right
now, but it's not an effectivelong-term teacher.
And so because of that,punishment does not work.
It doesn't work with adults.
We know this.
(06:12):
Criminal justice reformadvocates have known this for
years.
It doesn't work with kids.
It doesn't work with kids whocome from traumatic backgrounds.
The only kids who it seems towork on are the kids who would
have learned the lesson withoutthe punishment.
That's the great secret ofpunishment it only seems like it
works because the kids thatwould have learned the lesson
anyway learn the lesson.
(06:33):
So why is punishmentineffective?
Because it works against theway that your child's brain is
set up.
Your child's brain is set up toprotect them, to survive, to
connect with you.
Punishment interrupts that,disrupts that.
It's a terrible teacher, and sothat's why I'm anti-punishment.
Well, what are consequences?
Consequences are notretributive.
Consequences are designed tocreate a boundary around a thing
(06:56):
in order for your child tolearn over time why that
boundary consequence is in place.
And I'm not.
I don't mean to say thatboundaries and consequences are,
are totally the same thing.
They're not.
That's a whole nother episodeabout boundaries, but that's the
fundamental difference betweenthe consequence.
So a consequence does not haveto send your child into a
reactive brain state wherethey're terrified or anything
(07:16):
like that, or they're, you know,even even just feeling bad
about themselves.
Consequences don't have to dothat, and so because of this, we
get to deploy consequences indifferent ways, and I could have
.
I know I keep saying I'm goingto have another episode, I'm not
enough, they're upset.
I guess there's going to be alot of episodes of this podcast,
but I will do another episodeabout a little acronym that I
(07:37):
developed sometime in the futureabout deploying consequences
with younger kids, like reallyyoung kids.
But for kids four years old andup, I think we should be
looking toward a totalcollaborative consequence model,
especially, like I said, afterthey're eight years old.
We should, this is all weshould be using and that's very
(07:58):
weird for me to say that,because I'm usually an advocate
for, like you know, not makingthese grand statements about
like, oh, this is, you know,this is the only way to do this
or this is the only way youshould be parenting.
I really think that this is,that's how effective this is.
I am such a believer that Ithink that basically, always
with a child over the age ofeight, definitely with teenagers
(08:19):
, you should be exclusivelyusing collaborative consequences
.
So we've defined whatpunishments are.
We've said that consequencesare not that.
Well then, what areconsequences?
What are collaborativeconsequences?
Consequences are outcomes of anaction, and we can choose to
work with our kids, or we canchoose to deploy consequences in
(08:41):
a way that we're not workingwith them, deploy consequences
in a way that they that we'rewe're not working with them.
Essentially, what acollaborative consequence is is
when your child does somethingthat you deem to be problematic
in whatever way, and there's canbe a lot of reasons why.
Right, it's not good socially,it it hurts somebody else, it's
hurts themselves.
Right, they're doing somethingthat could lead to further harm.
(09:03):
Or it's against some value setthat you have as a family and
you want to instill that withthem.
Any of those things that theydo that violate in some way the
what's not okay part of you.
The first thing that you want todo is actually approach your
child with curiosity, not withan iron fist.
(09:26):
So we're not going to nip it inthe bud.
We're going to wait for ourchild to calm down, because
usually, when we stop our childfrom doing something, they're
usually pretty reactive, and soI'm not saying that you
shouldn't ever stop your childbecause it sends them into a
reactive brain state and thenthey don't learn anything.
What I'm saying isintentionally sending them into
a reactive brain state and thentrying to teach them while
they're in that fight or flightlimbic brain mode is ineffective
(09:50):
.
So instead, what you're goingto do is you're going to wait
until after the situation hasneutralized, everything's calmed
down, and you're going toapproach your child usually an
hour later or whatever withcuriosity.
You're going to say hey later,or whatever.
With curiosity, you're going tosay hey, so this thing just
happened.
What was that about?
(10:13):
Help me understand.
I want to know why you weretaking out the baking soda and
vinegar and pouring them allover the kitchen floor
indiscriminately.
Or I want to know why you tookthat toy from your little
brother and put it somewherewhere he couldn't get it, even
though it's his.
And what you'll receive backoften is an immediate just like
they get triggered again andthen they go off.
Then, okay, we got to waitlonger.
We got to have the conversationwhen we can have it in a calm
(10:35):
way.
Eventually, we're going to havethis conversation in a way
where your child is going to beable to identify for you why
what happened happened.
If they're able to, it mighttake some back and forth with
you.
This is going to be able toidentify for you why what
happened happened.
If they're able to, it mighttake some back and forth with
you.
This is going to be a longprocess.
Collaborative consequences are along-term fix.
They're not a short-term fixhere.
So that's what we're going todo and then, as a result, in the
(10:56):
long term, we're going to settogether a new boundary and a
new consequence to go with thatboundary, to prevent that thing
from happening again.
So how do we do that?
How are we going to go about it?
Step one we've already saidwe're going to, we're going to
approach our child, we're goingto wait until a moment when this
consequence is actually goingto be received well, and we're
(11:18):
going to be able to have aactual conversation about this.
Step two we're going to try andseek to understand what's going
on here.
Where is this coming from?
How are we moving?
How can we move forward?
Step three and this is very,very important we are going to
seek our child's input.
This is where most parents justthrow up their hands like, oh
(11:39):
no, I'm definitely not doingthis.
But this is the joy ofcollaborative consequences.
It's going to take somelearning for you too, probably,
but we are going to seek ourchild's input, not only on why
that thing happened, but also onwhat we can do as a family
between you parent, child tostop that thing from happening
again.
Let me explain why this can beso transformative.
(12:01):
Number one, the first reasonwhy this is so transformative
and people will disagree with meon this, but I am very
convinced of this your child,highly sensitive or not, but
especially highly sensitive kidsfor those who are listening to
this episode with a highlysensitive kid has a robust,
nuanced and complicated innerworld.
(12:23):
They have a robust, nuanced andcomplicated inner world Whether
they're two years old, fouryears old, eight years old, but
the older they are, the morerobust, nuanced and complicated
their inner world will be.
The truth is that many parentsdo not want to accept.
Your child knows themselves andtheir inner world better than
you do.
(12:43):
Now, that is not to say that youdon't know more than your child
.
It's not to say that you arenot more ethical than your child
, that you don't know more aboutthe world than your child, that
you don't know more about theirbrain, that you don't even know
, at times, more about thetriggers that lead to certain
outbursts and activities.
All of those things can be trueAt the same time.
(13:07):
You are not a mind reader.
Your child has thoughts thatthey do not voice to you.
They have neural pathways thatlead to outcomes that you are
not privy to, that you do notunderstand.
And because of all of this,because of this understanding,
(13:27):
what you have to appreciate isthat your child likely knows as
well as you what types ofnegative motivations or
boundaries could be put in placethat would prevent them from
doing the problematic thingagain.
Again, you don't understandalways why they did a thing.
(13:49):
Sometimes you will.
Sometimes you'll have toexplore that with them.
Right, your child hurts yourother child, or you know they
have siblings.
We talked about siblingconflict in a previous episode.
That's another great episode tolisten to.
We will get into the.
You'll see how collaborativediscipline and collaborative
consequences fit very well intothe paradigm that I talk about
(14:09):
with siblings as well.
But as we, as we are, you knowyou might have any situation
where one child hurts anotherchild and they don't know that
they're doing that becausethey're jealous or something
like that.
You might have to help themname that emotion.
Your kids are not expertstotally in emotional nuance,
even though they have a nuanced,deep and very complicated inner
(14:30):
world.
You might have to help them dosome of those things, but
ultimately they will be able toidentify what types of
motivations will work better forthem Not always, but often.
So your child knows themselvesas well, or better, at least as
it relates to their inner worldand their thought processes, as
you do, and a lot of parentsdon't like that, but it's true.
(14:51):
Your child has thoughts youdon't know.
Number two your child's buy-inin the process of discipline is
actually more important than anyof the consequences that you're
going to deploy.
Let me say that again yourchild's buy-in in the process of
discipline and consequences ismore important than any of the
(15:13):
consequences that you wouldotherwise employ.
What do I mean by that?
If you think a certainconsequence would be massively
motivating to your child, butyour child is staunchly opposed
to that thing, and you'rethinking to yourself well, yeah,
I know they are.
That's why it's going to workright, because they really don't
like it.
They're so against it that it'sgoing to work in that way, your
(15:34):
child's brain processes willthen just associate those things
negatively with you rather thanwith the action that you're
trying to disincentivize.
What do I mean by all that?
What I mean is when you getyour kids buy-in in the
discipline process, in thecollaborative consequences
process, you are way more likelyto get to the heart of the
(15:56):
issue.
Why?
Simply because you have theirbuy-in.
It's a brain hack.
It's a brain hack.
By involving them, by lettingthem become your co-teacher,
your teacher assistant in theirown learning, they are going to
be way, way more likely to dothat thing.
And then, number three what'syour long-term goal here?
Right, like.
What's your long-term goal ofany consequence?
(16:16):
It's behavior development.
It's teaching your child tomake better decisions going
forward.
You did this thing.
It was not a good decision.
Here's what happened as aresult.
Let's make better choices goingforward, right.
What better way to teach achild to be, in other words,
self-disciplined, to leveragethe proper remedies for whatever
(16:38):
action that they take, than tolet them start early?
I have this quote up behind me.
I talk about it all the time.
It's an Alfie Kohn quote.
It's children learn how to makedecisions by making decisions,
not by following directions.
Same thing is true aboutdiscipline, right?
Children learn to bedisciplined not by being
(16:59):
disciplined, but by practicingdiscipline themselves.
And so collaborativeconsequences are this wonderful
tool where you bring them behindthe curtain and you actually
allow them to speak into theirown discipline process.
So that is what collaborativeconsequences are.
That's why they're massivelyeffective.
Number one, because they yourchild has this rich inner world
and they're going to know how tospeak into that world better.
(17:21):
Number two, because by havingagency in this process, they
themselves are going to be moreinvolved, more desiring of it to
work.
And number three, because youreventual goal is that you don't
have to do this anymore, thatyour child's going to do this
and take these steps on theirown.
So that's how we're going toget to that point.
So now that we've kind of gonethrough what collaborative
(17:41):
discipline is and why, orcollaborative consequences are
and why they're effective, Iwant to give you an example from
my own life of two differenttimes that we have deployed
collaborative consequences.
One is a very specificdeploying of collaborative
consequences.
It was one specific iterationof this happening.
Another one has to do withcollaborative consequences
(18:03):
associated just to a generallike a general rule boundary
that we have in our house butthat was determined
collaboratively, and I'll tellyou exactly how we did both of
these and it'll kind of give youa model of how you can walk
through this and do this withyour own kids.
In the first one.
I'll talk about the moregeneral one first.
What we were noticing is thatour kids had a really, really
hard time cleaning up afterthemselves, cleaning up messes,
(18:24):
and it was just leading to a lotof kind of negative association
for my wife and I, because wewere just constantly cleaning,
constantly cleaning up toys,constantly cleaning up the
kitchen, constantly cleaning upcereal bowls and everything else
.
And the first couple of stepsthat we tried to take, I think,
were good.
Our kids were really young atthe time.
This is before we starteddeploying any of this type of
(18:46):
stuff.
We're just let's just get ridof some stuff, let's get rid of
a lot Seven eighths of the toysand that really helped.
But it didn't.
It didn't go all the way.
And especially as our kids gotolder our oldest got older it
became very clear that like itwasn't going to be enough, like
he had to contribute into theprocess.
And now you guys are saying well, how is this related to
consequences?
(19:06):
Well, guys, the consequence ofmaking a mess is that you have
to clean it up.
The consequences here are verysimple.
Right, this might sound headyand convoluted, but you know the
consequences of every action.
The consequence of cussing outyour boss is that you get fired
right.
That's probably a bad examplebecause it's a little bit too
close to punishment, but I mean,like it, it is right.
(19:27):
I guess the better examplewould be the punishment for not
showing up to work is that youget fired right?
Because because if you're notdoing a job, nobody's going to
pay you to not do that job.
I hope maybe in maybe in thework, work from home world, you
can just like not show up.
I've heard of all these storiesof people like having all these
programs that move, all thesemouses.
They have like four computerslined up and the mouse moves on
(19:48):
each one like every minute, andso then the they like work for
four companies.
They don't do anything.
Anyway, this is a longdiversion from our consequences.
Those people need someconsequences.
They need to learn that.
You know, or maybe that's aconsequence of the company,
right, the company has beentrying to cut on labor, blah,
(20:09):
blah, blah, and they're notgiving good benefits and they're
giving cheaper and cheaperwages, and so, and they don't
want to, you know, provide anysort of support to their
employees, and so the result istheir employees.
The consequence is that theiremployees don't want to work for
them.
And so they just kind of phoneit in, they quiet, quit, or they
, you know, fill out anapplication and then have no
intention of ever actually doinganything for them.
So, yeah, you could see how,when we get curious, all of a
(20:30):
sudden the consequences thing itgets a little bit more
convoluted, but it's simple,right?
So in our example back to ourexample like, we're talking
about parenting, we're nottalking about the state of the
American labor force.
In our example of kids, when ourkids were making messes and not
cleaning them up, we were like,okay, we have to move to some
sort of system here where ourkids contributed some way.
(20:51):
And so we pulled my son asideand we said, hey, what do we
need to do to make sure thehouse is clean every evening
before bed?
Do we need to, like, have atimer that we set we clean up at
the end of it?
Should we, you know, before wemove on to the next activity, we
have to clean up the activitythat we did before we, you know,
leave the kitchen.
We have to make sure thatthat's reasonably clean.
(21:12):
Before we go play with friends,we got to make sure, like,
what's going to work for you tohelp.
And he thought about it and hecame up with a solution At the
end of the night.
We're just going to clean everynight, right, we'll just have a
timer.
It goes off half an hour beforebedtime.
We just spend the last halfhour cleaning and then we'll go
to bed.
And we were like we don't thinkthat's going to work.
But rather than saying we don'tthink that's going to work,
(21:34):
let's not do it, we said he hasto be involved to clean up the
toys.
He's going to be pulling teeth.
So instead we said give him theagency.
Okay, that's how we're going todo it.
So that night, at that time,friends could play.
Usually friends can't playduring the day, they can only
(21:55):
play in the evening.
We kind of saw this coming.
He didn't.
Timer goes off.
I think it was actually thenext night.
The first night it was fine.
The next night went off and itwas like no, I really don't want
to do this now.
We're like hey, but we, we gotto do this, but we can make a
different choice for tomorrow.
So we held the boundary, weheld the consequence that he had
established, but it became very.
He did as fast as he possiblycould Went and played with his
friends.
He was very upset about it, buthe wasn't upset at us.
(22:18):
He was upset that he had notforeseen this, and so we said
okay.
Next time we sat down, we said,okay, we, that did not work.
So.
So what are we going to doinstead?
How are we going to keep thehouse clean without doing it in
the way that we did yesterday,because that didn't work?
So this is the collaborativeconsequences process.
We actually let him have buy-in.
He said well, I want you to tellme when you think would be a
(22:38):
good time to clean, because Ican never predict.
I don't do well with time.
So, self-awareness, right.
Like, not only are we teachingresponsibility, not only are we
teaching team values of makingsure the house is clean, not
only teaching holding boundaries, we're also teaching like, hey,
know your limitations.
He's like yeah, I don't do wellwith time, I don't want to
watch.
Like, when do you think weshould clean up?
(22:59):
And we're like yeah, so weshould probably, before we move
on to the next activity, justpick up what we're doing.
And he's like okay, but what ifthere is the scenario where I
want to come back to it?
Okay, how many times per day.
Do you think that'll happen?
Oh, that probably only happenedonce a day.
Okay, well, once a day we canleave something, but then if
(23:21):
we're going to go on to the nextthing and then we want to leave
that too, we got to go clean upthe first thing.
We can't just have multiplethings sitting out everywhere.
I'm still using that.
I'm still using that.
I'm still using that.
Okay, does that seem fair toyou?
Oh, yeah, seems totally fair.
Next day comes playing withLegos.
I'm still using these, but Iwant to go over here.
I want to do this thing.
We didn't hold an unrealisticboundary because he had made
(23:42):
that call.
No, I, I.
There are going to be timeswhen this happens and if that
had happened, we would haveadjusted right, like we wouldn't
have just been like no, hammerdown, we're absolutely no, no,
and under no certaincircumstances can we change this
.
We already have proven thatwe're willing to make some
adjustments and changes.
So he goes, gets his stuff,plays.
It Turns out that he did wantto do like a combined lego,
(24:03):
magnet, tiles, giant thing,really cool, really fun.
But when it's time to clean upall that, are you still using
the legos?
Yeah, I'm still using them.
Okay, well, we gotta clean themagnet house because we gotta
clean up one of these.
Okay, I'll do the magnet house.
We'll clean up the magnet house, leave the legos, goes on, does
something else.
Well, now he wants to dosomething in the basement and
(24:24):
it's unrelated to upstairs, buthe wants to leave that set up.
It's going to be an obstaclecourse or whatever.
Okay, well, remember, we'reonly allowed to leave one thing
out at a time, thanks to himself.
Okay, all right.
All right, this seems fair,this is working.
Goes upstairs, cleans up theLegos, comes back downstairs,
does the obstacle course At theend of the night.
That night, we had one thingthat was left out.
(24:49):
Whatever that thing was that hewas still using that.
We weren't necessarily that wehad moved on to something else.
He had one thing that's stillleft out.
It was so much easier to belike hey, let's just real quick,
go downstairs before you go toyour friend's house and just mop
this up, or we can do it whenyou get back.
Okay, let's do it when we getback.
Okay, he gets home.
Remember, we said that we weregoing to do this.
(25:09):
So we go down to the base andwe do this.
So this has become aconsequence in our own home.
When we make messes, we cleanthem up and mom and dad help.
We're not just like sittingdown and like letting our kids
clean the whole house Mom anddad help but there is a
consequence.
It was designed collaboratively.
The kid had input into it.
(25:30):
How are we going to make thiswork?
What's the consequence for notdoing it?
We can't move on to the nextthing.
How are we going to hold thoseboundaries?
So this is something that'scontinually happened.
So this wasn't one-off issuethat we had.
This was a continual problemand we set some boundaries and
these kind of are like.
You can see how boundaries andconsequences were kind of like
(25:50):
interchangeably using these ofour.
Like.
You can see how boundaries andconsequences were kind of like
interchangeably using these.
But the whole point here isthat it was collaborative, that
that in order we had to have acollaborative solution to the
problem that looked forwardrather than looking back and was
seeking to be retributive.
So so let's, let's go to thethe next example.
I want to give you one moreexample and then we're going to
call it a day on collaborativeconsequences and we'll come back
(26:11):
with another episode in thefuture more on on this topic,
more on discipline, because Iknow that this has been a really
good topic so far.
The second scenario of, orexample of, how we utilize a
collaborative consequence had todo with TV screen time and we
were having a really tough timetransitioning away from screen
(26:32):
time just really hard.
And so we sat down with my son.
It came time to be done withthe TV one day and he screamed
and he fought and he like threwthe remote across the room or
something.
He huge meltdown and we said,okay, totally get it, it's okay
to be upset, we'll talk aboutthis later.
Not like we'll talk about thislater, but we'll talk about this
later.
Because he knows we do thiscollaborative consequences thing
(26:55):
, we do this collaborativediscipline thing.
We'll talk about this later.
So we go off, we leave and wecome back later and we have this
conversation.
Hey, how are you feeling afterit was time to turn off the TV?
Oh man, I was so mad.
I was so mad at you that youmade me turn off my show.
I really didn't want to turn itoff.
It was right at getting to thegood part and I just didn't want
to turn it off.
And okay.
(27:16):
Well, what do you think wouldhelp in the future for you to
turn it off when it's time toturn off?
Yeah, just let me do whatever Iwant all the time.
That was the first thing thathe said.
Just let me do whatever I wantall the time, then I'll be happy
.
Okay, well, we can't do that.
That's not a solution.
So what's an alternative?
Give me a 10 minute warningnext time.
(27:37):
Okay, we'll give you a 10minute warning next time.
Two days later, same situationscreaming, kicking, fighting
after the 10 minute warning.
So we give him the 10 minutewarning.
He's okay, yeah, that's fine,10 minutes.
Is up, still freaking out.
So that didn't work.
What do you think we should donext time?
Give me a five minute warning,10 minute warning, then a five
minute warning, then then off.
(27:57):
Okay.
Next day, two days later, threedays later, whatever 10 minute
warning, five minute warning.
Kid gets right off.
Wow, that worked.
Yeah, it worked.
Okay.
Well, what should we just dothat every time?
Yeah, let's do that every time.
Lo and behold, a week laterwe've done it for a week.
It's worked.
It doesn't work.
Totally loses it Freaks out,throwing, doing all this stuff.
(28:18):
All right, so it stoppedworking.
Sometimes, something works for awhile, but then it stops
working.
So what do you think we shoulddo if that happens again?
Well, it won't happen again.
I.
If that happens again?
Well, I won't happen again.
I won't do that again, Ipromise.
Yeah, we get it.
We know that you don't thinkthat you're going to do it again
right now.
We believe you, believe yourkids, we believe you.
We know that you're not doingthis on purpose.
(28:41):
We know that you're not tryingto make our lives hard.
We know that you don't want todo this.
So what's the consequence,though?
Should we maybe like not do itthe next day?
Should we like put the remotesomewhere?
What do we got to do?
Well, if I do that, next time,I think I should have no TV for
a month.
A month, buddy.
(29:01):
That's a long time.
What if we just do like threedays?
No, not long enough, dad.
A week he said it like it waslike the end of the world.
Okay, a week.
Next time that happens, we'lldo a week.
He said it like it was like theend of the world.
Okay, a week.
Next time that happens, we'lldo a week.
We'll just take the remote away, we'll put it somewhere for a
week.
Cool, okay, let's do it.
Three weeks go by, two weeks goby, not an issue, not one.
(29:23):
He remembered I don't want tolose it for a week.
I set that boundary.
Then it happens Eventually,goes down some YouTube rabbit
hole and just started a videoafter the five minute warning,
freaks out, loses it, gets supermad, gets even more upset
because he knows the consequenceis coming Take the remote away.
Hey, so what are we going to doabout this?
(29:45):
We did not like pull it awayand hide it in that moment.
That's it right.
Like we didn't like yellanything, we just like let it be
.
And then the remote was gone.
He's like where's the remote?
The next day?
And we're like hey, buddy,remember we said a week and I
kid you not.
This kid was like yeah, Ithought that would happen.
Okay, I'm cool with that.
Where's my Legos, where's myblocks?
Whatever goes off in place?
(30:07):
Parents oftentimes call me aliar on the internet when I talk
about stuff like this.
They oftentimes call me a liaron the internet when I talk
about stuff like this.
Like no way, no way in hell,did your kid do that?
Is that how it went down?
That's exactly how it went downA hundred percent.
The reason that it went downthat way, though, is because he
had so much buy-in in theprocess and, by the way, like so
many parents get to that thefirst day, like, think about how
(30:30):
much success we had before weever had to run into that.
We had like literally over amonth and a half of like very
few, like two or three meltdowns, and each time it was like
let's reassess the process, andand maybe there was one or two
interspersed in there where wedidn't change the plan I'm not
talking about those, becauseit's not necessarily relevant
(30:52):
for this podcast episode, but,like those ones, usually it was
like okay, but he hasn't eaten,but he didn't sleep last night,
but like he just got hurt.
Like there was other stuffgoing on, and we tried to be
understanding of that, and thislashing out has nothing to do
with, like, the addiction to thescreen.
It just has to do with, or thedopamine letdown, whatever.
Like he, this is actually justlike unrelated, and so we're
(31:12):
understanding in those times.
We're not like every singletime he makes a mistake.
We're like okay, what's theconsequence going to be?
Like it's not like that.
Like you give your kids a lotof leeway, I think.
But once you do have to do thatand you have to set that down,
we're consistent, we followthrough and then we process, and
that process literally led tomy son being completely fine
(31:33):
with a very significantconsequence losing tv privileges
for a week.
Because he was the one who cameup with it, he was the one who
decided on it and then he wasthe one who was going to fulfill
it.
And when he got it back I thinkwe only did six days we weren't
like trying to get give it back, but like it's six days later.
It was like this he's he'slearned what he wanted to learn
(31:54):
from this and and like we hadsomething that we had to do and
he it was going to be a loteasier for him to watch it.
So we did it right.
We weren't like super, supercrazy about this, but we gave it
back to him.
We're like yeah, man, just likenext time, a week again sound
good.
That seemed like a long time.
Yeah, that's fine.
And it didn't like we went likesix months and every time he
would just kind of okay, I gotit, like it's cool.
(32:16):
And a lot of punishmentadvocates come on here and
they're like, yeah, but if youhad just done that the first
time, you would have like,eliminated all of them.
No, because you don'tunderstand.
He had to be the one wholearned how to set that boundary
.
How did this is what I want himto do as an adult.
This is what most adultsstruggle to do.
This is why they're obsessedwith their phones.
Right, like I am too.
Like if I could set limits onmy phone, like my son could set
limits on the TV, my goodness,my life would be better, because
(32:39):
that, again, is the ultimategoal.
So this is why collaborativeconsequences are so
transformative.
This is why they work.
And if you are sitting hereright now and going, this is the
way I want to parent, this isthe podcast for you, because
this is the type of stuff wetalk about.
If you have a highly sensitivekid, again, the imposition of
just like top-down authoritydoes not work with highly
sensitive kids.
It just does not.
It will not work.
(33:00):
You bring them in on thecollaborative problem-solving
process.
They're going to tell youthere's a whole inner world
going on there.
They're going to make it somuch easier on you.
So that's.
This has been an episode of thewhole parent podcast.
I always am supposed to saysomething at the end here about
subscribing to the podcast.
Go to the show notes.
You can look at all thechapters and stuff like that.
We're trying to do a muchbetter job with the show notes
now, and by we I mean me.
(33:20):
The whole parent is just me,all by myself and sometimes my
wife who talks to me about it.
But if you are interested inthis, make sure that you're on
the email list so that you canget email updates, not only
about new podcasts but alsoabout new stuff we have going on
.
You'll get like a link to thathighly sensitive quiz and stuff
like that those on the emaillist did or will, and yeah, you
can just connect.
It'll be a good time.
(33:41):
But anyway, that's been thisepisode.
Make sure you rate and review,subscribe on Apple and Spotify,
otherwise I'll see you in thenext one, take care.
Popular Podcasts
Boysober
Have you ever wondered what life might be like if you stopped worrying about being wanted, and focused on understanding what you actually want? That was the question Hope Woodard asked herself after a string of situationships inspired her to take a break from sex and dating. She went "boysober," a personal concept that sparked a global movement among women looking to prioritize themselves over men. Now, Hope is looking to expand the ways we explore our relationship to relationships. Taking a bold, unfiltered look into modern love, romance, and self-discovery, Boysober will dive into messy stories about dating, sex, love, friendship, and breaking generational patterns—all with humor, vulnerability, and a fresh perspective.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com