Consequences: From Toddler Tantrums to Teen Transgressions
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You and I have been lied to because along the way people told us that the most effective way to discipline your child is to give them consequences.

but you have done that with your strong will child, notice it just usually doesn't work. With toddlers and younger children, you probably spend half your day admonishing, stop that, don't touch that, listen to me, put that down, don't wake up your brother, don't run away from me, hold my hand, sit down, stand up, put your shoes on, let's go, stop, don't climb on that. And when predictably your toddler or young child doesn't listen,

You try to put them in timeout and then have to repeat a tougher consequence when they predictably don't stay in timeout only to get more aggravated. Or you use the always popular if-then warning or bribe. If you don't stop that, put that down, leave your brother alone, then you will lose your favorite toy, snack, dessert, activity.

Or if you do what I say, if you are a good boy or girl, then I will give you that toy, snack, etc. It's exhausting. Consequences are not the best option here.

Maybe you have a child who is acting silly in class and you and teachers can have endless talks with this child about his or her behavior. Send him or her to the principal's office and the child will nod and agree to do better, but nothing changes until you realize this is not a behavior issue. This is a social skills issue.

Our kids tend to struggle to connect with their peers, so they act silly because that's their desperate way of trying to make friends. When you get to the root inside, you can change the outward behavior. And when you get to the teen and tween years,

It's more about internal motivation than external motivation. Good luck taking something away from middle schooler. They're just going to stare at you like, what are you even doing?

It's awesome with these kids. That said, there are times when consequences are necessary and they actually do work. And that is what we are going to discuss on this episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast. So welcome, this is Kirk Martin, founder of CelebrateCalm.com. Sometimes we as parents actually associate discipline with consequences or even punishment.

But discipline means to teach, to show your child, mainly by modeling it for them. And good discipline should lead to a closer, more trusting relationship with your child.

Discipline is not something you do to your child. It is something you do for your child. So before we get to some examples of consequences we use successfully with our strong-willed son, let's first look at why consequences don't work that well to change human behavior. First, consequences are necessary and helpful, but

but they are very limited in effectiveness.

Consequences merely let your child know, "Hey, that was wrong. You messed up." But your kids already know they messed up from a very young age. That's why they lie to cover up their shame. See, it's not even an integrity issue. It's not a behavior issue. It's an impulse control issue. You said not to do something, but they're impulsive, and then they did it, and they realized it was wrong, and now they don't want to get in trouble, so they lie.

What they need help with is knowing how to make different choices next time. They need tools, right? It's like we have a little construction project going on here, adding a mudroom because we have a very small house and no closet space or storage space. And so what if I came home at the end of the day and I noticed the carpenter hadn't really done any work on the mudroom?

Would I say, you know what, I'm not paying you, you're fired. But then he's like, but you never gave me a nail gun or a hammer to use. See, when you give the carpenter or the child a tool to be successful rather than just punishing for failure,

it works much better. See, a child who gets in trouble for not completing his classwork doesn't need a consequence, right? Like you lose recess. That doesn't fix anything. It doesn't get to the root of the issue, right? They don't need a consequence any more than someone with poor vision needs a consequence for not reading.

The child needs some tools in class like movement, music, and rhythm to help his brain process information more effectively. And that older person just needs reading glasses.

Because look, if you don't give people tools, they just get frustrated and your kids will begin to internalize, I'm a bad kid. I'm stupid. We don't want that. Look, kids don't always have the reasoning ability to stop before acting and say, oh yeah, a couple nights ago my parents said if I did that wrong, then I would lose something.

See, they're too impulsive and they don't make those decisions when they're young. So we've got to go beyond that. Think about this. Most human behavior, good and bad, is not rational. It is driven by something emotional underneath the surface. And think about this logically. There are dire and deadly consequences for drinking too much alcohol, doing drugs, eating unhealthy food, not exercising, being a workaholic, smoking, speeding.

You can die from these behaviors and yet rational humans do them every day. Why? Because these consequences don't address the internal emotional psychological needs so the consequences fail.

Also, strong-willed kids don't care about losing things. They only care about losing their ability to make independent decisions. This is critically important for you to understand about these kids.

What they value is not always what you value. They value autonomy, independence, agency. They want to do it their way. They don't mind touching the hot stove. So consequences aren't a deterrent to them. The consequences are actually part of the process of learning.

they don't mind losing the things they just don't want to lose that ability to use their brains to try to make their own decisions in this case giving them ownership of their choices within your boundaries is way more motivating than bribes or threatening and that's why you have to understand with strong will kids

I just encourage you go through that program if you haven't done it before the Stop Power Struggles with a Strong Willed Child because we show you how to do this ownership thing

And when you do that, watch what happens. I have ownership of my choices. I'm internally motivated. And now I will just get all this stuff done because I want to. And you don't even have to go to consequences. Look, you can tell your daughter that if she doesn't pick up her toys, you're going to take them to Goodwill. And next thing you know, she will put them in a bag and she'll be walking down the street to Goodwill waving to you.

Most consequences don't even address the underlying issue. The outward behavior we see often has nothing to do with the real issue. It's just an outward manifestation of something going on inside. And I want to get to the root of the issue, not just react to the outward behavior. Here's an example. We get this question all the time.

Well, what consequence can we give our tween, teen, daughter, or son for not doing their homework? And my answer is you can give any consequence you want, but you can't consequence a kid into caring about school. What will get your child to work harder is if we spark that internal motivation. Think about this. A child who has difficulty with writing projects, especially if they have ADHD or dyslexia, for example,

can't be consequenced into doing better. They need some tools to get those thoughts from head to paper. And I know as a parent of a young child, right? I guarantee you rely on consequences way too much. I would put way more energy into this. Whenever you say no to something inappropriate, always say yes to something appropriate they can do.

Just try this today. Try to switch from all the things just saying like, don't do that, no, stop, stop, stop to what can they do? Get that brain firing, give them missions, make it a challenge. Hey, bet you can't do this backwards or blindfolded. Hey, don't tell dad. But look, all those things are really motivating.

create successes instead of punishing failure. One of my favorite ways to discipline teach toddlers and young kids is to play rewind and replay when they make a bad choice. So say they walk into the kitchen and they take a sibling's toy.

Well, now we can make it kind of a game and say, hey, you need to walk backwards out of the kitchen and then re-enter and I'll show you how to handle the situation differently. See, that's teaching. You are actually role-playing, which is highly effective with kids.

Because you are practicing doing it the right way. You are practicing different ways to handle these situations. And if you want to take it a step further, which you should, you and your spouse can start doing rewind and replay when you yell, lecture, or lose your cool. Because that's going to happen. You say, oops, I just messed up. Then you walk backwards out of the room.

reset yourself and then walk back in and handle the situation in a calm authoritative way. See that will change behavior in your home very quickly because you as the parents are actually modeling this. I mess up, I rewind, reset and then I do it differently. Okay here are three tough consequences for your kids.

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Okay, number one, and this is one of my favorite tools ever. Just do what you said you were going to do. Keep your promise. And this is foundational. I want you to simply do what you promised to do. And this is a tough discipline tool I used in the mornings to get Casey to school on time. I call it time for time. Now, caveat.

I almost always try the softer approaches first, like waking child up, hiding breakfast outside, making them forage for their food, doing a treasure hunt, connecting with kids. All of those things are extremely helpful. And I try to do those first before I go with kind of a hardcore approach.

But you can use this with your kids. Just make sure it's age appropriate and you be the judge of that. So I would say, hey, Casey, we leave every morning at 7.23 a.m. sharp. By the way, I always make my time limits very interesting because it tends to stick in the brain a little bit more. That specificity for kids, especially neurodivergent ADHD kids, really important. Hey, Casey, we leave every morning at 7.23 a.m. sharp.

Every minute you are late getting in the car costs me a minute of my time and my time is valuable. It's a little bit of demonstrating self-respect there. I respect my time. I promise you that every minute you take from me, you will choose to forfeit 15 minutes of your screen time at night. Choice is up to you. Let me know if you need some help.

Notice the tone. Firm, even, matter of fact. It's not lecturing about how important it is to show up on time. And if you can't be in time in life, you're never going to be successful. I'm not going through all of that. It's firm, even, matter of fact. It's very, very clear. It may even be a little bit more stern this time. Stern isn't mean. It just conveys firmness.

I'm serious about this. Don't mess with me. Don't mess with my time. See, that provides clarity. I like the language here. I promise you means you can count on me. And I switch that around. I change that because a lot of parents had a hard time with like, well, I just don't like enforcing consequences. It sounds so harsh. And it's like,

Well, I'm just keeping my promise to you because I promised if you did this, this is what the outcome would be. And you can even change it from the word consequence. I like saying, hey, here's the outcome. You have a choice to make and I'm good either way with your choice. I want you to know if you make this choice, this is a positive outcome. And if you make that choice, that's a negative outcome. Totally up to you. See, I'm not trying to own my child's behavior. I'm putting it in their control.

court so they have ownership of this. So I keep my promise and I like this language, "You will have chosen" because your child does have a choice here. There's nothing deeper going on here. I give the child some tools but this is very clear. So when I said that, Casey's response of course was, "Why do I lose 15 minutes for one minute of your time? That's not fair."

And the answer to that is I don't play fair. I play to win. And honestly, my time is more important than his when he was a kid. So I don't go the consequences route very often, but when I do, I make sure it's meaningful. I'm not going to be like, hey, for every minute you take from me, you will have chosen to take a minute from you because then your kids, how many of your kids like they calculate the consequence?

And they're like, oh, okay. If that's a consequence, I'll just go ahead and take the consequence because I really just wanted to do what I wanted to do anyway. So I hope that makes sense. So here's...

Here's how it worked. So the first morning we tried this, he got in the car three minutes late. I didn't lecture. I didn't get on him. I wasn't aggravated. I simply held up my phone and he immediately got upset because my phone said you're three minutes late. I don't like doing a lot of talking with kids when they're upset or when these things happen because it tends to infuriate them.

And here's his response. Seriously, dad, three minutes late. That's good for me. And he was right. That was progress. And you could say this time. This is an option. You know, I'm going to give you a do over because this was the first morning we tried this. Tomorrow, this same choice will cost you 45 minutes of your time.

Now, I could offer to help him with more tools in the morning, but you don't have to, and I didn't. So I simply said, yeah, that's better for sure. You still chose to lose 45 minutes of your screen time tonight.

Needless to say the car ride to his school was tense and uncomfortable and that's normal and okay You know what he said on the way? I don't know why anybody would think you're a parenting expert This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard and again, you don't need to react. Well, that's just rude Stop taking everything so personally, right? He's a kid who's angry at himself and

because he made a bad choice. I don't have to take that personally, and I choose not to. So I didn't react at all.

That night, I simply reminded him that he'd chosen to lose 45 minutes of his screen time that morning. And he, of course, said, thank you for being consistent following through, Father. It makes me feel safe as a child. Yeah, that didn't happen. And that's okay. It's okay that your kids are going to be mad at you sometimes. So I just said, hey, see you in the morning at 723.

And he did much better after that. So here's the principle I want you to practice over and over again. Simply do what you said you were going to do with no drama, no lectures, no resentment, no talking about your childhood and all that you do for your kids. Become the trusted parent they can count on. And I asked Casey about this. Casey's grown now. I asked him for his perspective this summer because this summer I completely reworked

We have a program called Discipline That Works When Consequences Don't. And it used to be two hours. I just expanded it to four and a half hours because I really wanted to answer literally every single question you have. And so I asked them, hey, which tough discipline tools were most impactful to you as a kid?

And he said this time for time lesson was, quote his words, harsh but valuable. And he said, when you kept your promise to me and I had a meltdown or tried to draw you into my misery, you just stayed firm. And that has served me well in my adult life. And in this new program, I give you dozens and dozens of disciplined tools and scripts for the hardest situations. Here are what we go through.

Tantrums, I teach you how to stop whining with one word. Getting your kids to listen without repeating yourself 50 times. Lying, stealing, sneaking things at night. Siblings roughhousing, we go through that for the first time. Kids being late, morning routine, dinner time. And then the really tough ones, kids being aggressive, hitting their siblings, hitting you, being destructive around the house, calling you the B word, kicking the back of the car seat.

I wanted to give you a step-by-step instruction. So I'll just say this. If you struggle with anything with discipline, get the Get Everything Package. If you already have that, this program is already downloaded to your app. So listen to this because it's really, really good. If you don't, we've got a sale at CelebrateCalm.com. Okay, second example here.

of a really good consequence that I liked. And this was for swearing because I remember when Casey came home and he wanted to try out something his friends had been exploring and he started swearing. Not calling us names, but just swearing around the house. And it didn't work out that well for him.

My response was not to be shocked or outraged, but kind of wondering what took them so long to talk like that. And look, if you have a strong willed child, you have every right to say, you know what, I'm going to wash your mouth out with soap. But they're most likely going to say, oh, can we use Irish spring? They will call your bluff. So I just said, hmm.

So what you're telling me, Casey, is that you are ready for adult responsibilities since you are now using adult words. I'm really happy about that because mom and I could use some help around here. So this weekend, while your friends who taught you these words are playing... By the way, I don't know if they taught him or if he taught them.

I'm okay with either one. It's just how it works, right? So while your friends are playing, having fun while they're on their screens, you'll be helping us scrub toilets, do grout work on the shower, running endless errands to boring stores, picking up dog poop in the yard, trimming hedges and picking up leaves, cleaning out the garage, going to the grocery store, baking meals, and all kinds of fun adult activities.

I'm really looking forward to you helping so welcome to the adult world and that had the predictable effect on him that he stopped doing that number three

This was a good one. When Casey began driving, he had a strict curfew with very clear consequences. So one night when he came home late, I was sitting in the living room reading and I didn't even look up. I didn't question. I didn't lecture. I didn't create any drama. I just said, hey, I hope you had a good time. Be sure to put your keys and driver's license on the counter.

He, of course, tried to argue and make excuses why he was late. Of course he did, because what else are they going to do?

But just because your child wants to create drama doesn't mean you have to participate. And I'm not trying to be mean to you, but some of you, you just actively participate in that. And you don't have to. That's a choice you get to make. And I know your kids are difficult. I know you're frustrated. I know your wits end. But don't participate.

And look, I like very clear things like this. As long as you have clear consequences and reasonable expectations, just stick to that. And it's kind of, you know, it reminds me of this. This is a really important example, actually.

of putting the ball in the child's court, something I really love doing, and teaching them to be responsible for themselves. See, that's my whole goal in discipline. It's not for me to be responsible for my child's behavior.

It's to teach them how to be responsible for their own behavior. See the best discipline is not me imposing things on a child. It is a child learning self-discipline. So Casey came to me once and he said, "Dad, I deserve a later curfew." And I said, "Of course you think you do. What teenager doesn't want a later curfew?"

So my question to you, Casey, is what can you do to earn a later curfew?

And he never really came back and talked to me, but I noticed he started coming home early. His curfew had been nine o'clock and he started coming home at 8.52, 8.57, 8.54. And after a few times, I asked him, I said, hey, what's up with this whole coming home early thing? And here were his exact words. Dad, I wanted to prove to you that I could control myself so you don't have to.

I didn't want you to have to worry about me getting home on time. Let me say that again. I wanted to prove to you that I could control myself so you wouldn't have to. And I thought either this is the most manipulative kid on the planet, partly, right? It's called influence. Or that's really good wisdom. And I remember saying, you know what, Case? Your new curfew? No.

9:15 and he's like seriously dad I came home early like eight nights in a row and all I get is an extra 15 minutes and I said you know what case you keep doing that and you keep showing me that you can control yourself and

you will have a much later curfew. But I just went in increments. And that became the basis, actually. He has a program for kids called, that's in the Get Everything package, it's called Straight Talk for Kids. And he teaches your kids how to control their own impulses and emotions.

That's what we're ultimately after, giving kids tools to learn how to control their own behavior. So here's my honest advice. Spend a lot more energy creating successes. Give your kids ownership of how they do things. Spending a lot more time affirming their good choices. But when there are times you have to be tough, the kids being aggressive, kicking the back of the seat, being outright defiant,

Use the scripts and action steps, right? Even firm matter of fact, do what you said you were going to do. Keep your promises. Look, when you do start doing this, you will change your family very quickly and you could do it for a fraction of the cost of therapy, which I like. So let's practice this week.

And by the way, that rewind and replay, I'll encourage you. I just thought of this. Do that with a teenager sometime. Like when you get upset or a tween, older kid, just model and say, you know what? I just messed up. And just walk backwards out of the room. They're going to look at you like you're a freak, which is the way they look at you anyway. So you may as well model for them that.

how you reset yourself and do it over. Okay, let's practice this. You should have an opportunity to do some kind of discipline within minutes of listening to this podcast. Hey, thanks for listening. Thanks for sharing this podcast with others. Love you all. We'll talk to you soon. Bye-bye.