Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck. And people want to know about setting consequences for teenagers.
Parenting tips for consequences are part of my specialty. So, we're going to talk in this
video about what makes good consequences, what makes a bad consequence. How to use positive
consequences and negative consequences for teenagers and what to do about phones. So
for years, I was a treatment foster parent for youth ages 12 to 18 and I've raised 4
children of my own all through the teenage years. And there is something that I have
learned. And that is there's definitely such a thing as a bad consequences. People do some
pretty manipulative stuff and pretty mean stuff. And the more digital our society gets,
the worst it gets. So, this is going to be a great video to discuss how to use positive
consequences, negative consequences, what make a good consequence and what to do to
not manipulate about phones. There are 3 factors that make a good consequence. Number 1, keep
it simple and predictable. So, consequences don't need to be elaborate or ultra creative
to be effective. In fact, sometimes I think parents do that for their own benefit. Doesn't
help the child. In fact, the more predictable and simple a consequence is, the better. In
our family, we have 4 negative consequences, that's it. Just 4 unless something is decided
in a family meeting or some other time. Number 2, relevant. The consequence needs to have
some sort of relevance for the child. That doesn't mean it needs to chage every time.
Because remember, we only have 4 negative consequences. But it can't be punitive. It
can't be something that you're doing just to hurt the person. In fact, consequences
don't have to hurt. That's one of the things that makes them so relevant. Did they teach
the child something? Did they really learn something? So, that brings me to the third
point about what makes a good consequence. And that third point is it should build character.
A good consequence should be something that builds character and leads the child to improve
in some way and to go into their own head and problem solve. Because that problem solving
is going to be future confidence for not having the same problem they just had. They need
to learn cause and effect. If the consequence teaches cause and effect in that predictable
relevant way, then it's also going to teach cause and effect and development for the child.
So, let's talk about positive consequences. You know, so often people just immediately
think of negative consequences and I have talked already a little about negative consequences
although we are going to spend more time talking about negative consequences and what makes
good negative consequences for teenagers. But let's talk about positive consequences.
Now, we don't want to be bribing. Bribing is not a good consequence. So, what do you
do for positive consequences? Well, what you do is you praise. Sincere praises is what
I call it. The type where you look in their eyes and you tell them what they did that
was really great. That is a positive consequence that means something to the heart. Now, I'm
the self-government lady. This is the Teaching Self-Government channel. And Self-Government
is about having a change of heart. So, it's important when we show somebody that they
did something well or we acknowledge their effort at trying to do something that we'd
look into their heart with our eyes and we give them with sincere honest praise. Another
type of positive consequences is occasional motivators. So, we all get motivated by certain
things. Make a list of what motivates your child. Does your teenager get motivated by
free time? Do they get motivated by a little bit of game time? Doing stuff with friends.
What is it that motivates them? Make a list and then occasionally pull out that list of
motivators and use it to help them make plans for themselves as they're trying to conquer
some of their troubling behaviors or get to the next level on doing something positive
for themselves. I know that we did really great on motivators in our house because sometimes
my son will set a goal for himself like exercise every day. And he'll put it on a sticky note,
put it by the light switch on the wall and he'll say, "Exercise every day for a month
and then get ice cream." He's 16 years old. He can buy ice cream whenever he wants. He
could just take the car and go. But he's setting himself a goal. After a whole month of exercising
every day, he's going to go out and get himself some special ice cream somewhere. And I think,
how awesome for him that he knows that he can create a motivator for himself. And he's
done a really good job, and the exercising as well as motivating himself to do a lot
of other really positive behaviors. Another type of positive consequence that means a
lot to teenagers is natural consequences. Things that are freedom-oriented. They're
based on truth. Okay? So, if you establish more trust with the person then you usually
get more freedoms. Explain that to them. "Hey, when you're following instructions a lot,
accepting no answers, you're helping out without being asked, we have more trust in you with
that point. And just a byproduct of that, a natural positive consequence is going to
be that you're going to end up getting more freedoms. When you want to go do something
with friends, probably we'll be more open to that unless we have specific reasons or
reservations why you shouldn't. So, explain to them about what the natural consequences
are. As well as those synthetic ones that we already talked about. So, now we're going
to talk about negative consequences that are good for teenagers. But before I do that,
I want you to know there is a lot more information about these consequences as well as the skills
needed to actually govern yourself in the Teaching-Self Government Parenting course.
The teaching self-government parenting course is on the website teachingselfgovernment.com.
There's also some links that will take you to that site in the bottom description of
this video. So, find those if you're interested in self-government and what other skills you
could be teaching your teenager. So, let's talk about the negative consequences. In our
family, like I said, we keep it simple. We have 4. The first negative consequence that
we use is for almost everything. It is chores. Why do we use chores? Well, because work is
the antidote for a sick character. Also, when a person does chores, then they can get done
with their rehab experience or repentance or whatever you want to call it quickly. It
doesn't follow them around the whole day like taking something away does. It also doesn't
manipulate them because they have to choose to accept it. They have to choose to do it.
If you don't give a person the opportunity to accept their negative consequence, they
won't ever learn to master themselves. It will always be about you against them. In
our family, I wanted my children to govern themselves and take responsibility for themselves.
So, we help them learn the skill of accepting consequences and gave them the opportunity
to accept their negative consequences calmly and with a good heart. So, work is the antidote
for a sick character. Once a person is calm and can accept their consequence, then they
can go and work. Their mind is free at that time. This is a georgic principle. Their mind
is free at the time to think because they're doing may be a minimal task. They might also
be doing a task that allows them to work on their prefrontal cortex or problem-solving
development because that's where we problem-solve --in the front part of the brain. So, work
is a great thing for them. Work is one of the number one things that builds confidence
in children. I got lots of stories, success stories, and stuff that would prove that.
Also, people often worry. "Well, if I have my child do extra chores for negative consequence,
won't they hate work?" No. They won't hate work unless you hate work and unless you think
it's a bad thing. A negative consequence doesn't have to be bad. It's just something you do.
If I say to my 16-year-old, "Porter, just now, you didn't follow instructions because
you didn't keep a calm face, voice and body and you started talking back. What you should've
done was the steps to following instructions and you should've disagreed appropriately.
Since you chose not to do that, you've earned an extra chore." He'll look at me and say,
"Okay. What's my chore?" And I'll say, "For your extra chore, I need you to go around
the house and get all the house garbages and take them out, replace the liners and all
the garbage cans, okay?" And he'll say okay. And he'll just go do it. Because it's like,
"What? That doesn't take very long. I'm 16-years old. That's not a big deal." Some chores are
smaller, some chores are bigger. You can choose but just an extra chore. Super easy. You can
remember it every time. You don't have to be ultra creative and they don't have to have
anxiety about what's coming because you're doing some sort of a teaching interaction.
So, what about those other 3 negative consequences? Well, we use 3 different negative consequences
for when a person goes out of instructional control. That means they're not willing to
follow any instructions from parents and they're probably having a teenage tantrum of sorts.
Maybe they're ignoring. Maybe they're yelling, pouting. Getting super depressed, something
like that because they didn't get something their way. Then we do something with them
called the rule of 3. I can't train you on that in this particular video. What I need
you to do is have you go to the Teaching Self-Government parenting course to learn that. So, if you
go to teaching self-government.com, then you can learn how to do the rule of 3. But there
are 3 different negative consequences that we use during. And they all are for character
development and problem-solvinge development. So, we keep it simple. 4 things. So what about
phones? See, what everybody does with teenagers is they say, "You're being rude, give me your
phone. You've done something wrong, give me your phone. You didn't come home on time,
give me your phone." This is the thing that everybody is using because all the teenagers
want a phone. And the parents feel like that's the main power button. "If I take away the
phone, they will feel the pain." If we could be clear about something, a negative consequence
is not necessarily about feeling pain. It's just about learning cause and effect. You
could like doing problem-solving exercises and that's okay. Because it still teaches
cause and effect. You still did something you weren't originally planning on. But do
we need to take things away to try to hurt our children? I don't recommend it. Now, this
doesn't mean that there's never a time to take a phone because there absolutely is.
But my recommendation is don't take it for every little thing. Because then you are just
manipulating the child. Now, I want to talk about phones for a quick minute. Now, this
is just bonus material. Some of you are already ready probably to move on to the next video.
But if this interests you, this is for you. So, before you give a child a phone, make
sure they're ready for it. Which means they can control themselves. They can self-govern.
There's a video I'm going to suggest you watch after this video called "What Is Self-Government?"
so that you can what level your child needs to be at before they can actually get a phone.
In my family, they have to be able to control themselves which means there's 4 basics skill
they have to have. They have to know how to communicate calmly and effectively. And they've
got to be able to give themselves a no answers and give themselves instructions and follow
through with their own selves as the director. If they can't do that, then that device can
control them. So, don't give to them unless they're ready. That would be the first mistake.
And that's another reason why parents get so frustrated at the phone because the child
isn't ready. They're on it too much. They're disconnecting from the family. So, then they
just start pulling that phone all the time. Because "Do phones lead to more selfish behaviors?"
And the answer is yes, they do. Because it's stimulation and it changes the way that the
brain is wired. So, we do have to be careful about how much stimulation we're having our
children have. Especially because we're not really sure what it's doing to their brains
at their levels of development. We do know it increases anxiety, stress, oftentimes depression.
Causes sleeplessness, stuff like that. We do know those things. They have studied them.
Neurologists have done studies on adolescent brains. And they know there are things going
on there and they also know that the digital world is playing into it. But exactly pinpointing
it. They haven't given us definitive answers yet. Okay. So, what do you do about the phone
then? You don't give it to them until they're ready. And if for some reason, there is some
sort of violation that happens, they're watching things on the phone that they shouldn't, they're
going away without being asked. And they're getting into risky behaviors perhaps or their
communication and connection to the family is suffering then you pull them aside, you
have a planning meeting. You pre-teach them and you say, "This is what I see that's happening.
We got to come up with a solution for how to stop this or how to control this. And so,
what suggestions do you have?" And see what they come up with. And then you can say, "I
have another suggestion. If we can't get this under control, we're going to have to not
have the phone for a while. Because since you started using the phone, I've noticed
the problem with this, this, this." And so, we're going to have a little test period to
see how we do. And if it's still continues to be a problem, then we'll have to remove
the phone until you got yourself really in a place where it's not goign to control you
but you are going to control it. And then that's when you would take that phone away
as a negative consequence. You would prepare them ahead of time. This is the most just.
It's not manipulative. It's predictable and it shows them that you actually really care
abou them. Not that you're just trying to hurt them. Which is so many negative consequences
end up giving the message of. So, if you've like this video, I know you're going to love
the next one. It's called "What is Self-Government?". Go there. Learn more about self-government.
Go to some of the links below in the description if you want to find more resources for self-government
and learn how to teach it in your home too.