Hi, I'm Dr. Paul Jenkins a child and family psychologist and I'm here today
to help you know how to come up with effective consequences that do not require cooperation.
I'll give you the psychology first because that's important to understand. But then I've
got an effective tool that I want to share with you a little later. So, stick around for that.
The first thing to understand from a psychological standpoint is the interplay between control
and maturity. Now, when I say control, I mean control over your own life and think about it, that goes
from zero no control up to a hundred percent all the control. Keep control in mind somewhere while
we talk about maturity. The most common way we think about maturity is how grown-up you are.
So, at birth, how much control do you have over your own life?
Hardly any, right? You can make a big noise and a big stink. That's about it. How about as an adult?
Now, if you're an adult you've probably got some small prints some disclaimers running through
your head at this point. But when I ask teenagers for example, how much control do the adults have?
"Oh, 100 percent", okay, so let's just go with what they're saying for a moment. As an adult ideally
you have full control over your own life. So, think about it, as you gain maturity you also pick up
control. The more mature you are the more control you have over your own life.
We okay with that so far? Now, here's what's going to change it and make it so powerful.
We're not talking about age. Age is only one of the ways that we measure maturity. But think about it,
we all know adults who are pretty immature. You know a few don't you and we all know young people
who are pretty precocious. They're quite mature in a lot of ways. What do we mean when we say someone
is immature or that they're very mature? See, we're talking about responsibility and we're talking
about moral decision making and we're talking about their ability to cooperate and interact
with other people. So, let's simplify this. I'm going to break it into three stages for you. These are
important when we come back to the consequences. Stage one. Stage one is the least mature. At stage
one we tend to be selfish and self-centered. We tend to be very focused on what I want it becomes
a very demanding thing. At stage one we're throwing tantrums or fighting or screaming for what we want.
Sound familiar? Yeah. And two-year-olds are really good at this because they're immature.
But notice this a teenager can be pretty good at stage one too. I have seen some doozies
of tantrums thrown by teenagers or even adults. So, it's about stage not age. Now let's go to stage two.
Stage two is kind of middle of the road. Stage two is where we stop fighting and start cooperating.
This is a key to coming up with effective consequences so keep that in mind for a second.
At stage two we don't want any trouble. We want to keep the peace. So we're going to go along and
comply and try to help out where we can. Stage two is a lot more pleasant and you get to have
more control if you're on stage two. Stage three is the highest level of maturity. That's where we
truly take responsibility for our own actions. We take initiative. I love that word. It means that we
understand what needs to happen and we do it without somebody having to ask us to do it.
This is a much higher level of development. At stage three we have empathy which means we
understand and care how other people feel and how our behavior might impact them.
We engage in service and we make good moral choices at stage three. Now, it's pretty uncommon
for parents to come to me as a professional psychologist and say, "Doc, can you help my kid
is so mature?", doesn't happen. Usually, they come in and say, "My kids should be behaving better and
obeying and being respectful but they're not", and they're all frustrated because their kids are on stage one.
So, what I find myself doing as a professional psychologist a lot is helping parents understand
what to do if their kids on stage one and that might be what you're wondering about too.
When we're talking about consequences. Consequences are important on stage one and on stage two. Stage
three, you don't have to worry about it too much because they're kind of taking care of themselves
at stage three. But stage one and two we're going to use consequences. There's an important
difference in the kind of consequences we use on stage one versus stage two and the key is
cooperation. Remember when I was describing the stages you don't even get cooperation until stage two.
At stage one they're refusing to cooperate. They're being defiant. They're going up
against everything that you're trying to do with them so they're not cooperating.
What that means is we have to choose consequences on stage one that do not require cooperation. Now,
I've taken the time to explain the psychology behind it because that's going to help with the
brainstorming. How do we come up with effective consequences that do not require cooperation?
Look, I've done some of the work for you. I've put together a one sheet pdf that will get the juices
flowing as you think about how to come up with these consequences. Just go grab it. Go to the URL
that's on the screen right now drpauljenkins.com/ consequences. I've done some
of the work for you to just get the juices flowing on how you can come up with these. The key here is
what can I enforce 100% whether my kid is on board or not. I have to tell you just a quick story about
a time when our nephew was living with us. He was 13-14 years old at the time big husky kid
who was getting into some trouble at school and whatnot and he came to live with us for the
summer. Well, we had many grand adventures and I remember a time when he was refusing to cooperate
and for a teenager to refuse to cooperate creates a real challenge for parents. We didn't have any
teenagers at the time all of our kids were younger and as he is defiantly just kind of
in my face and refusing to cooperate. I went in and had a little conversation with Vicki and we call
this a parental pow wow. Okay, when mom and dad come together and talk about, "Okay, what are we going to
do about whatever's going on with the kids?", and I went into the bedroom. I still remember just going
in closing the door behind me and I said, "Vicki, he's on stage one", and she's like, "You think?", the
whole neighborhood can hear that with his yelling and screaming and defiance okay and so what we
had to do is come up with some consequences that don't require cooperation. You'll see on the list
that I'm giving you free access to that there's a lot of categories that we don't always think about.
What do we provide? Like services or access. Okay, so Vicki and I started thinking about
we provide access to different spaces in our home. We provide access to electricity. We provide access
to our vehicles. We provide access to equipment in our home. Do you see how this starts to roll out
and not only do we provide that we control access to it and we don't need his cooperation.
So, we're making this whole list right and I would encourage you to do the same.
Start brainstorming. In fact, when you download that list print it out and make a list of your ideas
on the list so that you'll have that ready and available for you
in the moments that you need it. That's when it's hardest to think is when the heat is on.
So let's get those tools into your hands. Remember, the key is what can I enforce 100 percent whether
or not my child is on board. Whether or not they even know what those consequences are going to be.
You know what? I'm going to throw you that one too because sometimes from the kids I've heard, "Hey,
you didn't tell me this was going to happen", and my favorite response
you're on to me. Yeah, I'm not always going to tell you. All you need to know is that every
choice has a consequence. The better my choices the better my consequences. Any questions? And I
always like to flash a little smile, when parents are smiling kids are thinking. Remember, what can
I enforce 100%? Start brainstorming. Make the list. Once again that free cheat sheet is available to you,
drpauljenkins.com/ consequences. I've already started the brainstorming list for you.
Print that out and then put your good ideas on there. You've got this. Now before I turn you loose
sometimes parents ask me, "Yeah, but what if the consequences don't work?".
Usually what they mean is it didn't change my child's behavior. Let's just do a little mental
cleansing here for a minute on the concept of consequences. The very word itself cone
sequence from the latin roots of that word it means it comes with some kind of a following.
It follows something. Consequences are not there to manipulate your kids. Consequences are not there
to make your children do something. Consequences are there because they follow with something else.
Their choice is followed by this thing that comes with it. That's what a consequence is.
So, it's not that consequences work or don't work. It's the consequences come with particular choices.
When we change our own attitude about that it changes the energy that we ca that we have as
we're working with our kids. So, when you're tempted to think that the consequence isn't working
make a little mental shift to say, "Oh, this is simply what comes with that choice", it's not there
to change the choice. Does that help a little bit? I think that little energy shift is going to make
a difference for you as well. Thank you for the good work you're doing as a parent. I'm glad that
you're here on the channel. I hope you're finding it helpful. Remember that free resource go grab
it if you haven't yet, drpauljenkins.com/consequences.
I got your back here.