Posts Tagged “Consequences”

The Difference Between Helping and Enabling

When does “helping” a child become “enabling” a child? It is hard to know where that line is sometimes. As parents, we love our kids and are willing to make sacrifices for them, but can our sacrifices ever send the wrong message to our kids? The answer is yes! We can certainly send unhealthy and unrealistic messages to our kids

What We Can Learn From the Post Office About Parenting

Has this ever happened to you or someone you know? Child: “Mom we need to go to the store tonight! My project is due tomorrow and I need a poster board and some construction paper!” Parent: “How long have you known about this project?” Child: “They told us two weeks ago, but I don’t see what that has to do

What is Parental Debt?

I know of parents that are deep in debt.  Not financial debt, but parental debt.  What is parental debt?  Parental debt, like credit card debt or any other debt, is when you want the reward or benefit of having something right now but (rather than paying for it right now) you put off paying until sometime in the future. How

Loving Relationships Give Consequences Their Power

In the updated Love and Logic Parenting Class – Parenting the Love and Logic Way, Jim and Charles Fay share the following observation, “Our heart breaks every time we see someone falling into the ‘consequence trap.’  Well-meaning parents become ensnared in this trap when they believe that the solution to all of their problems involves finding bigger or better consequences.” 

Is That Consequence Logical?

I hear of parents whose knee-jerk reaction to almost anything that their child does wrong is to take away their child’s cell-phone.  “It’s the only thing they care about”, parents will tell me. “It’s the only thing that makes them do the thing I ask them to do!” Whether the misbehavior is talking back, refusing to do chores, allowing grades

Halloween Candy – Should Parents Take Control?

Halloween is an interesting holiday to say the least. Kids dress up in costumes anywhere from witches to princesses and from superman to zombies. Then, we as parents encourage them to do something that we are opposed to them doing the rest of the 364 days a year – accept candy from strangers. Nonetheless, it is fun to see our

Letting kids fail in the short term can be great to teach kids responsibility

There we were, at WalMart on a Saturday afternoon.  Eliza and her brother Ezra each had two weeks of allowance and they were trying to stretch it as far as possible (which isn’t easy since they only had four dollars each).  I was working on my skill of patience as each of them pointed out the things that they wanted

Let’s Play Hide And Seek The Stuff I Clean Up

Many parents complain about how their children leave stuff all over the house.  Parents either feel like unpaid servants or like broken records constantly nagging their kids to clean up after themselves.  Some parents say that it takes less energy to clean up after their children then to get their children to clean up after themselves.  Other parents complain that