Families For Life | Loss of Privilege: How It Encourages Positive Behaviour in Children and Teenagers-Young Children

Teaching responsibility through natural and logical consequences

It is understandable to want to protect your child from negative consequences. However, by supporting your child through the consequences of their actions, you allow them to learn from their mistakes and help them flourish into a responsible individual.

How can you use consequences to help your child learn responsibility?

There are two types of consequences:

Natural consequences and Logical consequences.

• Kid spilled drink

Natural consequences happen without you or other adults intervening (e.g. your child not getting to drink their favourite drink if they spilled it). These consequences help your child to learn from their own experiences.

• Parent taking away toy from kids

Logical consequences are consistently carried out by you or other adults and are directly related to behaviours you wish to discourage in your child (e.g. removal of a toy your child is fighting over with another child). These consequences help your child to see the connection between their actions and outcomes.

For younger children:

Some suggested consequences for breaking rules include loss of privileges (e.g. taking away time for TV, gaming or device use) and time outs for reflection. This sets time aside for your child to stop, think about their behaviour, and take responsibility for their actions.

Before using the loss of privileges or time outs for the first time, explain to your child what to expect.

It is best to do this on a day when both you and your child are calm

For example, you can say: “Time out is when you sit quietly and calmly for 5 minutes to think about what you did and how you can make things better. Snatching other people's toys gets you a time out.”

Explain to your child the reason for them losing their privilege or being put on time out before enforcing it

For example, you can say:“You are still snatching your friend’s toys even after I told you to stop doing so. You will need to go into time out now for 5 minutes to calm yourself down, think about what you did and how you can make things better. I will come and get you when your time out is finished.”