Raising Teenagers: Consequences

Often our first reaction is anger at the teens behaviour and this anger can override the effect of the consequences. Their focus will be on your anger not on what they did. I am guilty of firing up really quickly! I recently started repeating a phrase over and over in my mind, "When I get angry, I am going to whisper". For me, whispering when angry really doesn't work and it sounded like a low threatening voice, which I feel wasn't what I was aiming for.

There is a great post over at Creative With Kids which has some strategies I would like to try the next time I get angry.   

I've also been in the situation where I have handed out a consequence whilst I was angry and then realised later that I may have been a bit strong. We don't want to give the impression of inconsistency to our children, but if it really is a strong consequence for the behaviour, Foster Cline and Jim Fay suggest we apologise, say we thought about it and give a fairer consequence.

Consequences don't have to be immediate. Teens wont forget. So, we need to delay our response to give some thinking time for ourselves and for our teen. Foster Cline and Jim Fay authors of Parenting Teenagers with Love and Logic suggest saying something like, "This behaviour really worries me. I'm not sure what I can say to you right now. We'll talk about it later."
Teenagers are expert negotiators! Use your thinking time to come up with a tight response with consequence and plan for how you will handle their reaction. Then when everyone is calm and the timing suits you, lay it on them.

Love and Logic talks constantly about 'real world' consequences. They distinguish between punishment as a consequence that doesn't happen in the real world, such as grounding, and consequences, something that is real world based, such as paying for a breakage.

What I am finding quite difficult with my teen is finding appropriate real world consequences for his age. This has been the major drawback for me in applying Love and Logic Principles.

I have mentioned many times the conflict between my teen and Chook. There's an age difference of eleven years. My teen constantly teases, rough houses and doles out punishment to Chook. It is driving me insane trying to intercept the two of them. I cannot for the life of me think of appropriate 'real world' consequences for my teen. But I am seeing the real world consequences in Chook's behaviour towards Ooffa and Strawberry. And it saddens me because my teen has helped to create this.

This is the last post in the Love and Logic Raising Teenagers series. The book Parenting Teens With Love and Logic continues with two more parts. Part Two deals with changes in your adolescent and Part Three has 39 pearls of wisdom for a variety of Raising Teenager Problems, such as Parties, Dating and Runaways. Some good practical advice for dealing with these and 36 other issues.

As for my issue, well, I'm mulling over a couple of options. The first one being sending Gamer to boarding school and the second one being taking him to a counselling session. Of course there's always the third option! LOL!

Hope you have found the Raising Teenagers Series useful. Here are the links to all the posts in this series:

• Develop a healthy self-concept in your teen.
• Encourage responsibility.
• Provide guidance to find a solution to their problem.
• Neutralise all arguing.
• Give control through choices.
• What you say must be enforceable and followed through on.
• Show empathy.

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