Breaking the Rules and Lying Lessons Learned All Around free essay sample

Lessons Learned All Around Lessons Several factors come into play when a child lies or breaks the rules. There are also several consequences to be given. However, there is a certain way to give the consequence and a certain way for the child to learn their lesson. Also, one thing to consider is why the child lies. The consequences also have to be clear and focused on what the real problem was and why she did what she did. The child may be wrong and will have to learn their lesson but there Is a way to do It too.Firstly, a consequence is something that follows naturally from a persons action, inaction or or decision. It differs from a punishment in that a punishment is retribution. Punishment is getting back at someone, to hurt him or her back for a hurt they did. When you get a speeding ticket, its not a retribution for something you did wrong. Its a consequence of your poor choices and decisions. When youre giving a child a consequence, Its Important to make it flow naturally from the childs choice or action. For example.If your son sleeps late and doesnt get up for school, the natural consequence is to go to bed earlier that night to get more sleep. The natural ensconce isnt to take his phone for a week. Tell him he has to go to bed early for the next three nights, and then if he can show you he can get up for school, youll go back to the later bedtime. Its also important to make the consequence task-oriented, not time-oriented. A time-oriented consequence Is when you tell your child hes grounded for a week or cant use his cell phone for two weeks.Its Ineffective because all It does Is teach kids how to do time. It does not teach them how to change their behavior. Making your daughter stay in for three weekends wont teach her to observe curfew. It Just puts you and your family through grief and the child learns nothing. A task-oriented consequence is related to the offense and defines a learning objective. If your child stayed out past curfew last week, this weekend, she has to come In an hour earlier to show you that she can do It. When she shows you she can do It, you can go back to her normal curfew time.Making her stay in for three weekends wont teach her to observe curfew. It Just puts you and your family through the grief and the child learns nothing. The best consequences are those from which the child learns something. If your son is disrespectful to his sister, a good consequence is to tell him he cant use the phone until he writes her a letter of apology. In the letter, he has to tell her what hell do differently the next time hes in conflict with her. Writing the letter of apology Is a learning experience for him that wins him back his phone. That way, hes not Just doing time. Hes completing an act that teaches him something. I think parents have to be very clear about consequences, especially the older kids get. By older, I mean the difference between six and eight and then eight and ten. Im not talking about the difference between eight and eighteen. The older kids get, the more thought they have to put into the consequence. So if a kids grade drops because hes not doing his homework, yes you homework for two weeks. Or until the teacher tells you hes brought his grades back up to a B.Secondly, lets face it. Information isnt Just available to our kids; its injected into them. Their peers, by some adults, and by the media, push bad ideas down our kids throats. Its hard for a parent to keep control of their kids when this is happening and protect them from their own harmful impulses and dangerous outside influences. Your kids honesty becomes the connector between whats happening to her on the outside world and what happens at home. You need her to tell you honestly what happened today, so that you can honestly decide if thats best for her. You need to hear that information in order to decide if thats going to help her meet her responsibilities now and in the future. When parents dont get the right information, theyre afraid theyll make the wrong choices for their kids. When your kid lies, you start to see him as sneaky, especially if he continues to lie to you. You feel that shes going behind your back, that shes undermining you. We begin to think that our kids are bad. We make the connection that if lying is bad, liars are bad. Its Just that simple. Parents should hold their kids responsible for lying.But the mistake parents make is when they start to blame the kid for lying. Its considered immoral to lie. But when you look at your kid like shes a sneak and an operator whos undermining your authority, its a slippery slope that starts with muff lie and ends up at mires a bad person. I think that perception of your kid promotes more lying. If your child thinks you think shes bad, shes going to hide the truth from you even ore, because she doesnt want to be bad. Even though they are lying, kids dont want to disappoint their parents. The lie itself isnt the fundamental problem.You need to discover why your child is lying. Some experts believe that in our efforts to teach our kids not to lie, we overwhelm their capacity to tell the truth. If you give young children a task thats too hard and they fail, theyre probably going to lie, says Hoffman. This happens a lot in school. Kids fail and lie about the results, or they say, Its no big deal. The latter may seem less reprehensible, but its a self-destructive IEEE because those kids suffer not only the humiliation of failing but also the sadness of covering up feelings. The final disgrace is having to endure classmates reactions.Few epithets are more shaming and enraging than the bald accusation, Liar! Also, parenting-advice books often tell you to set a good example for our children by not lying at all, but what Dry. Defaults experiments and our common sense show us is that this is nearly impossible. The real challenge for parents, she says, is negotiating the fine line between having standards and being understanding of the imperfections of human nature. When pointed out to Dry. Default that many parents have a stringent rule We dont lie in this family she responded: What those parents want is for their kids to be perfect.But when a parent is incredibly strict about lying, he creates a situation in which the child is doomed to fail because no human can meet these standards. In fact, she adds, the more the parent says, Were a good family; we dont lie, the more difficult it becomes for kids to own up to their imperfections. Rather than setting the unrealistic goal of abolishing all lies, what makes more sense is to establish what your own familys boundaries should be. How can you help your child be (mostly) truthful? Encouraging truthfulness, modeling it, and rewarding it.By addressing not only the content of the lie but also the lying with dialogue and understanding. According to Dry. Default: What kids need to know is that you want them to try their best to do the right thing. You also understand that no one is perfect. If they do make a mistake, they can come to you and know that you will not castigate them but you will want them to do better in the future. Thirdly, have you ever punished your child in the heat of the moment, when youre angry and set? If youre like most parents, the answer is probably yes. In fact, this is one of the biggest, most common parenting traps that you can fall into. But often when you do this, youre focused on winning the fight rather than working towards teaching your child to choose to do the right thing. Overly harsh punishments do not create regret; they only serve to create resentment in your child. While understandable, that mindset of winning over your child Just isnt helpful. Thats because when you get into that wrestling match, youre playing the wrong role: you become your childs peer ether than his parent. Remember, you already do have authority over him.So dont get engaged in a tug of war-?it will only set up a power struggle. Its important to understand that overly harsh punishments do not create regret; they only serve to create resentment in your child. He will only be thinking about his anger toward you -?and believe that youre unreasonable and unfair. Why doesnt long-term grounding work? This type of grounding is usually interpreted as house arrest-?in other words, the message to your child is something like, Mimi have to be home and you cant talk to your friends. But long-term grounding is not effective in teaching your child the lesson you want him to learn.In fact, James Lehman says that grounding Just teaches kids how to do time and doesnt show them how to change their behavior-? and ultimately, theyre not going to learn the lesson youre trying to teach them. There is no such thing as a magic punishment or consequence that changes behavior. Instead, focus on teaching your child the skills he needs to learn-?and look into why she made the choice to misbehave in the first place. After all, your goal is for your child to make the right choices by herself, even when youre not there. So use consequences to require your child to practice the skill they need to improve their behavior.Understand that consequence given without that focus is Just a punishment that wont teach your child anything new. Heres an example of how you might deal with your child when she misbehaves. Lets say your teenager keeps breaking curfew and you want her to come in on time. 1. Wait: Dont give her a punishment at 1 a. M. When she comes in. Instead, wait until youve calmed down. Sleep on it and talk to her in the morning. 2. Talk: When you do talk, sit down together and say something like, Mimi didnt make t home when you were supposed to last night. Tell me what happened. Your child might say, My friend was upset and she needed to talk. But challenge her reasoning by responding, If your friend is upset, does that mean you get to break the curfew 3. Challenge: When challenging your childs bad choices, always ask a variation of this question: How can you do it differently next time? So in our example, you might say, answer with, l guess I could text you next time and let you know whats going on. You might respond by saying, Okay. Next time, I want you to do that and I will come and get you. You cannot break the curfew rules.So regardless, your responsibility is to get home. 4. Consequences: After this talk, its time to give your child a consequence. James Lehman recommends that you choose something connected to the misbehaver that will encourage her to make better choices. Have her earn back the privilege she lost. So for example, you might say, Because you werent home on time last night, you cant go out with your friends this weekend. And, for the next week, your curfew will be a half hour earlier until you can prove that you can come in on time. Dial back your childs curfew by a half hour that week.If she comes in on time each night she goes out, she can have her old curfew back. That way, your teen is learning good behavior as shes earning back a privilege. By the way, you can and should adjust consequences depending on how serious the behavior was. If what your child did was very risky, then she really is going to need supervision for a while, and there should be a longer earning period. Additionally, another part of the consequence might be, muff have to come home right after school. I get to look at your computer and it will be kept in a public place.You can see your friends but they have to come o our house. So it all depends on the misbehaver. Why is this four-step process so important? If you simply say, muff missed curfew; youre grounded this week, and leave it at that, youre missing out, because you wont get to challenge your teenagers faulty thinking. And believe me, theres a huge amount of reasoning that is faulty with teenagers. Adolescents get in trouble with it all the time. Remember, the important piece is to have that conversation and to make sure your child is learning what she needs to learn. Without that, youre Just trying to mold behavior through punishment ?without teaching your child a new replacement behavior. Lastly, if you find yourself in a situation where youve given your child an overly harsh punishment, dont feel you have to follow through with it. Remember, you are role modeling to your child how to manage yourself when youre angry. Its a fallacy to think that everything that comes out of our mouth as parents is law and if we back down, were seen as inconsistent. Your child can see when youre saying things in anger, and can sense youre being unfair, unreasonable or even ridiculous in some cases.Decisions made n anger are usually wrong decisions-?why lock yourself into them? Youre the parent; youre the teacher. You can say to your child, l was pretty angry when I suggested grounding you for the summer. Eve decided to handle this differently. Then proceed with your problem solving conversation. Let her know what you would like her to do and what consequence decision youve made. This is role modeling a really important lesson for your child. And l said it so Im stuck with it is role modeling that teaches your child that you dont know how to correct yourself when youve been unreasonable.I think you can do this even if you grounded your teen two weeks ago but youve realized you made a mistake. Dont get so caught up in your words. Youre not stuck with them-?they are not set in stone. As a last note, Brenna Harrison had plenty of reasons for doing what she did and she wants to regret it but the back at me for doing what I did and lying to you. Taking my car away to drive back and forth to school only serves to make me dependent on my parents for something I could have taken responsibility for. Taking away visitations with Brandon had nothing to do with lying and everything to do with punishment.I already took the initiative to correct myself but the fact that the parents added unnecessary punishment took away my new responsibility to get my schoolwork done and my new responsibility to go to school by myself on time. The CONSEQUENCE was issued when I would have to go to school four hours earlier and be on time and correct my grades to higher levels. Also, there has been no communication issued with neither teacher nor Brenna about it further. Did you know that I have an A in history right now? And that Spanish will soon follow? Of course not, because you issued a punishment rather than a consequence.