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Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Consequences - a Parent’s Elixir for Fear

I just had to write about this experience. A mother had given her son a consequence of writing three pages front and back for a negative behavior. If you are familiar with the stress model, you know this is not an effective solution to this or any behavior problem. As we were discussing this, I could tell that initially, she was on the defensive side. Her first comment was that she was going to keep the consequence even though she knew it wouldn’t work. I broke out in a little chuckle. So did she. This broke her defensiveness. Normally, I wouldn’t have chuckled at a parent. However, I have a good relationship with this parent. She usually knows where I’m going when I ask her to talk about a parenting situation. She then followed it up with saying that she wanted help to find a solution for the problem. We discussed what she needed to do to get re-connected with her son. Then she could help him resolve the stress that was causing the negative behavior. She was very aware that her and her son had become disconnected in their relationship lately. Bottom line, she was feeling rejected and was medicating her pain by giving her son a consequence to make her feel better. Read my article “Consequences” for more on this at http://bit.ly/pBwc85 Saturday’s blog will talk more about her “rejection”.

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