To think natural consequences are frustratingly ineffective???

Natural consequences do nothing for my older kid and likely won’t for a long time - he’s learning the theory but doesn’t have the executive function to halt the activity. For my youngest he understands a bit, but he’s 2.

They also only work if the kids care about the consequence. That’s the nice thing being an adult! I understand what happens if I eat too much cake and get a tummy ache and sometimes I do it anyway!

For breaking house stuff I would interupt the behaviour earlier - if they disregard the next warning about the cup, it gets taken away. If I’ve told you to stop climbing in the sink and flooding the house, you go in time out AND we brainstorm less destructive behaviours. For hitting you go in time out if you can’t remove yourself to calm down.

Watching cheap stuff break is hard for me bit like pp said, it’s the fault of the manufacturer and purchaser. I talk about the environment with my kids and our choices but I don’t expect it to sink in yet.

Activities are hard - like acting up in a restaurant we should remove them after one warning. But for leaving the house I try to start leaving sooner. I also talk to my kids about expectations now vs when they are bigger - like I did a big toy declutter (to store not throw out) yesterday and talked my older (5) son through it. He didn’t want it but I explained he is too small to put everything away and when he is bigger and keeps his toys put away I won’t do this, but for now we can only keep out the ones I can manage to put away.

I think a lot of gentle parenting stuff glosses over how to actual enforce boundaries and consequences.

When my son runs in the road I will grab him either gently or roughly however I can and I will yell. My youngest gets his snowsuit on backwards and socks over his mittens so he keeps it on. When my oldest touches a hot stove he gets yelled at. Yelling isn’t needed for spilling a drink, but it is okay for actual danger.

I was expecting you to describe some actual naughty behaviour! I would be absolutely exhausted if I was getting hung up on how to manage your examples. But my kids have SEN so we all have different challenges I suppose.

I kind of like the idea of natural consequences but it hard to think of any meaningful ones for the situations I have to manage. And of course we are told that ‘normal’ parenting doesn’t work for SEN kids.

The natural consequence to them breaking the doors off the dolls house should have been that you removed this toy on the basis they arent ready to look after it properly. Not just leave it there for them to continue playing with

Children break toys sometimes, especially cheap crappy things like whoopee cushions. Chill out.

@myplace ,

‘Be ready for school everyday, go to bed when you want. Be late for school and go to bed at 8pm. Still late for school? 7.30pm.
Spill food and drink in the lounge? All food and drink stays in the kitchen. Bring all empties back to the kitchen, pay attention so you don’t spill the drink? You can have snacks and drinks in the lounge.
Smash the nice mug? Go back to using plastic crockery until you are better at paying attention.’

All very sensible consequences, but none of them natural.

They are just normal consequences/punishments that most sensible parents use.

Natural consequences are awesome, but you have to understand the problem. If you don’t want to be late, then you are the one with a problem. Kids don’t give a monkeys about being late. If you wants something to be nice, then you have to keep it nice. You can’t expect them to.

Natural consequences come when the child won’t like the consequence.

These ones worked brilliantly for me-

Be ready for school everyday, go to bed when you want. Be late for school and go to bed at 8pm. Still late for school? 7.30pm.

Spill food and drink in the lounge? All food and drink stays in the kitchen. Bring all empties back to the kitchen, pay attention so you don’t spill the drink? You can have snacks and drinks in the lounge.

Smash the nice mug? Go back to using plastic crockery until you are better at paying attention.

It’s your job to create an environment your dc thrive in. Giving them a china mug then nagging them relentlessly and getting upset when it breaks isn’t particularly productive.

You have young whirlwinds. Don’t buy things that need care. When they are ready to care for something, let them choose it. If they want special red gloves with furry trim, they show you they can keep hold of both gloves for a couple of weeks.

They will look after things they care about.

👏 👏 👏

I think you need to give some real consequences. They don't have to be massive they just need to be consistent and proportionate. They break a cheap whoopee cushion. You don't replace it. They break an item that belongs to you or an expensive toy through being silly or careless then the consequence might be no pocket money or stay in your room for half an hour to reflect before apologising or no treat on whatever day.

Just don’t look for short term results. Stay consistent, continue your policies, and hang in there. It takes a long, long time to imprint things on kids, but long term consistent application of the same strategies will, in the end, make it clear to them, and the things you are teaching them will be part of who they are for life.

Why not simply don’t buy stuff that will break like ceramic mugs, use melamine until they are older. Buy as robust toys as you can get/afford, have fun making things with them that will naturally deteriorate, or fall apart after a few days/weeks/months. I applaud your natural consequences approach, but simply take it a stage further and buy for longevity, or get creative and make not having something for keeps actually fun. They are only small children, learning how to treasure something special won’t happen quickly, it takes a bit of time, but worth sowing the seeds early. Have fun😊

Just being alive is bad for the environment... If you feel strongly about doing your bit then just model this behaviour and talk to your children about environmentally friendly choices.
Stressing about a broken whoopee cushion or mug is pointless, won't help the environment and will make you miserable.

Surely the natural consequence of breaking someone else's stuff is that person being upset, and cross with the person who broke it? Not shrugging and going, "oh well, now I don't have a lamp"?

When my friends' giant dog (which they cannot control) knocked over and smashed my nice side table and bowl, I was upset and they paid for the damage.

Obviously the kids aren't going to learn to respect things and keep their home nice, if they learn that everything in it is dispensable and unimportant to the adults.

Natural consequences only work if it makes sense to a child.

I let my dd go out of the house in bare feet because she would not wear socks or wellies. Once her bare foot touched the cold concrete, she turned around and asked for shoes. She never complained again because that moment of discomfort of cold feet is something that she never wanted to feel again.

Yabu to think that the kids would care about personalised mugs. My kids had favourite mugs and cups but if one broke, they’d be unbothered. (If their sibling had the cup then that’s a different matter)

Is it possible that you have more stuff than you think? There’s always people with more stuff so you might think that your kids don’t have much toys but with something like Hot Wheels, kids usually have multiple so the loss of one isn’t a big deal. This is especially true if that HW had been on the floor for a while or if it’s almost Christmas/birthday and assume that it’s likely to be replaced.

Whoopie cushions and party bags are usually designed for temporary pleasure and your kids are old enough to know this. It’s a matter of time before there’s another party and hopefully new laughs. It also takes time to miss something sometimes.

Natural consequences only work in some situations. In others, as you say, the consequences are too small to really have an effect or would be too big to be ‘worth it’ as a lesson.
Some things are just non-negotiable, like putting on shoes or a coat in winter.
Other things need a direct made-up consequence to the child, eg. they won’t care if they break a lamp, but you would as it’s expensive and belongs to you. So the natural consequence of ‘oh well, we just don’t have a lamp anymore now’ won’t work. So the consequence is either you get angry at them and express your disappointment (which is horrible for them and could be enough, depending on the child) or you punish them in some way so it has a direct effect on them.

Days out, they don't know what they're missing, whereas you do.

Days out, they don't know what they're missing, whereas you do.

At that age they are not gping to care about the environment. Even at 16 my dd can't see how it will affect her.

For playdates, I would just arrange them at your house for a while, to my kids that's a consequence because they like to go to other people's houses, but it means the other child doesn't miss out and you don't have to stress.

Often this stuff matters more to you than to them as you are discovering.

I find you sometimes have to egg up the 'natural' consequences. So "I can't buy you that until you're sensible enough to be careful with your things, maybe if you stop breakingthe stuff you already have, I can reconsider" would still be a natural consequences in my book, as there's still a direct link to the unwanted behaviour.

Ah, that is an interpretation that I wasn’t familiar with. Natural consequences in lieu of punishments isn’t usually applied to accidents.

If they do keep breaking the same thing though, it might be best just to put those away til they're older.

@LoremIpsumCici ,

No they would be wearing shoes, not getting burned or frost bite, as I would enforce safe behaviour by non-natural consequences.

I think you need to mix it up a bit. Natural doesn't always work. They live in the moment still at that age.

@Boomer55 you know natural consequences is basically being chilled about things that happen and allowing whatever the result is to be the result without further reaction, right?

So you're playing roughly with something and it breaks...it's now broken. Noone puts you in timeout or yells or rants about it. It's just broken.

Natural consequences is about as chilled as it gets.

I honk the natural consequence has to be one which inconveniences them. In your example with the ceramic cup, assuming that the offending child broke their own cup, then E.g.

When it is drink time, give the children who take care of the cup a drink straight away. Praise them for taking care of their cups and how pleased you are. Make the expectation very clear in a positive way. Then go and get a boring cup for the child who broke theirs and give them the drink or

Replace the broken ceramic cup with the most boring plastic cup that you can and explain that when they show they can take care of it, you'll consider upgrading it.