31/01/2026
🌞🦋Natural and logical consequences for poor behaviour 🦋🌞
It's easy to dish out time-outs, take tech away for a long time, ground etc as punishments, but it's proven that natural and logical consequences are far more effective and help our children learn from mistakes, developing responsibility, accountability and problem-solving skills.
So what is the difference?
1. *Natural Consequences*: Allow children to experience the direct outcome of their actions, for example breaking a toy means they can't play with it any longer. Perhaps they threw it in a rage, well they've set their own consequence already.
2. *Logical Consequences*: Impose related, reasonable outcomes, which make sense to the child and seem fair, for example not putting away toys means helping with extra cleanup, or in a case recently at home, going upstairs with their shoes on when explicitly told not to resulted in hoovering the upstairs of the house later on!
What are the benefits of this approach?
1. Encourages self-regulation
2. Fosters accountability
3. Develops problem-solving skills
4. Builds resilience
5. Strengthens parent-child relationships
6. Allows for a much calmer way to deal with behaviour
Here are some more examples:
1. Forgetting lunch- Pack a simpler meal next time and going hungry!
2. Not wearing a coat- Feeling cold, this is a common one in our house!
3. Being late home- Missing that amount of time from the next night out.
4. Being physical to a sibling- Picking up one of the siblings chores as a kind of community service.
5. Refusing to do homework - Getting into trouble at school for not doing it.
And some general tips when dealing with poor behaviour:
1. Stay calm and consistent, leave for a few minutes if needed.
2. Explain consequences clearly, if they're logical and fair as above they're much less likely to argue.
3. Encourage reflection, not straight away, but the next day perhaps.
4. Set clear expectations to begin with, children's brains love boundaries and knowing where they stand.
6. Encourage them to set their own logical consequence as it involves them in the process.
7. If needed say you're too cross to tell them their consequence now and revisit after some time out for everyone.
It won't always work out and we all know in the heat of the moment it can be almost impossible to keep cool and not dish out ridiculous punishments, but it's ok to come back and say exactly this. It's actually really good modelling for our children to see we're not perfect, that adults make mistakes, but we own them, learn from them and apologise.
I can promise you from direct experience with my own children and of many students over the years, this approach is so much more effective.
For more information about 1:1 coaching drop me a message to sam.safespaces@gmail.com or visit http://safe-spaces.square.site
