Episode 391 Transcript
Hello, it is Rachel, and welcome to episode 391 of Your Parenting Long Game.
I think there’s been an interesting swing in parenting over the last several years. For a long time, parenting advice was very consequence- and punishment-heavy.
Your child talks back? Give them a consequence.
They don’t do what you ask? Take something away.
They have a huge reaction? Then there needs to be a consequence, so they know that behavior isn’t acceptable.
And then parenting started to swing in the other direction. We learned more about nervous system and emotional regulation.
We started talking about connection and validating feelings and understanding what’s underneath behavior, and somewhere along the way, consequences started to get a bad reputation.
In fact, people often assume that because of the work I do, I must not believe in consequences.
They’ll say something like, “Oh, you teach people how to not have to use consequences.”
And that’s not exactly true. I actually believe very strongly in accountability. I believe our kids need to learn that their actions have an impact.
If you hurt [00:01:00] someone, that’s going to affect a relationship. If you break something, it needs to be fixed or replaced. If you make a mess, you may need to clean it up.
What I don’t believe in is punishment for the sake of punishment. And there’s an important difference because when we punish for the sake of punishment, it actually adds more Yuck without teaching more skills, and it doesn’t lead to long-term better behavior.
So let me give you an example. Let’s say your child gets angry and throws the remote across the room.
If your response is, “That’s it, no screens for the rest of the week,” what have they actually learned?
Maybe they’ll be afraid to throw the remote next time because they don’t want to lose screens again.
But what we understand about behavior and big reactions now is that they happen when a child is dysregulated and hasn’t mastered the ability to regulate effectively.
So even if the fear of losing screens is enough to scare them into doing better (often it won’t scare them into doing better, but let’s say it does…), all that’s happened is we’ve added another layer of Yuck [00:02:00] inside of them because now they have this fear, “When will I mess up again and lose something?”
And when we add more Yuck without adding more skills, we often get more of the behavior we don’t want. Because when Yuck is higher than a child’s skills to handle that Yuck, you’re always going to see negative behavior, moods, and attitudes.
Or here’s another example. Imagine a child who has a terrible morning getting ready for school. They’re complaining, refusing, moving incredibly slowly, and eventually you’re late. So you say, “Well, because you made us late, you’re not going to your friend’s house this afternoon.”
That’s logical, right? But what did losing the playdate teach them about getting ready tomorrow? If the problem was that they have trouble with executive functioning skills (maybe they have trouble initiating or shifting away from one task to the next, or keeping track of all the steps, or tolerating the discomfort of a transition), losing a playdate doesn’t teach them any of those things.
It’s like giving a child an algebra test before they know how to do algebra, and then punishing them [00:03:00] for not doing well on the test instead of teaching them the algebra to begin with. When we do, they’ll naturally do well on the test. Punishment isn’t going to teach them the algebra and it is going to add a lot of Yuck.
Now, again, that doesn’t mean I believe there shouldn’t be consequences. If we’re playing together and you keep hurting me, I’m going to stop playing. If you break something, you need to contribute money or time to replace it.
If you make a mess, you need to help clean it up.
And the reality is the parents that I work with use different level of consequences. Some families use more consequences than I would suggest, some use them less.
To me, the key isn’t how many consequences you use, it’s how you approach a child with those consequences.
Because if you’re going to use them, there are a couple things that are so important in fostering long-lasting resilience in your child.
The first thing that’s important is that when you are approaching a child with a consequence, you are not adding additional shame.
And the second is that as much as you’re focusing on the [00:04:00] consequence, you’re focusing on teaching them how to do better next time.
So all of this leads to something that I call the “consequence sandwich,” and this is how I suggest when you do have consequences, you approach them.
There are three parts to the consequence sandwich: One, state the rule matter-of-factly. Two, get into your child’s world, and three, teach the strategy.
So let’s go back to the child who broke something and how you might use a consequence sandwich. The first step is to state the rule matter-of-factly without anger or judgment.
So you might say something like, “Since things that get broken need to be fixed, part of the payment is going to come from your money.” Notice what I’m not saying. I’m not saying, “I can’t believe you did that,” or, “You know better,” or, “Maybe if you have to pay for it, you’ll learn not to throw things,” or, “Do you have any idea how expensive that was?”
These statements are not necessary for accountability.
In fact, the more we approach a child with judgment or [00:05:00] anger, the more they focus on defending themselves rather than learning a lesson.
I’m actually going to give you an example of this so you can feel what it’s like. Imagine you get a call from school that your child is sick, and you’re worried about them, so you’re driving to school to pick them up, and you are speeding, and an officer pulls you over.
You know you were speeding. You’re worried, and now you’re annoyed with yourself. And the officer comes over to your window and is condescending and judgmental.
They say, “Do you have any idea how fast you were going? What were you thinking? You could have hurt somebody.”
You try to tell the officer why you were speeding, and they say, “I don’t care. This is the law.”
And you can tell that they are angry and judging you for doing what you’ve done. And then he gives you a ticket.
Now, technically everything he said was true.
But what are you thinking about as you drive away? Probably not, “You know, he makes an excellent point. I really need to drive more safely behind the wheel.”
What you’re probably thinking is, “What a jerk.” You’re replaying his tone. You’re telling your spouse later how rude he was.
You’re thinking [00:06:00] about how he could have handled that differently, and suddenly his behavior has become the story instead of yours.
And that’s what can happen with our kids.
If the consequence comes wrapped in our anger, our judgment, our lectures, or our shame, our children, our child’s attention shifts from, “I need to handle this differently next time,” to, “Mom is so unfair. Dad is so mean. They don’t understand me,” and we’ve lost the opportunity for them to learn the lesson.
Now let’s compare this to a police officer who, instead of walking up with anger and with judgment, just says to you matter-of-factly, “You were going 52 in a 35. Because you were over the speed limit, I’m going to issue you a ticket.”
Now you tell the officer that your child is sick. Maybe they smile at you and say, “Yep, I get it. I’ve got kids, too. The law’s the law. I’m still going to give you the ticket.”
They didn’t let you get away with it, but they also didn’t approach you with anger and judgment.
Now, at that point, you may not like the ticket, you may still be irritated that you got a ticket, but there’s much less to fight [00:07:00] against.
That gives you space to focus on yourself instead of the officer’s behavior. You don’t have to defend yourself as much. You don’t have to double down on your own story. You can actually learn from the situation.
So remember when we add judgment, when we add anger, we make it less likely that our child will focus on the lesson we actually want them to learn. Without anger or judgment, they can focus on the idea that the thing that got broken needs to be fixed.
So you may have Yuck that they broke something, but as soon as you add your Yuck behavior to the situation, they will focus more on that and they won’t be open to changing themselves.
So again, step one is state the consequence matter-of-factly.
Step two is to get into their world.
This is where you are understanding the situation from your child’s perspective. And this is where I think a lot of parents get nervous because they think, “Well, if I acknowledge what was going on for them, am I letting them off the hook?”
And no, that is not the case.
Understanding why they did what they did is not the same [00:08:00] thing as condoning it or saying it was okay. Understanding why something is happening is actually showing us the tools that they’re lacking. So in the situation where a child threw a remote, we want to understand they broke something because they were frustrated.
So we may say this to them out loud, we may not. If we’re going to say something out loud, we may say something like, “You were really frustrated when I told you it was time to stop.” Now, a lot of kids don’t like that type of validation, so you don’t have to say it out loud, but you do need to genuinely understand what was going on there was that they struggle to handle frustration maturely.
So after you say or think, “You were really frustrated because I told you it was time to stop,” you’re not then saying, “So of course it’s okay to throw something.” You’re just saying, “I understand what was happening for my child, and now I know what you struggle with.”
And that leads to the third part of the consequence sandwich, which is to teach a strategy.
And this is where we’re not scaring children into doing better the next time. We’re teaching them [00:09:00] how to do better the next time.
So if a child breaks something because they had a lot of Yuck and hadn’t mastered the skills to handle the Yuck maturely, we need to increase their skills for next time. So we might say to them, “We need to give you another way to handle that frustration. We’ll figure out what you can do next time you feel yourself getting to that point.”
Now, keep in mind, you are not teaching them that strategy in that moment right then, because if your child is really upset, they’re not going to hear you. This isn’t a lecture when your child is already flooded. What you can then say is, “We will work on that later,”
And then you do actually have to work on it later.
Now, if you’re not sure how to bring it up later, or if you’re not sure how to teach them how to handle their frustration differently, or if you’ve taught them how to handle their frustration differently, but they’re not using those strategies, this is what I help parents with inside of my program. You can feel free to reach out to me to see how you can get support in any of those areas.
There’s a link to sign up for a call with me at, under the episode if you’re listening in a podcast [00:10:00] player, or in the show notes for this episode at rachel-bailey.com/391.
Because the teaching of strategies is really important, and now you have all three parts to the consequence sandwich.
So it might sound something like this: “Since things that get broken need to get fixed, part of the payment is going to come from your money.”
Then you’re either thinking or saying, “It was really frustrating when I told you it was time to stop. We need another way for you to handle that frustration. We will work on that later.”
And there you have it, stating the limit, getting into their world, and teaching them a strategy.
Now let’s look at another example. Your child is playing with their sibling and they’re getting more and more wound up. They stop listening when their sibling says stop, and eventually someone gets hurt.
Now probably, unless you have a plan for this, you’re going to get really angry, and you’re going to yell, “That’s it. You’re done playing. I told you five times to calm down!”
Or you can make a plan outside of the moment (so you don’t feel helpless in the moment), and that plan could be your consequence sandwich. When you start to see this escalating, you could say, [00:11:00] “Since everyone needs to feel safe when they’re playing, we’re going to stop playing for now.” Matter of fact.
Then get into their world. “You were having so much fun that I don’t think you noticed how wound up your body was getting.” Again, this doesn’t excuse hurting someone. We’re just identifying what made the situation difficult.
Then we’re teaching the tool. “We need to help you notice that sooner. We’ll figure out what you can do when your body starts getting that wild.”
Now, compare that with, “You hurt your brother, so you’re grounded.”
The consequence sandwich helps them recognize what was hard for them, and it gives them strategies to know what to do differently next time.
All right, here’s one last one. Your child loves doing art projects, but they hate cleaning up. They leave everything out, and this time some of their paint dries out. Instead of, “See, this is exactly why I’m always telling you to put your stuff away. I’m not buying you any more paint,” you can use the consequence sandwich. First, [00:12:00] “Since we need to take care of our things if we want them to last, I’m not going to replace the paint right now. If you want another set sooner, you can save up the money.” There’s the rule.
Then, “I know that when you’re finished with an art project, stopping to clean everything up feels like a huge pain.” There’s their world.
And then, “Let’s figure out what would make cleanup less bad next time.” And then you’re finding strategies to help them be successful.
We’re not rescuing the child from discomfort. The child who broke something has to contribute money. The child who hurt someone has to stop playing. The child whose paint dried doesn’t automatically get new paint.
They’re going to be uncomfortable because there is a consequence, and it’s not a sign that we did anything wrong. They’re allowed to be upset about it. They can think it’s unfair. They can wish we would change our mind.
But we also don’t need to increase that discomfort through shame, anger, judgment, or lectures. Because when we do that, we’re shifting their focus from their behavior to our behavior.
It also [00:13:00] affects how they see themselves because it leads to them thinking, “What’s wrong with me? I always mess up. Mom is so disappointed in me. I’m bad.” And when we already have a child who experiences a lot of Yuck, especially a child who’s sensitive, anxious, or hard on themselves, we do not want to add shame to what they’re already going through.
Because then our kids aren’t just dealing with the impact of what they did, they’re dealing with what they think what they did means about them.
The consequence sandwich sends a very different message. The rule says your behavior has an impact, and you are capable of being accountable for that impact.
Getting into their world says, “I can understand why this was hard,” without pretending the behavior was okay.
Teaching the tool says, “If you didn’t have the skills to handle this well today, we can build those skills so you’re more capable tomorrow.”
That’s what we want our kids to learn. Not simply, “If I did something wrong, my parent will make something unpleasant [00:14:00] happen to me,” but “my actions matter. I can handle the impact of my actions, and when something’s hard for me, I can learn how to handle it better.”
So the next time you’re considering a consequence, remember the sandwich: First, state the rule matter-of-factly. No anger, no judgment, no trying to make them feel bad enough to learn the lesson.
Second, get into their world. What was hard about this situation for them?
And third, teach the tool. What skill, strategy, or plan would make them more capable of handling the situation next time?
And again, if you’re wondering how to bring this up with them later, how to teach these skills, or how to make sure they actually use them in the moment, free to reach out and we can discuss what it would look like in your family to get support.
Because it’s important for you and your child to know accountability and understanding are not opposites. Firmness and connection are not opposites. We don’t have to choose between holding our kids accountable and recognizing that they’re struggling, and we don’t have to make our children feel worse in order to help them do [00:15:00] better.
We can address what happened, we can understand what made it hard, and we can increase their capacity to handle it differently the next time.
This is Leadership Parenting, and it’s part of Your Parenting Long Game. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you again next time.
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