Natural consequences and unconditional parenting?

[shimsheree]

Do these two kind of go together?

DH was talking with a friend at church and our friend spanks his two year old. They are very gentle and loving parents...I think they're just pressured by their parents to spank and do time-outs and stuff, and they have a very active two year old like us. Anyway, DH told him we don't spank and our friend asked what we do for punishment. DH told him that for the specific behavior they had been talking about, we do separate ds from whomever he's around (I think it was hitting?).

So DH and I were talking later and DH had kind of felt like he was making it sound like we don't do anything for ds's behavior and let him get away with everything, even though we don't. So we talked about how to portray unconditional parenting to others when they ask us about it.

We thought that maybe it would help them (and us?) if we explain it that we use natural consequences, but natural consequences that are not punitive. Does this make sense? Does anyone else think of it this way?

I think dh and I need to sit down and talk about some natural consequences that might happen for different situations. Does anyone feel like listing some that you do in your family?

One for us is that if ds is hitting dd (who is one year old) with something, then that object needs to take a break since he's not being safe with it. And then I ask him if he'd like to see if she's okay (sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn't), and I get him to play in a different area and we move on.

Does that sound like unconditional parenting and like a natural consequence?

Thanks for any help you might have. DS is very active and we've really struggled with things and with changing how we deal with situations with him.

~Sheree

[mom2grrls]

I think of GD as a way that we can discipline now and in the future, a long term way of thinking, KWIM? When people use the term natural consequences I think of something like if you don't bring an umbrella and it rains, you'll get wet. I don't think any imposed consequence/punishment is a natural consequence. For the situation you described I would make sure I didn't leave them unsupervised to play and try to stop the situation before the 2 y/o resorts to hitting-like if you see him get frustrated or the 1 y/o grabs his toy you can jump in. 2-4 can be rough behaviorwise but eventually it does pass

[mamazee]

Natural consequences are not "used" in UP, as intentionally using any kind of consequence is a punishment. However, consequences do sometimes naturally happen, and we can't always stop them, either because they are out of our control or because there is a safety issue (like if I take a knife away from my toddler, I'm not punishing her for using the knife, I'm just keeping her safe.) It might seem like semantics, and I understand that, but if you're trying to explain UP to people who haven't heard of it or don't understand it, I think talking with the language of punishment is not the way to go. They won't understand that it isn't an issue of replacing one kind of a punishment with another.

I find a good way of explaining is that we try to look past the behavior at the reason for the behavior, and then address the reason instead of the behavior itself. If you only address the behavior, then the problem that caused the behavior will still need to be dealt with, with the same punishment or a different punishment when the behavior shows up again most likely. But if you solve the problem causing the behavior, the behavior will stop because the cause is no longer there.

So, if a child is acting out, and you look beyond the acting out and see that the child is not sleeping well, then you could punish for acting out, or you could just work on the sleep issue. Or if siblings are fighting you could punish them for fighting, or work on the sibling rivalry issues that lead to the fighting. And yes you could do both, though punishing seems like an unnecessary step to me if I'm working on the cause, and I question whether punishment teaches kids what we intend to teach.