Not long ago I took my kids and some of their friends to a major league baseball game for an outing. While we were watching the game, a young boy sitting behind us was making everyone miserable. He was out of control, loud, and rude.
His parents did try to manage him, but their efforts were ineffective. They shushed him, praised him when he was quiet, bribed him with food, and threatened to take him out of the game. Nothing worked.
Finally, one of my son’s friends turned to me and said, “That guy needs some serious consequences.” I made a note to myself to call his parents when I got home and congratulate them. I don’t often hear that kind of thing from adolescents.
If you are like many of the parents I talk with, you often have difficulty identifying and following through with appropriate consequences for your teen. However, it’s really not that difficult. Let’s take a look at a few simple principles that can guide you in determining the right consequences for a problem with your teen. (See the sidebar on pages 136 – 139 for a list of sample consequences for specific problems.)
Remove the Desirable, Add the Undesirable
A consequence, basically, can be either removing the desirable or adding the undesirable to your teen’s life as the result of a rule violation: for example, the removal of television privileges or the addition of extra chores.
In my experience, removing something a teen wants is usually more effective than adding something she doesn’t want. This is true for several reasons. First, many kids today have more school and extracurricular demands (sports, music, theater, church, and so on) than their parents did, so they have less free time to do whatever has been added to their already busy schedule.
Second, it requires more of the parent’s time and energy to supervise and monitor added responsibilities than it does to remove an activity. Although monitoring your teen all Saturday afternoon while she cleans out the garage to your standards can be a great consequence and a way for you to spend some time together, it does cost you. So before you impose a consequence that involves adding something your teen doesn’t want, make sure it is worth your personal investment.
Don’t Interfere with a Natural Consequence
Whenever possible, allow your teen to face a natural consequence to an undesirable behavior or attitude. Don’t intervene. For example, allow your teen to
 | lose a relationship as a result of being selfish; |
| | be kicked off a sports team for not meeting the grade point average requirement; |
| | spend the night at the police station after being picked up for loitering late at night; |
| | miss out on going to a movie as a result of having spent all his allowance. |
Such consequences are powerful and effective. Best of all, all they require from you is that you get out of the way! Of course, many situations do not have a natural consequence, and in those instances, you need to apply something of your own making.
In addition, it is always a good idea to make your consequence as close to natural as possible. For example, if your teen acts out with his friends, you might ground him or restrict the time he spends with those friends. If he trashes the house, give him some added home upkeep responsibilities.
Make the Consequence Something That Matters to the Teen
A consequence must matter to the teen. She must be emotionally invested in it. She needs to want and desire what she is losing; she needs to not like what she is having to add. Otherwise, the experience doesn’t count for much. If you have a loner kid who loves her music, she likely won’t mind being restricted to her room with her stereo. That is why you need to know your own teen’s heart, interests, and desires.
This might lead some parents to ask: What if nothing matters? They have tried everything, and the teen doesn’t really seem to care. The behavior and attitudes do not change, and you don’t see any evidence of increased self-control or awareness of how choices affect her future. If this is your situation, what might be the cause?
Your adolescent may be detached or even depressed. Her heart may be so disconnected that consequences don’t matter, as in Trent’s case in chapter 16. If so, you must find your child’s heart before all else, and then help her reconnect to herself and to you.
Or your teen may not care much about people and activities. This is true of teens who live in the life of the mind. Since they aren’t social, many of the typical consequences that are effective with teens may not matter a lot to them. But something matters to them — perhaps reading, watching TV, or being on the computer. Use these as consequences.
However, with kids who are more seriously introverted, they may need your help so that they will become more involved in life, people, and activities. Regard this as a problem, not a preference. Remember, all of us were designed to be attached to people and events. So get her into the mix. Then life will begin to matter to your teen; there will be something to lose.
Keep in mind that your teen may be engaging in a power play with you, holding out to see how far you will take this. If so, the consequences do matter to your teen, but she doesn’t want you to know, either because she’s so angry at you that she wants you to feel helpless, or because she is waiting you out in hopes that you will drop the consequence. In these situations, you may need to talk with your teen about her anger and try to connect and defuse things while also keeping the limit going. In time, your teen will likely become aware that she is only hurting herself, and will begin to respond.
When you do see a positive response, be sure you are warm and encouraging with your adolescent. When teens submit to a consequence, they often feel humiliated, weak, powerless, and alone, which puts them in a very vulnerable position. They need their parents’ grace and comfort. So refrain from lecturing, making jokes, showing your teen that you were right, and so forth, or you may wound her during this period of frailty. Treat your teen as you’d like to be treated in a similar situation.
Have More Than One Kind of Consequence
While there is no perfect number of kinds of consequences you should have for your teen, you probably do need more than one. If your adolescent knows you will take away the phone every single time he breaks a rule, he is likely to do a cost analysis in order to figure out if he can do without the phone for a period of time. It might be worth it for the satisfaction of breaking the rule! So have a few different consequences to break up the predictability. You don’t need many. Just the right ones.
Preserve the Good
Here’s another good rule of thumb: the best consequences matter the most, but preserve good things the teen needs. Impose consequences that are a big deal to your teen, but don’t remove activities that are good for her, such as participating in sports, taking music or art lessons, or going to youth activities at church, Boy Scouts, or Girl Scouts. These activities teach teens important lessons in discipline, cooperation, skill building, and coaching, and in so doing contribute to their growth. Far better to remove movies and video games, which are limited in their capacity to help kids grow up.
Of course, some behaviors or situations may require this sort of life surgery, because the bigger problem outweighs the value of the activity. A kid on drugs, for example, may have to drop sports so that he can attend Twelve-Step meetings or get treatment. Use judgment and get advice from wise friends if you are considering this step.
Distinguish between Misdemeanors and Felonies
How severe is too severe? How easy is too easy? You’ll want to ensure that the consequences fit the violation appropriately. The time should fit the crime. When consequences are too strict, it can lead to alienation, discouragement, or increased rebellion. When they are too lenient, it can lead to increased disrespect and a lack of the desired change in the adolescent.
So give the most lenient consequence that works. Keep your mind on the goal, which is a heightened sense of responsibility, accountability, and self-awareness in your teen. If a more lenient consequence changes his behavior, and the change lasts over time, then you are on the right track. If it does not, and you are providing your teen with the right amounts of love, truth, and freedom, then you may want to increase the heat of the consequence over time until you see change.
Certainly, a serious offense merits a serious consequence. And if your teen does something seriously hurtful, such as violence or stealing, he should pay the price, in terms of restitution or what the law or school requires. But this is more a matter of justice and fairness than of changing behavior and attitudes. Both are important. So it is probably best to say that within the parameters of justice, whatever is most lenient and works is best.
This approach keeps parents from being unduly strict. As indicated above, it also gives you room to turn up the heat. If you max out too quickly, you have nowhere to go, and your teen will quickly tune you out and it can backfire on you.
A friend of mine found this out the hard way when she told her son, “You’re grounded for a year,” when he was disrespectful. Of course, disrespect is bad, but I thought a year was overdoing it. The son soon figured out that he no longer had much to lose, so he acted out more and his bad behavior escalated. His mom had maxed out her consequence equity too soon. She had to resolve the issue by admitting to her son that the year was a mistake and removing that consequence. As a result her son felt that she was listening to his side a bit more, and things got better between them.
Use Rewards Strategically
Many parents wonder if they should have both reward and consequence plans. They want to include both the positive and the negative to have a balance.
Rewards are good things, but teens shouldn’t be rewarded for doing what is normally required in life. After all, adults don’t receive promotions for showing up to work on time or for avoiding jail time. Rewarding teens for doing what they should already be doing can result in their not being ready for the future. It can also contribute to an attitude of entitlement or to seeing themselves as superior to others.
Instead of rewarding teens for doing what they should, give them praise. We all need a pat on the back. But reserve rewards for something special, such as extra results or extra effort. When your teen makes unexpectedly good grades, does well in some endeavor, or knocks herself out in some task, give her a reward as a way of acknowledging the value of what she accomplished.
No Responsibility = No Privileges
As you try to determine the best consequences to use when your teen violates a rule of behavior or attitude, remember that what your kid wants most is to be in life and have friends; teens are very attached to things and relationships. Use this intense interest to help your teen understand that privileges require responsibility, and they will be removed if there is irresponsibility. In so doing, you will help your teen succeed in adult life.
A CONSEQUENCE LIST
Below are three categories of kinds of consequences that are fairly universal with teens. Use the examples to develop an appropriate consequence list for your teen.
Social access. Teens feel more real and alive with their friends, and they don’t want to miss out on anything that is going on. This drive can help you as a parent.
Here are some specific ways you can limit your teen’s social access:
Ground your teen. Don’t allow her to leave home for social events. In some situations you might allow your teen to have friends over; in others you might not. Your teen’s life is school, home, and whatever else that is good and healthy (sports, music or art lessons, church functions, and so on).
Keep in mind, though, that grounding can also ground you! Someone needs to be home to enforce the restriction. So if you are going to use grounding as a consequence, be sure you have figured out the logistics of which adult will be there too.
Restrict phone privileges. You might take away phone privileges for certain times and days or even altogether. Of course, if you take away your teen’s cell phone, you’ll make it more difficult to find your kid when you need to. Be sure you are willing to pay this price before you impose this consequence.
Uninstall instant messaging. Teens stay in contact with each other through IM on computers and often have several different conversations going on at one time on the screen. They love staying in contact this way. If you need to restrict IM as a consequence, there are software programs that restrict or eliminate usage. I have found that this is better than uninstalling it, as it is generally easy to reinstall. Talk to a computer expert about this.
Restrict driving privileges. If your teen drives, you have instant leverage! Use car access as a consequence. This only makes sense, as driving requires a certain level of maturity. Teens who show less maturity are more at risk of driving irresponsibly and possibly hurting themselves as well as others.
Several years ago, some friends of mine had a bright teenage daughter who lost interest in school during her senior year. They were very concerned, as she was college material. The family had an extra “beater” car that the daughter had been using, so when her grades started slipping, they took away the privilege so she was forced to get rides with friends, use her parents if they were available, and ride her bike to places.
The daughter was unhappy about this, but the consequence worked. She knew her parents were going to stick with the consequence, and she dearly loved driving. Soon her grades rose to their previous level.
Media. Next to friends, today’s adolescents care about the world of media, making it another consequence category. As pointed out earlier, while the media can certainly expose kids to dangerous elements, it can also expose them to a lot of good information. So carefully monitor the media content rather than ban all of it.
Restrict access to the television. Television access should have limits anyway, in terms of time and programming. But it can be further restricted or removed completely. You may need to take the television out of your teen’s bedroom if you can’t lock access to it, or you may need to tell him he can’t be in the doorway of the family room, hanging out while people are watching.
Restrict access to the computer for connecting, browsing, and listening to music. That is, anything except school assignments. More than ever, the computer is becoming a central part of life. Teens are incredibly proficient at using them. It can be a powerful consequence to remove access.
Remove access to music. Take away your teen’s stereo, Walkman, iPod, or computer. This consequence can be challenging to impose, because there are so many ways a teen can get access to music. But music is an important part of adolescent life; it matters to teens.
Remove access to video games. Video games don’t have much value beyond entertainment, and many can be destructive. It’s not difficult to impose this consequence, as you can easily lock up all the video games.
The third category of consequences has to do with tasks.
Tasks. An added activity can be another effective consequence, as long as your teen doesn’t want the activity and it is a good endeavor. For example:
Assign added chores. Give your child extra responsibilities around the house, such as loading and unloading the dishwasher, doing laundry, mowing the lawn, cooking meals for the family, and taking out trash.
Assign extra homework. If your adolescent would benefit from more assignments in a particular subject, contact the teacher and ask for it. This can be an effective consequence for problems in neglecting schoolwork.
Assign community service. Contact your city council and ask about any projects your teen could do, such as cleaning up a park or visiting residents in retirement centers. It may sound negative to use such worthy activities as consequences, and it’s always better for teens to do these out of good motives. However, community service projects can hook teens into helping others, and these things can play a significant role in decreasing the undesirable behavior that started the whole process.