Natural consequences

Recently, Lucas has been acting up at meal times. He has always been a fussy eater but nowadays, he is testing the limit to see if I can go beyond the 1.5 hours treshold.

Anyway, this post is not a complaint. Rather, a revelation I got in differentiating natural consequence and punishment to young children. Yes, it is probably common sense and no rocket science... but I didn't realise how easy it was to go down the slippery slope of posing many outcomes as punishments when they should be natural consequences.

Example, last Friday, Lucas once again took 1 hr 45 mins to eat his dinner. We told him explicitly that if he finishes his dinner slowly, he will not get to play with the toys at the toys section of X department store. No rationale was given (BAD MOVE 1). He took his time. He finally chewed off his last mouth of food at 8.45 pm which was about the time we needed to set off for home. So we told him, matter-of-factly, that he can't play toys cos he finished his meal so slowly and that we had already told him to eat dinner 'properly' but he didn't listen. (BAD MOVE 2). This must have sounded a lot like a punishment for non-compliance. Of course, he protested with tears and shouts. But we went home anyway.

That night, I set about thinking how it could have been different. On hindsight, I should have 1st explained the rationale for eating 'properly' i.e. it will leave you time to do what you want. And when he didn't perform that task, I should have made it clear that he was not going to play toys becos it was a natural consequence of him dilly-dallying, and NOT becos we were out to punish him for not complying.

But it is really a lot easier said than done, esp. when you already feel a blood clot forming in your veins out of sheer frustration. But if children see how their actions affect the consequences and how they can control that, then perhaps they will comply more. Anyway, it is a theory and I'll test it out to see if there are any improvements. And that's one of the things I love about being a parent,.. it is like playing CSI, finding an answer, 1 clue and 1 assumption at a time.