"What do you do when nothing works?"
A mom sent me this question and then gave me the details. Her son was jumping on the bed and her husband told him he'd lose his privilege of being in their room to play. Soon after, the boy proceeded to jump on the couch so they took away another privilege. In another moment, the parents told the boy that "hitting hurts" and he looked at them and said, "I want it to hurt."
I want to stay with that for a second before we go anywhere else.
“I want it to hurt" is the kind of thing that makes a parent feel like they've completely lost the plot. It makes us feel like something is deeply wrong and every strategy we’ve ever tried has failed simultaneously. In these moments, it can feel like our child has somehow become the one in charge.
I hear from parents in situations like this one more than you'd think, and I want to offer something that I genuinely believe will be more useful than another consequence strategy: A totally different way of understanding what just happened.
Here's what I see when I read this mom's message.
The consequences didn't fail because consequences don't work.
They failed because of when they were used, how they were sized, and most importantly what this little boy actually needed in that moment, which had nothing to do with losing privileges.
Let me explain…
