Raising kids in this day and age and growing them up to become responsible human beings is no small task. For most of us, the days when our local communities were tight-knit and worked together as a team to raise families are gone.
By the time children enter school, this reality hits us front and center. Our children are exposed non-stop, once they enter school, to a cultural barrage that often does not match the values we teach at home.
The result? Behavior problems in school age children are approaching rampant. If you are facing this challenge as a parent, you know how unsettling and stressful this problem is.
You may feel there are no easy answers and in truth, there are many variables working against you. What should be the consequences in elementary school for bad behavior? First, ask yourself who you think should be deciding those consequences for your child. It is easy to give away your power as a parent; give it away to the school, to after school activities, to any system that promises to “help” you raise your child while you must be elsewhere. To let someone else determine the consequences for your child’s behavior.
If you have decided you want to be the one dealing with the behavior problems your child faces in school, don’t give away your parenting power! You are the best judge of your own child. You know what motivates him (or doesn’t). You understand his home life and his heart.
You need to be the authority in his young life. The person he can count on to deliver the praise AND the consequences.
If you have shied away from this task, that’s understandable. Parenting can feel like the loneliest job in the world. Take heart! You are not alone. Don’t give up! There are concepts you can embrace that will help bring order and calm back into your precious family life as well as your child’s school days.
== Take Your Power Back and Parent Through Consequences.
Keep in mind that your child’s school experience is an extension of your valued homelife. Not the other way around.
In other words, your family comes first. Before work. Before school. Before a dizzying array of activities.
Focus on building relationships within your family. Treat these people as the most important people in the world to you – because they are! Eat together, play together, study together, giggle together, learn new things together.
Please hear me carefully. I am NOT telling you to baby your children. Instead, I am asking you to consider creating a culture of family that is so strong and vital that you might find you have fewer overall school problems and what challenges you are faced with will respond more effectively with the consequences you choose.
Moving on, a few straightforward consequences in elementary school for bad behavior are
- losing privileges.
- apologizing and making up for the behavior in some (symbolic) way.
- extra chores or work.
You are aiming for the strengthening of your child’s conscience in all of this. Remember the conscience? That old fashioned notion which was our inner voice reminding us when we did something wrong? The conscience led us to appropriate guilt which in turn led us to healthy actions – apologizing and making amends. That’s how people used to “grow up” when they made mistakes.
We need to bring that process back to our parenting. Why? Because it works. It matches how we are hard wired as humans.
So remember, when you are in need of doling out consequences in elementary school for bad behavior, begin by owning your own parenting power and use consequences in such a way that your child will grow in character.
