Consistency

Being consistent is key to parenting. Consistent, as defined by Webster, is marked by harmony, regularity, or steady continuity : free from variation or contradiction. Children thrive on consistency, well, wouldn’t you? If you were able to go through daily life where all laws were free from variation or contradiction wouldn’t life be simpler?

If you are not consistent with your rules and allow the child to break the rules while you are chatting with friends, or on the phone, then the variation is there and the child is confused. As a parent, our job is to draw a line in the sand and as a child, their job is to push that line as far as we, the parents, will allow. By being consistent, the child knows that the line will not budge, no matter what, and will accept his role behind the line and move on to trying to cross a different line. If you make the line variable, the child will continue to push over the line in order to do what he wants, which is disrespectful.

When giving your children rules, such as no hitting, you are teaching them that it is not an appropriate behavior to hit, anyone or anything. If you are consistent with that rule, every single time they hit someone or something they would be corrected, until the behavior corrects itself and the child understands that hitting will result in a consequence, every time. The hitting the child does will slowly stop and you won’t have to be so diligent in watching for that behavior as a new one will take it’s place.

Being consistent is hard. It is the tedious job of monitoring every move the child makes, from a distance, and being available to correct the behavior immediately. If your child is like any of mine, as soon as they see I am busy they act up. It could be yelling at each other, bringing toys out of the playroom, climbing on the couch or whatever their sweet little mind wants to do, that they know is against the rules. They do this as an attempt to cross the line in the sand. Sometimes if the infraction is less important than the matter being attended to the consistency of the rules slips. If you are serious about trying to correct a behavior, like hitting, there should never be a contradiction. As soon as the hand goes up to hit, the child should have the appropriate consequence, whether the hand is going to hit the couch or a person. You know what will happen once the hand goes up so why wait until someone gets hurts to hand out the consequence? Nip it quickly and force the behavior to end quickly.

The consistency strategy works well with most behavior issues.

Our daughter is learning how to wipe after using the potty. For a month or so she did an excellent and independent job of wiping. Then I began to wipe her to get her out of the bathroom quicker and we are back to square one. Every time she uses the potty she wants me to help her wipe. I am being consistent and allowing her to stay in the bathroom until she wipes because if I give in, she will continue to cross the line. After a week, she has figured out that I will not help her and she is beginning to become self-sufficient once again. It was hard to not give in and make the rule variable, especially when she cried and whined but once again, we are winning by being consist with the rules.

If you want your child to ask to be excused from the table after meals, every time they get down you need to put them back in their seat and tell them they need to ask to be excused. It amazes our dinner guests when our 3 and 4 year old ask “May I please be excused”, wait for a response, then take their plate to the sink. Sure this respectful behavior took months of consistent nagging from Bill and myself , and we lose a lot of good dishes as they clear the table, but the results are worth it. We are building the foundation for consistently polite, respectful children.