Why Consequences Don't Need To Be Logical

Your connection is truly your superpower. When you have such a good friendship and connection with your kids and you have fun with them, they don't want that to go away. They like that, they look up to you. They respect you because you respect them. You've got to give respect to get it. A lot of parents get mad that their kids don't respect them. And I say, so you've already earned it, but they haven't respected you anyway. And they go, what? You got to earn it, you got to work for it. Now let's get into the idea of consequences and whether or not you think they have to be connected or have to be logical in order to be effective. It's better off to not get the perfect consequence but follow up consistently. What are good consequences for a three-year-old? I know you're supposed to ignore the tantrums and use the behavior board for specific things, but what about the other bad behaviors that pop up? I would say don't grab toys off the baby. So when he does, then what you do is, welcome to the Brat Busters Parenting Podcast. My name's Lisa Bunnage. I'm a parenting coach. I'm a mom. I'm also a grandmother. And I'm Amy Bunnage, Lisa's daughter. And I handle the marketing and planning here at Brat Busters. While I don't have kids, each episode will dive into parenting topics and Lisa will answer your questions. Let's get started. Okay, sweetie, what are we talking about today? Today's topic is all about consequences. Consequences, okay, very general topic. That's a good one. So we're gonna hit that two ways. One is with toddlers and the other is with everybody else, right? And then there is one main theme that I do wanna touch on and it's a question that you get quite a bit. It's around the idea of consequences. Do they need to be connected? Do they need to be logical? But before we get into that, let's maybe start off with what age do you think you can start giving kids consequences? At about 16 months, gray area, but around 16 months. And they're very gently introduced. There we go. So how about you going to how you approach discipline for the toddler age? The toddler age. It's consistent, corrective actions. So if they do something naughty, you just say one word, you just go no, and they don't use sternness or anger. You just go no, it's kind of more serious and quiet. And say no, and then you remove them from the fun or the fun from them. It's gotta be fast though. They've gotta connect it. Cause they're not really thinking things through a lot, right? When they're really little. So you just say no, and then you wanna connect that bad behavior that they're just learning how not to do. Okay, they're brand new. They're gonna try stuff. So you just kind of, you want them to associate it with something that negative that happens to them. So they're gonna lose a toy. They're gonna be taken away from the fun for a minute, stuff like that. So consistent, corrective actions, not words. Words are useless. These mini therapy sessions, discussing all their big feelings and big emotions around everything. It's ridiculous. It's all, it's all actions. And they learn through repetition. It's like a toddler will touch a hot oven 10 times, but maybe not the 11th. There's not a lot of thought that goes in that. It's more like a knee jerk reaction through repetition. And what age do you consider to be a toddler? A toddler 16 to 35 months, just the way I've broken it down. Because I believe that by 16 months, they can start to learn, they can start to learn right from wrong before that, but it really kind of kicks in with consequences at about 16 months old. And then, but they're just starting, right? And then at three, they can stop and think before they act. That's why we don't use consistent corrective actions anymore. And that's why you specifically have your boot camp split up. You have the toddler one, and then you have the three to 12 one. Do you wanna discuss the brat versus, oh, I got that. Whoa, the brat buster is behavior board on there. Okay, the behavior board starts at three because they're starting to be able to reason things through and think before they act. Okay? So if they know every single time they do something naughty that there's gonna be a consequence, they will stop doing it. They'll stop and think eventually it takes a bit of time. The behavior board is set up like this. Everyone's on at three and above mom and dad also. So everyone has a rule. And then underneath the rules, you put the consequences. So everyone has a rule and a consequence. So your rule might be no yelling. If you yell your consequences, you have to play hide and seek with the kids for 10 minutes, something like that. It's something fun for them. And then with the kids, let's say their rule is no hitting. If they hit, they get two consequences all the, one rule and two consequences for the kids because you give them a positive action consequence first. So they have to do a chore or something. And then if they refuse to do that, then you do the negative deprivation. You take something away. So you start with a positive action. If they won't do it, you do a negative deprivation. Could be media blackout for 24 hours. You want to really up that one. So the second one you don't, you want them to learn, hey, wait, if you choose not, if you choose to hit someone or break a rule, then you're going to get a consequence. If you choose to not do the easy consequence, I will impose the harder one. And that's all your choice. That is such a hard word to say. And... Which one? The or consequence? I'm going to go with consequence. Oh, I know it's frustrating. I wish it was just like con. That was short for consequences, but it isn't anyway. And then if parents want to just get started, just to see the basics of the Bratbusters Behavior Board, we do have that. If you join the newsletter, you get access to like a mini course, which shows you essentially just how the basics of it. Okay, so now that we've gone over how you approach discipline four, three to 12, how you approach it for toddlers, now let's get into the idea of consequences and whether or not you think they have to be connected or have to be logical in order to be effective. Well, I think they're all logical. So I don't quite understand that word. To me, it's logical. You do something bad, then you replace it with a good deed. You do something good. And if you refuse to do that, then we'll take something away. But I think they're all logical. I think what you're referring to is, does the punishment have to fit the crime? Yeah, so does it have to be something that goes along with it? Like a good example of that would be if they, let's say that they hit their little brother. So a good consequence would be, they have to share their favorite toy with their little brother as the consequence. So the little brother gets to play with their favorite toy for the rest of the afternoon or something. So that's an obvious one, right? The punishment would fit the crime, but it doesn't have to, okay? It's nice if it does, but I don't think there's that much more of a lesson there if it does fit the crime. So I think an example, just if someone's trying to get the idea of what we're going for here. So an example could be, five-year-old breaks the TV by throwing a toy. So I think a quote unquote, connected consequence would look like no TV until maybe they've done enough chores to help earn a little bit of money towards a new one. But then the not so connected consequence would be you clean a window. Well, you already went with the second consequence there. You did the negative deprivation. So you dove right into that. I would say if they threw a toy at the TV, I would take a toy away rather than the TV. Well, I think at this point you have no TV for them. Oh, I see, it's already broken. The TV's gone in this scenario. Oh, that's right. Okay, well, we're talking in loops here. Okay, so yeah, the punishment does not have to fit the crime, but a lot of people think it does, think it's way more effective. Yeah, it can be nice, but I don't think it's as important as people think it is. They put a lot of emphasis on this, and I just don't think it's that important. And I think you've also talked about the idea that sometimes it gives parents that paralysis by analysis, and they almost get bogged down by this. I agree with that. And I don't teach really what I did with my kids. The reason is I was already a leader, so things were a lot. Once you're a leader, everything's easier. You can do, okay. Anyway, I'll give you a good example. If my kids had, let's say, forgotten to do a chore or something, their consequence might've been brushing my hair for five minutes. Does that have anything to do with their chore? No, but did I like having my hair brushed? Yes, did they like doing it? No, perfect consequence. Did it fit the crime? No, you see, but it was still a perfect consequence. It was perfect. I got a great hairbrush out of it. It was a perfect consequence. For me. For me. I do enjoy as well how I was like, oh, I think that this is your perspective. And you go, I agree with that. Well, I would hope you agree with yourself. Is your perspective, yeah, I agree with that. It's funny because sometimes when I'm talking, I've literally done this. I've stopped, not that, wow, that was really good. It's quite embarrassing, actually. I did that in coaching the other day in the client lab. They said, geez, I've never heard anyone compliment themselves that quickly. I said, wow, that was brilliant. It's because I'm really bad at analogies. And I actually came up with a good analogy. And I went, wow, that was a brilliant one. It's a red terrier. I'm also really bad at analogies. Yeah. I think just before we get into the parenting questions, I don't think we can do an episode on consequences and not give some examples because that is one of the number one questions you get asked. And it's just a chore. It's a good deed. Look at it that way. It's a good deed. It could be wiping down the front of the fridge. You just give them a wet rag if they're a little kid. It could be sweeping the kitchen floor. It shouldn't be the whole house. The consequence, the first consequence, the positive action should be like a two minute chore, but you give them 15 minutes to do it because you want to give them time to fight, procrastinate, argue, whine about it. So you want to drag it out a little bit, but that should only take a couple of minutes. It doesn't have to be anything huge. And the consequence doesn't really matter. It's just a good deed. It could be wiping out the toothpaste in the bathroom sink. It could be picking up 10 toys within 10 minutes. That's a really good one because it's measurable, right? The amount of time you've given them and the amount of toys. So it could be straighten up the shoes at the front door. Everybody's shoes at the front door. Think about anything that needs doing around your house that you think they could manage, just have it done. Or it could just give them a wet rag and you say wipe down the front of the fridge. Now, if you have a stainless steel fridge or a dishwasher, it's a really good idea because you can see where it's been touched. And you can say, you have to wipe down the whole front so that they can reach, right? So then you can see if it's been wiped down. And they can see it too. So it has to be measurable. If you just tell a kid, oh, kind of wipe down the fridge. They might just touch it really quickly with a wet rag. But if you say you have to get the whole thing wet, I have to see that the whole thing's been wiped down. You see how it needs to be measurable? And you've often talked about as well as that parents get caught up in what the specific consequence is. But you talk about the idea that it really is the consistency of following through. And do you agree with that one? I totally agree with that because I say it all the time. And yeah, of course I agree with it because that's my opinion. So what the consequence is, is kind of inconsequential. Sorry, I just want to throw that in. It's more the consistency. Parents are very quick to come up with a perfect day. Add a perfect consequence. I had a perfect play date. But then the next day, they let everything slide. You can't. It's better off to not get the perfect consequence, but follow up consistently. So yeah, and make it something simple. It should be something the kids already know how to do. It could be even just helping you with laundry. They have to put the, you hand them every single piece of laundry, and they have to help you put it in the machine or something. So that's also measurable. So something that's measurable and don't make it anything difficult. It doesn't have to be wow. Parents get very caught up in what consequences are. It doesn't matter. It's the consistency that matters. One last thing for the questions is, won't that make them hate chores? Who cares? Do you like chores? And that's a bad thing for me to talk about, because I love cleaning. But I don't care if they hate it. Like most people will hate scrubbing a toilet. So it's a good consequence to have anyway. But it doesn't matter. This is the pleaser parent style. I want them to enjoy everything in life. I don't. I want kids to learn how to do stuff that they don't like, because that's called self-discipline. And that's a really good work ethic. You're going to have lots of things in life in your job that you don't want to do. You probably don't want to pay taxes. You probably don't want to pay rent. You got to do it, even though you don't like it. So and I think it's really important that they learn to do stuff they don't like doing. I taught my kids from a really young age, you got to do what you need to do before you can do what you want to do. They were like two. And if they wanted, they'd say, snack or whatever. I'd say, sure, as soon as you put your toys away, they'd run around putting their toys away without even thinking of it. Like they got to the point where before they'd asked for anything, they'd run around and clean up. So they were trained from a very young age. You got to do what you need to do before you can do what you want to do. So they don't need to like chores. That's ridiculous. You want them to learn how to do the hard stuff, do the stuff they don't like. But I think I want to be specific because you actually don't use anything physical. I know some parents use exercise as a consequence. OK, I don't like it because I feel it's almost, it's almost physical punishment. Do you know what I mean? You have to do this with your body to make it up to. I just don't like it. Cleaning up, like sweeping a floor is not the same as doing 20 push-ups. I don't like it when I see people have punishment for kids. They make them run around, like do a lap at a, what's that called, the school oval or something, where they have to literally run around the track 10 times. I've heard of that. Parents doing that as a consequence with a teenager or something. They have to run around the oval like 10 times. I just don't like it. It just makes me feel icky. And I don't really want to go into it too much, but I just don't like it. I think your approach is you just don't want to associate negativity around exercise. Around physical activity. Yeah. OK. But sweeping a floor is OK. Should we get into the parenting questions? Sure. So we have the first one is Rachel from Israel. Seven year old, we start using the behavior board and it's going great. How would you respond to a child who learned that instead of hitting back during an argument and getting a consequence? He comes to me and tells me that his brother was bothering him. I want him to deal with problems on his own. I disagree. If you've got, let's say he does have a brother bothering him, I would go to the brother. I wouldn't I don't expect kids to parent other kids. Now, if this just sort of back and forth stuff, that's different. OK. But if you've got one kid always bothering the other, that's your job, not your not your your child's job. So I disagree with that. You got to figure out who's starting these problems and go to the source and say and then have a consequence for them. OK, the next one is Emily from the United States. I have two boys, four and eight who do tit for tat when it comes to hitting and pushing, et cetera. I've been using your brat board method and have seen success with the 10 minute consequences. But I still struggle when something happens in the car or in public when I don't have my go to activities like fold blankets, put away dry dishes, et cetera. I've started asking them to do high knees or jumping jacks, but that doesn't work in the car. What do you suggest I say or do when a battle erupts while driving in public? OK, I don't like the physical. You know, I don't like to punish using physical activity. So let's knock that one out. But also just say to them, look, we'll deal with this when we get home. We'll discuss it when we get home. So you delay it until you get home. Then when you get home, say you guys were fighting in the car. So here's your consequence. Are your kids driving you nuts? They don't have to check out bratbusters.com for my boot camp courses. If you want to learn how to become a leader. OK, the next one is Brianna from the United States. My seven year old continues to lie to me. What do I do? Put no lying on the behavior board. And every time your seven year old lies, there's a consequence. If you're not sure if they're lying, you do the interview. You say, can you please tell me what happened? Can you tell me every single point there and every, you know, exactly what happened? Lay it all out for me and you take notes. Maybe an hour later or two hours later, you say, can you go through that again? Don't let them see your notes. Say, can you go through that again? If they're telling the truth, the facts never change with the truth. If they change the facts, then, you know, they're lying. And you just say, I've decided you're lying. So here's your consequence. OK, the next one. And by the way, don't do any lectures around this. Parents wanted to lecture this stuff all the time. Don't say, you know, you shouldn't lie, blah, blah, do not do that. Just say, I'm deciding you've lied. Here's your consequence. The rule is no lying. You lied. Here's your consequence. That's it. You don't need to discuss this stuff. I can understand where parents come from when they're wanting to discuss it because possibly they want to make sure that their child feels like they have a voice and they're not just coming in and saying, this is my way or the highway. Yeah, whatever. OK. OK. Could you imagine when the police pull you over and give you a ticket, can you imagine them discussing why you shouldn't get a ticket, why you shouldn't speed? Could you imagine that? Wouldn't you just sort of? I don't want to say it, but wouldn't you be mad? Like, what are you doing? Like, what the heck are you lecturing me for? Give me my freaking ticket and let me drive away. It's like that. It's annoying. It's patronizing. It's unnecessary. OK. The next one will leave that one at that. The next one is Vera from Switzerland. My girls are seven and eight and always against each other. Every possibility they have, they talk against each other every few minutes. How can I lead them out of this end with what kind of consequences? So they're always say that against each other. Is that the term? It says always against each other. So they talk against one another. They talk against so they're tattling on each other. OK, we'll do the interview. Say, OK, well, let's do the interview. This one's a bit different because now you got two kids. They put a line down the center of the page and put each kid on the top of each the one on the other and half each of them. And then write notes. They tell me exactly what happened. I'll give you each two minutes to tell your story and then write notes and then decide who's who was in the wrong and then say, I've decided you started it. You go after the one who started it. If it's nothing, say, well, this was nothing. Just go work it out yourselves. If it's just petty little complaining and say, well, why are you coming to me with this? I don't want to deal with it. I give it's just petty complaining. But if they really are starting something or teasing each other or hitting or whatever, you want to get to the bottom of that and sort it out. If they sometimes parent, sometimes they just get into this route of complaining to the parents to get extra attention. That's what I mean by if that's if that's all it is, then just say, well, it doesn't sound like much to me. You guys can just go go play for a while or just play in separate rooms for a while, whatever. This might be a good opportunity as well to discuss how you approach getting siblings to get along. Okay. If you let's say you have two kids, seven, eight year old girls, okay. And they're not getting along. You never do one on one time with them. It builds resentment. Even though it's fair 30 minutes with each, they still hate the other kid the whole time you're playing with the other kid. Okay. It's just the way it is. So whenever you've got kids who are not getting along, you never do one on one time, you do stuff with them all together. So you may play a game and don't do anything competitive though. Just play fun stuff or do artwork or do crafts or do something like do magic science experiments or something. Do something where there's no winner, no loser. Okay. So it could be like just like, you know, I don't know, coloring or something, whatever, but, and you play with them and you stay between the two of them and then you play with it. You're teaching them how to get along even though you're in the middle. So, and there's no resentment if you're both, if you're all there, right? So yeah, parents make this mistake all the time. I don't know why they don't, I don't know why they don't get along. I do want lots of one on one time with them. And I said, well, you just answered your own question. That's why they don't get along. Builds resentment. Now, if they're getting along fine, then you can do one on one time, but not while you're trying to teach them how to get along. Okay. The next one is Majesta from the United States. I have five kids under four. How do you address for lack of a better word, bratty behavior and playmates and friends when the families are visiting our home? Specifically, the visiting child does not follow the rules of the house, even after my husband and I instruct and remind them of the rules. When the other parents don't enforce our rules, our kids start to push boundaries because they see other kids getting away with it. Is it appropriate for me to step in and give the same consequence or take action on someone else's child when their parent is present or do I leave the discipline to them? Absolutely. Nothing you can do about that. Uh, all you can do is you can say, next time you're going to see these people say, do you want to just go out for dinner? We can get sitters or whatever. You cannot discipline other people's kids. You cannot tell other people to discipline their kids. You cannot criticize other people for not disciplining their kids. Okay. You just can't. There's nothing you can do about that. Um, I've lost friends over that where they've had kids because my kids were really polite. Obviously that's why I teach this stuff. They're really polite and I'd have just these really, unruly kids come over and just destroy stuff and that. And I thought, yeah, I'm not having these kids over again. I just stopped having them over. I stopped having the kids over. Nothing you can do. Nothing. They're not your kids and parents are just going to get mad. If you try and discipline other people's kids, good luck with that. It's not going to work anyway. They're just going to run to their parents and she told me, yeah, it's never going to work. It's a tricky situation. But if you have them alone, that's different. Right. If I'm in charge of your kids and you come over to my, they come over to my place. I lease his rules. I'm in charge now, but if the parents are around, nope, none of my business. So what does Lisa's roles look like? Like, are you enforcing consequences or how do you approach that? Well, that's the pool story. You can look that up. If you want, just Google, brat busters pools, pool story. It'll come up. You know, I deal with bad behavior, but then I always focus on the good kid always. I think that's a really important part as well as this is someone's first podcast. What do you think is the most important part of calm leadership? Connection, playing bonding. You know, their love language is fun play, even with teenagers, their love language is you being a good listener. And also they usually like humor. They like it when you show an interest in their music and that whatever they're interested in, you show an interest in that. But connection is number one. Discipline is just a tiny part of this. I always say, you just got to get it out of the way so you can have fun with your kids. My goal is not for you to raise nice kids. That is the org that just happens organically. Once you're a leader, my goal is that I want you to be happy. I want happy families. I want you to enjoy your kids. I want you to wallow in parenting like I did. It was the most fun I ever had. I loved it. Absolutely loved it. I got all that pesky discipline over and done with by the time they were about three and then they were just self disciplined. They didn't get into trouble. So why would they? I was a leader. And the reason why I bring this up every once in a while with podcast episodes is I like to think of this as maybe this is someone's first time listening. All they know is the word. Bratbusters is the name of the podcast and they just see something about consequences. And so I think such a big part of your approach is that connection. But the name's slightly misleading. Let's be honest. Well, and you know me, I like, I like controversy. So I threw that name in. That was actually sort of named by the teenagers I worked with. They used to say, you're always busting brats. And they used to say, you got to teach this stuff, Lisa. So I called it Bratbusters. I thought it was funny. Um, but I never called a kid a brat. So yeah, I don't use that term. So anyway, um, but yeah, connection is number one being fun, um, being positive, controlling the energy, controlling the narrative. Don't let their tantrums and anger take over. You don't let it control you. I always stay calm though. If they get, I've worked with a lot of kids and if the worst they get the calmer I get because I know that I'm going to stay on that high road, which is the calm road, and I'm going to wait for them to join me there. Okay. I never, I never talk to them if they're having a tantrum or anything. That's the low road. Once I talk, once I entertain them or pardon me, start talking to them in the low road when they're, I go down to that low road, that ladder is kicked out to the high road. I can't get back up there for the rest of the visit or the rest of the day. Okay. You've got to remain calm and let them join you. They will eventually, once they respect you, they don't go the crazy road. Anyway, they just don't, you can only fight with a calm, loving leader forever. Eventually they will give in. Okay. Eventually they'll lean into it because we all want to be happy. We all like happiness and joy and just to feel good. My goal is always that kids feel good when they're with me. If they feel good, they do good. If they feel bad, they do bad. So my goal is that they feel good about themselves. Their self-esteem is probably my number one goal. The next one is Chelsea from the United States. Four children ages seven, four, two and four months. We recently started the behavior board and using chores as consequences. I find my seven and four year old are quick to do their consequence without complaining, such as cleaning the table or wiping down the shower. They know that they will have to sit out from family TV time if they don't, which I know is very motivating. It hasn't yet been three weeks, but I do find they are becoming more obedient. Do I need to find consequences they dislike even more? I'm working on connecting more also, but everything is still a work in progress. No, I'd say just keep going as you're going. It's three to six weeks before you start to see results. And how'd she say three weeks now? Yeah, you're doing great. Keep doing what you're doing. You're on the right track. I do want to note the word obedient though. And yeah, I was going to say that, but I didn't want to nitpick because I always do like when I'm working with someone, I do, but they pay me to do that. Right. So yeah, I don't like the word obedient because I want them to be self-disciplined, not obedient. We don't want to raise obedient soldiers here. We want to raise confident self-discipline people, people who have enough pride in themselves and their behavior that they tend to not act out. So yeah, I don't like the word obedient, but you know, she's doing a great job. So I didn't want to nitpick, but you did you nitpick. But yeah, when I'm coaching, I pick on everything. I remember one of my clients a couple of weeks ago said, my God, she said, I talked for like two whole minutes about everything I was doing. And she goes, and there was one word I said wrong. And she goes, your face lit up when I said it. I wrote it down. I thought, oh, I'm going to pick. And it was probably something like the word obedient. It was hilarious. But she said, I saw your face light up. She goes, I knew I was in trouble in that moment. But I actually think that that's important. And this is why I bring up these things is because your approach, and I think most approaches in general are so nuanced. And I can imagine if someone here is behavior board, they hear consequences. They might think that that just falls along with the same lines as obedient. Okay. What kind of mother was I? Goofy, very goofy, crazy. I used to chase my kids around the house with underpants on my head. My goal is always to have fun with kids. When I was working with troubled teens, my goal was always to laugh. I wanted to laugh with them. I wanted to get them laughing. So, and when you get that kind of relationship, but I also don't take any crap is a difference there. But when you get that kind of relationship, that real fun, because their love language is fun. It's my love language too. I love humor. I love laughing. I'm very goofy, which I'm lucky that way because kids like that stuff. Anyway, so I fit right in. I'm more like a 65 year old toddler. But anyway, they love goofy, right? So yeah, fun is I lead with fun. And when I was working with kids, this is kind of embarrassing, but they nicknamed me. They called me fun, Lisa. It's not very inventive, but they used to call me fun, Lisa. I'm funny. I'm fun. And the kids are drawn to that. You become like the pied piper. And I don't take any crap though. I get, I just get less fun. I get quieter if they act out when I was working with kids. Okay. That's all I had. I had no other leverage. They didn't like that. They like fun, Lisa. So you lead with fun, lead with joy, lead with positivity and make them feel good. When they feel good, they do good. When they feel bad, they do bad. How do you treat people that make you feel good as an adult? How do you treat that person? You know, that person who makes you feel like a million bucks when you walk in the room? That's what I do for kids. That's my goal. I remember my kids would walk into the room. I remember once we had a family dinner and I hadn't seen my son in a couple of weeks because he didn't live with me. He was an adult. Didn't live with me and I hadn't seen him in a couple of weeks. And I had all this family of 30 family members coming in. He walked in and it was the weirdest thing. I hadn't seen him in a couple of weeks and literally he walked in and it was like everything else was drowned out. My face must have lit up when I saw him. It was like it was just total joy. That's what you imagine that if people look at you like that, like he probably thought, oh, God, mother, stop it. You know, but anyway, he was probably annoyed by it. But I can remember that it was just I tuned everything else out and I went running to my son who I hadn't seen in a couple of weeks. So yeah, it's that. And of course my daughter would be the same, but we've never not seen each other for a couple of weeks, except when you went to Africa. And that that airport reunion was was messy. She wasn't happy with me. She went to Africa. There was this is interesting. Actually, she was 18 years old and through college, there was this trip to Africa. Where was it? It was in Zambia. It was in Zambia. She was going there to help in the schools or something. And it's a long way away. It's a foreign country and it was with the college. So, you know, she was with a lot and she was the youngest one, I think. Now they went for three months and she was just turned 18 and she's I could have stopped her. I could have, but I knew it was important for her to go. So I let her go anyway, three months of Sheer Hill. But anyway, so when she came home, my ex-husband and I were there and I don't know if I did it or not. But you know how they have those chains that you're not supposed to pass? I think I ripped it aside and went running and threw myself into her arms and she was like, oh, geez. It's humiliating. So yeah, but you want to be that person for your kids that make a fool out of yourself when you see them, right? She didn't care about customs. She didn't care about anything. She went right through those boundaries. Well, and everyone let me go too, because they see a mother and they're not, no one's going to get between a mother and her kid. OK, let's get into the next question. So Madison from the United States. Three year old is very territorial over toys with other kids and especially his little brother, who's one. He gets jealous and acts like a baby sometimes. What's the approach here? Does not taking toys go on the behavior board? What are good consequences for a three year old? I know you're supposed to ignore the tantrums and use the behavior board for specific things. But what about the other bad behaviors that pop up? Well, specifically, you don't take toys away. You don't grab toys off others. So I would say don't grab toys off the baby. So when he does, then what you do is you give the toy back to the baby and you say, now he gets to play with that all by himself for the next 10 minutes. That could be the consequence. OK, but only it's only going to work if he likes that toy. If it's something that he likes, that he grabbed off the baby, that would work. If not, just go to the behavior board and have him do a chore. OK, the next one is Sabrina from the United States. Daughter is going to be three mid February and we are struggling with her cleaning up after her stuff. As soon as we say, OK, time to clean up your toys. She immediately says no and continues protesting. Every time I try cleaning up with her, she just stalls and continues to protest. Taking away her toys doesn't seem like it bothers her either. Even when she's trying to get another toy, I tell her as soon as you pick up the other toy, you can have this one. She doesn't. She just doesn't play with a new toy. OK, well, she's almost three mid February. She's just on the cusp. You can't get a toddler to do a chore, by the way. OK, you cannot get a toddler to do a chore. But when she's three, you can put down, pick up 10 toys within 10 minutes of being asked to do so. That could be her rule. So then put it on the board when she turns three and then follow through. So you say, OK, I'm going to start the 10 minute timer and you need to pick up 10 toys within 10 minutes. And if she doesn't, it's something like 24 hour media blackout or something. Then you take something away. But then you said she won't play with a new toy. She's just having a standoff. She probably wants to. And why is she got a new toy? Or you mean the next toy that she gets to play with? I don't quite understand that part. I think that she doesn't care if the next toy gets taken away. Oh, I see. OK. So yeah, but she probably usually media blackout or something might work. So you take something bigger away. OK, the next one is Emily from the United States. Three year old son and one year old daughter. We just started using the behavior board. My son's rule is no hurting. And his consequence is that he has to share a toy with his little sister, since he's usually hurting her because of not wanting to share a toy. He doesn't have a favorite toy. So I usually say that if he hurt her because of a toy, then she gets to play with that toy for five minutes. If he hurt her for some other reason, so for example, pushes her or pinches her, I have him go out and pick a toy to give to her. He doesn't have any favorite toy. It does redirect his behavior, though, although I have had to resort to the 24 hour consequence because he hurt her so many times in a day. My question is my questions are, is my one year old daughter too young for that to be the consequence? Sometimes she has absolutely no interest in playing with that toy. Is it still a good consequence for him? Because it draws attention to his behavior. I thought about having him do an unrelated chore. But I like that in giving her the toy, he is repairing some of the hurt. Also, this hasn't happened. But I can imagine that my daughter may pick up on the fact that if she bugs him enough and he hits her, she gets a toy. Have you ever encountered a kid who will do that? Okay, I would eliminate that because it's just not working. It's happening too much. So I would go straight to the behavior board and say, do a chore instead. Forget about the toys and handing them over to her. It's not working because he keeps doing it, right? So then you were, I got lots of different ideas. I just start with the most popular ones, which is if they grab a toy off of a baby, then you have them give it back and the other one and the baby gets to play with it for a while. Obviously, it's not working. So you go straight to the behavior board and you say, no hurting your little sister. And then every time he does, he grabs a toy, consider that hurting. Anytime he hurts her in any way, then you go to the behavior board and you get him to do a chore instead that has nothing to do with this little sister. Okay, we have one final question. So Rob from the United States, I enjoy your podcast. I'm learning so much. But what should I do when the eight year old son doesn't want to do a special chore, but also doesn't care about getting a toy or privilege taken away? Okay. If he doesn't care about the, the second consequence, consequence, consequence, that is the negative deprivation you're taking something away. So obviously he doesn't care about screens or anything. You invent leverage. I don't like doing it. It's the last resort. So you invent something that was never even there. And you say, I'll tell you what, we just had a rough day today. You decided not to do the first consequence. We were going to surprise you by going bowling tonight, but now we're not going. So you inventing leverage, you were never going to go bowling, but now you tell them that you were, and it was going to be a surprise. And you've just taken it away. You do not owe him that. They usually say, if I'm good tomorrow, can we go say no? It was just a one off thing we were going to do tonight. So you do not owe them that or else they've learned that I can be rotten and I can still get it. Right. So that's a big mistake parents make. You do not owe them that privilege, that treat. So yeah, it's inventing leverage. You have to make something up that you're going to do. Well, we were going to treat you by going out for ice cream tonight, but because you didn't do that first consequence, now we're not going. That was your choice. Okay. I would say it like that. So there you go. Inventing leverage. I don't start with that, but that's sometimes that's all you've got. Right. Okay. Well, that was everything. Okay. This was consequences punishment, fitting the crime kind of idea or natural consequences or related consequences, whatever you want to call it. They do not have to fit. The punishment does not have to fit the crime. Sometimes it does naturally. If not, don't worry about it. Don't let that be your stumbling block for not even having a consequence. Follow through with discipline, but then make it fast, get it over and done with. And then you get back to being positive and cheery with your kids. Whenever I'm disciplining my tone is very quiet. I talk slowly. I talk low. I almost whisper and say, Oh, that was an interesting choice. Here's what we're going to do. You see, I treat that like a business transaction. I treat disciplining like it's just nothing to me. It's just something that has to be done, but there's no emotions attached to it. Whatsoever. But 99% of my interaction with kids is fun. And that is when I have, I'm very emotional. I'm very goofy. I laugh easily. So I really like to be fun and have fun with kids and they tend to be drawn to that. They don't want to lose that. But I get real quiet, real boring, real fast. If they act out, you talk about that being your leverage. Well, when I was working with kids, that's all I had. And you know, when I was working with kids, I'd say to them, Oh, didn't I wasn't big on what you just did. I'll tell you what, I'm just going to go real quiet for 30 seconds. And I would just sit there and look at my watch for three. And they, they always say the same thing. Sorry, Lisa. I didn't mean it. And I'd say, that's okay. 20 more seconds. They hated that because they lost fun. Lisa, I use that as leverage. Now, the reason that doesn't work at home is I was with those kids, I was fun the whole time. You're not going to be juggling and being fun the whole time with your kids at home. Right. So it's a very different thing. That was when I was mentoring children with behavioral issues and teenagers. That's sort of what I did. Teenagers were a little bit different, but anyway, obviously. But anyway, that's all the leverage I had. I took away fun, Lisa, but it was just very quick. And it was, I just got real boring, basically. And they hated that because they liked fun, Lisa. They liked the connection. The connection with them was the superpower. And that is the truth. That is the same at home with parents. Your connection is truly your superpower. When you have such a good friendship and connection with your kids and you have fun with them, they don't want that to go away. They like that. They look up to you. They respect you because you respect them. You've got to give respect to get it. A lot of parents get mad that their kids don't respect them. And I say, so you've already earned it, but they haven't respected you anyway. And they go, you got to earn it. You got to work for it. I worked my butt off to get respect with kids and I got it. I know how to get it. I make them feel good about themselves. I don't accept bad behavior. I deal with it. Okay. But I get it over and done with really fast. So consequences are important, but really the connection is number one, number one, for sure. I, if you know what, if you're not connected with your kids and they don't feel like you like being with them, I wouldn't even want you disciplining them. You work on that connection before you do anything else. I think that's a great place to end. Okay. That's good enough. I got all heated there. Sorry about that. She just, you know what? I know I'm getting heated when I look in my side eye, I can see her and she's leaning back in her chair. It's like, here we go. Well, no, she's like, no, I won't need to interject for a while. She knows I'm on a bender. Anyway, thanks so much for joining us. We'll be back again next time talking about parenting. Happy parenting. Thanks for tuning in. If you're ready to dive deeper, check out bratbusters.com to learn more about the behavior board, parenting courses, and private one-on-one coaching with Lisa. If you've enjoyed the show so far, we'd love it if you could take a moment to follow, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback helps us reach more parents just like you. The information provided in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional advice. Lisa is a parenting coach, mom and grandmother. She is not a licensed psychologist or counselor. Her services do not replace the care of psychologists or other healthcare professionals. For a full disclaimer, please visit bratbusters.com forward slash disclaimer.