Consistency is a troubling word for parents. Do I have to be the same all the time? What happens when I lose it? Does it mean I have to discipline the same way for each infraction? Consistency in discipline means responding in ways your child can expect. There is nothing more confusing and disruptive for a child than to never know how your parent is going to react. As the dictionary puts it, consistency means responding in a way “that is necessary for the sake of logic, accuracy, or fairness”.
The importance of logic and fairness cannot be overstated. When “consequences” (the politically correct word for punishment) seem unfair and illogical (which they all do unless natural or a logical choice the child makes), children resist or learn to get sneaky and even lie to avoid them. We all know what we did to stay out of trouble. Fairness and logic does not mean responding the same way all the time, i.e. going to one’s room or timeout every time behavior is inappropriate or inconvenient. For a child to learn self-control and self-discipline, a parent needs to approach all infractions from a similar place of fairness and logic; from a set of consistent principles that inform each decision a parent makes. The parent’s response can be different in each case, but the principles remain the same. The child learns what to expect and what not to expect.
Every child knows his parent is going to lose it from time to time. Consistency means how that loss of judgment is repaired. Do you lose it and blame your child for your emotions and behavior or do you lose it and take responsibility after emotions calm? If the child trusts that his parent will go over the situation and make repair or if he trusts that he will get a chance to tell his side of the story, that brings consistency to the problem. Things don’t get swept under the rug. Everyone is always held accountable and taking responsibility for ones actions and emotions can be expected.
Thanks for the reply – I’ve only just checked in and seen it.
This person is a good friend of mine, and we give each other support. I can see her ongoing frustration and battle where she’s at her wit’s end, even calling in law enforcement authorities. What she says is that the daughter tends to “manipulate” people, something that she thinks has been picked up from her ex-husband (whom I’ve never met). She doesn’t think anybody believes her (again, something that happened when she was victimized by her ex) and since I am not in her shoes, I don’t want to give the impression that I know what her solution is, which is why I am asking for your opinion. She thinks that people who are child-centred get “hoodwinked” by her daughter whose ambition is to run rings around her and successfully does so because she doesn’t know what to do to set boundaries that she can effectively enforce. Since your reply a few months ago, I tried to gently give her your perspective (since the problem remains), but I sense she thinks I am simply echoing what others who have got involved have said, and she sees it as not listening to what she, the parent, is saying, and instead, only listening to the child who lies. She is desperate to help steer this child from the path that she sees her heading toward.
There are also others in our group of friends that are beginning to encounter similar situations, so I’m always trying to get more clarity.
Thanks so much for your considered and helpful reply. One other question – the teenager’s mother, as a victim of a narcissistic and abusive ex, gets reminded of his behavior in her, and she doesn’t want to be re-abused and also doesn’t want that child growing up that way, or influencing the younger child who is “sweet, innocent” and unaffected by the father as she has never lived with him. It’s her fear of the same thing taking root that causes her to try very hard to find out what she can do not to enable that behavior but finds herself powerless as whatever she does gets a response where the child wins by causing damage (either physically terrorising or by bullying the younger child). Would it be the case that she needs to separate the behavior of her ex from the daughter, even though the dynamics of abusive behavior are the same, and not use the same strategy? Victims are taught to not tolerate abusive behavior and to set limits or terms of engagement that sometimes end up with complete “no contact”.
It’s the classic self-fulfilling prophesy problem. Your neighbor, out of fear of passing on what she experienced, tries to take control, her daughter rebels and takes the same kind of control of her mother that her mother once experienced from another. It’s also, a shame to say, the experience the mother has come to expect. Her reminder of her own experience is her problem, not her daughter’s. She should definitely not parent her daughter by projecting her own experience onto the situation, which she already has purely unintentionally done. And unfortunately she has “allowed” her daughter the same abusive tactics. This kind of passing on what we least want is insidious and requires some deep work on oneself and one’s beliefs that have built and deepened over the years. It’s easy to say, “I don’t tolerate abusive behavior”, but hard to make it a reality as it needs to come from one’s gut, not one’s head. Her daughter needs understanding and connection—very hard to give when you are feeling like that child’s victim. I’m curious about why you are asking such intense questions about your neighbor.