Keeping Children from the Consequences of their Actions

Now, before you begin this blog post, it would behoove you to go back and read the caveats attached to the first post in this series. It should suffice to say that I am speaking from experience and that some of this experience is observational and some of it is personal — i.e., I have done and sometimes do the very things that I am warning against. With that in mind, let’s explore the second way that you can sabotage your child’s growth and maturity: disconnecting consequences from actions.

I see this at school on two connected fronts: academics and behavior. Teachers deal with this consistently. On the academic side of things, it usually starts with a parent emailing, calling, or meeting with his or her child’s teacher and saying something like:

“Jimmy, got a low grade on a test recently. What’s up?” Or “Jimmy, got Summa last year and his averages are down in the 93 range now. What wrong?”

On the behavior side of things it often starts with a call from the school by a teacher or our Dean of Students about an issue at school. The next thing that happens is the critical point. How will you react when some
negative feedback from teachers or school administrators reaches you as a parent?

There are a few reactions that are really harmful. As a parent, you may be tempted to get defensive (“Are you sure that he should not have received partial credit on that answer?”). The other harmful temptation is to blame shift (“How did he learn to push kids down? It must have been that other boy in class!”). To keep from falling into one of these knee-jerk, harmful responses, please bear in mind that your teacher is really trying to help your child grow up and be the man or woman that God is calling him or her to become.

Now I am not saying that teachers or administrators see things correctly 100% of the time. We don’t; sometimes we blow it. But I advise you to remember a few things. First, know that your teachers are your eyes and ears assisting you as parents in helping your child grow up. Second, you cannot parent well unless you remember that your child has a sin nature and that their moral struggles should not be unexpected.

Here is where the rubber meets the road. As a parent, you can see your child’s struggles as opportunities for growth rather than obstacles that need to be removed or destroyed. So you have a problem. Jimmy’s grades are lower or he pushed a fellow student down at lunch. At that point, find out what happened and why it happened ... and find that out first from the teacher. Counting on the testimony of your child, their friends, or friends' parents who were not there can be misleading. Go right to the source.

Note that boys and girls can confuse their parents in different ways at different ages. The next few statements might not fit your child, but they are general tendencies. Younger boys tend to give partial information that can be misleading. When I used to handle discipline, I remember two boys being brought to me because they got into a fight at recess. I told them that I was going to hear them one at a time and that one person needed to stay quiet while the other one was speaking. Here is a “transcript:”

Me (to Boy 1): “Ok, what happened?”
Boy 1: “He (pointing at Boy 2), threw me down, kicked me, and hit me (etc., etc., etc….so many details)!"
Me (to Boy 1): “Is that all that happened?”
Boy 1: “Yes.”
Me (to Boy 2): “Did you do this?”
Boy 2: “Yes.” (I am thinking at this point it's an “open and shut case.”)
Me (to Boy 2): “Did anything else happen?”
Boy 2: “Yeah. He (Boy 1) hit me first!”
Boy 1: <Blush.>

The information, you see, is incomplete. Younger boys tend to shave the truth and diminish their own responsibility. If this sounds like Adam in the Garden, then I think that you might be seeing the origin of the trend.

Upper grammar and middle school girls have an opposite problem. They don’t cut the truth short; they add to it. They sound completely rational, but when you dig into what they are saying you'll likely find a mix of what actually happened along with their interpretation of what happened. Often, they are not great interpreters.

When you get unsettling information about your child, remember that you must keep your focus on your goal as a parent and consider the proportion of the problem. If your child, his/her grades, or the teacher is telling you something, first consider your goal: to help them grow up to be a mature adult. Often, your child does not need to be protected from a problem; they need to be advised about how to work through the problem. The older they are, the truer this is, and the larger the problem that needs to be worked through rather than removed. It might sound something like this:

Parent: “Hey, Jimmy, can we talk about your history grade? I was talking with Mrs. Smith and your grades are lower this quarter. Are you doing your best?”

Jimmy: “Uh, I don’t know. I don’t like history as much this year.”

Parent: “Jimmy, sometimes we might not like a subject as much, but we have to do our best. Your character and willingness to work hard on something are much more important to Mrs. Smith and to me than your grade. When things are a little tougher, that is a great opportunity to work hard on something.”

Another helpful consideration: make sure that you are reaching out to those who can really help solve the problem. One of the problems we can have in parenting is that we want to get others to help us build a case. Talk with the teacher first. Don’t call everyone else. When I struggle with this, I end up mistaking empathy for agreement — with embarrassing results. I tell people about a problem and my friends empathize. I think that they agree, but when push comes to shove and if and when they know all the facts, I find that I have often misled them.

Parents don’t see the damage they are doing to their own child and the future damage that they are inviting by deflecting consequences. If you are persistent enough, you can probably argue your way past people who are trying to help your child grow up and mature. You might pressure people (teachers, friends, pastors or others) to keep painful but small consequences from coming upon your child, but know that your actions are harming rather than helping your child. Consequences are there to change a child’s direction. If you restrain those consequences — particularly when they are small—you are pushing the issues down the tracks. If you keep small consequences from coming, then instead of your children's actions being corrected by loving teachers, they will face larger consequences that could have been avoided if they would have learned the little lessons that they could have absorbed at school.

What next? If you find yourself blame shifting or being defensive about your child’s behavior, be honest with your spouse and/or pastor. When I am doing something that I shouldn’t, I am really thankful when my wife or a friend pulls me aside and says, “You know that thing that we talked about? You're doing it again.” Being honest is a start. It's also helpful to understand why you are doing what you are doing. If you have a problem with something that your teacher or an administrator is doing, talk with them. Schedule a time to talk when there is not any particular issue that you are dealing with. Be open, but listen too. While you might not see eye to eye on everything, you will almost always find that your child's teacher has constructive observations, that they truly care about your child and your family, and that their insights and support can help you encourage your child to growth and maturity.

Stay tuned for Part 3 of this series on how parents can sabotage their child's growth and maturity: Treating Children Like Adults and Teens Like Children.