We came into adoption and parenting hurt children with six biological children already in the family, including two with Asperger's. We'd figured out logical and natural consequences a long time ago and felt confident that we could teach any child to behave.
Then our adopted children came home and we discovered slow learners. Finally I realized that consequences just don't work for our children. They don't work at all!
When my bio children were 18 months old, walking and getting into trouble, we didn't use consequences because they were too young to understand. Our adopted children were 19 months, 3 years old and 6-1/2 when they came home and not one of them could learn through consequences. We finally realized that consequences require cause-and-effect thinking which none of our children had.
We have found that there are only two ways to teach them. One way is connection (more on that later). The other is to actually make them do whatever they are supposed to do. Our son's counselor called it hand-on-hand. If they're supposed to keep their hands in their lap and they come out, then hold them in their lap. If they're supposed to walk into the house without getting sidetracked, hold them by the hand and walk them into the house. If they're supposed to be going to the bathroom, walk them to the bathroom. If they're supposed to be quiet and they talk, they put their hands on their mouth (and a parent can help if they continue having trouble).
But logical consequences just don't work. Time outs don't work. Sitting in break doesn't work. Those all require an assumption that today's consequence will be the same as tomorrow's, which of course was no part of our children's birth environment.
Natural consequences do seem to work better. They rarely get hurt the same way twice.
We have found that natural responses are pretty effective when our now 7 year old son feigned injury or sickness. Once we were driving home from camping and he made a big to do about how sick he was (I noticed in the mirror that his expression was very different when he thought we weren't looking). So when we got home he went straight to bed for 24 hours since he was so sick. No more pretending to be sick. Similarly, after a few big screaming episodes over minor injuries, I was ready for the next one. When he let out a blood curdling shriek after getting a few hairs pulled, I scooped him up and rushed him to bed. Those shrieks turned to anger quickly when he realized what was happening. I bandaged his entire head and kept him in bed resting for hours. That was the last shriek over any injury.
But, let me tell ya, I'll be deliriously happy when time-outs start working, because using hand-on-hand with three little children all day long is just about more than any human being can do and stay sane. Oh, that's right, I'm already crazy.
Great article! What about tweens? Our 12 year old adopted daughter doesn't seem to learn from consequences either but we can't really make her do things like with a younger child. Any suggestions?
ReplyDeleteAs our little children are healing we are doing less and less of hand-on-hand and more verbal direction. We used to have to physically hold their hands on their knees, now we can just say "hand on your knees" and they go there. Does your daughter respond to verbal directions?
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