Taking dessert away from your child doesn't work. Here's why....
A mum asked whether the way she disciplined her child was okay.
Here’s the scenario and my advice.
Mum had a friend over for dinner. Her 6-year-old daughter was smacking her lips whilst she ate. Mum felt it was rude and said the daughter would not have any dessert if she continued with the noise. Her daughter continued and so mum followed through and didn't serve her daughter dessert whilst everyone else had theirs.
Mum, as all of us as parents, do the best we can with what we know in any given scenario.
And there are a couple of things we might like to consider in this approach.
It’s important to set a boundary, and it’s important to follow through.
It’s also important to question what meaning a child makes from the response of the parent and what beliefs or skills the child has to move forward with as a result of our response.
In the current approach:
Child was smacking her lips at the dinner table. Mum asks politely for her daughter to stop. Her daughter continues. Mum gets annoyed because she’s trying to entertain a friend.. dessert gets refused to teach daughter a lesson in table manners.
Child meanings: If I smack my lips I get some attention (even if it’s annoyance). And if I try to get attention when mum has a friend over, I miss out on dessert.
In this scenario, child may stop smacking her lips in the short term, but in the long term, may resent her friend for taking mum's attention and form a connection in her mind/belief: If I ask for attention, I get punished (dessert taken away). Dessert gets associated as a reward for good behaviour and punishment for bad behaviour. The child develops unhelpful beliefs and no new skills or table manners are learned for when this scenario happens again.
Another approach:
Child smacks her lips. Mum asks her to stop. Child continues. Mum sees through attention-seeking for what it is, connection-seeking. Acknowledges daughter’s need for connection and sets a boundary: “I’m talking to my friend and you’re smacking your lips, would you like to tell me something? Or if you wait a few moments when I’ve finished talking we can go into the kitchen and you can tell me there?”
Child meanings: child feels mum “gets me” and feels acknowledged for wanting connection and being given a chance to talk. Mum has friends and sometimes she likes to talk to them and that doesn’t mean she doesn’t like to talk to me or spend time with me. The helpful belief is formed “I’m as important as mums friend.” and through mum modelling asking questions, she learns that asking questions is good skill to have. And no distorted connection is made with dessert.
In this scenario, next time mum has a friend over for dinner, daughter skips on smacking lips for attention and just asks mum, can I speak with you? They have a chat, come back and dinner continues. Or some version of this.
It sounds like a lot of moving parts to remember in the moment and it is. But when we can see past our child’s behaviour to their good intent, acknowledge their feelings and set up a behaviour we want moving forward, life, in the long run, gets so much easier for parent and child. And most importantly we embed the helpful beliefs we want for our child.
The Considered Communication Strategy is a core module in the Stressed to Best Parent Method. It outlines the structure of each component of formulating responses to help embed the healthy beliefs we want to instil in our children for life.
And one more thing to note. Mum had an intuition about her response to her daughter not feeling right for her, otherwise she wouldn’t have asked for an outsider's opinion. It’s great she trusted that!
Do you trust when your response doesn't feel right for you?
Much love
Dina xxx