I was thinking about this recently.

How do I teach consequences?

Well, let's start with how I teach about Shroedinger's cat, to take today's example of what DS wanted to know about. (I know it's Shr?dinger but I can't have the o-umlaut here). There's a lot to explain first. But to DS, it's just a picture of a cat on the cover of a book Mammy is reading. He doesn't need to know much about quantum theory just yet, nor does he need to think about trapping cats in boxes with a radioactive source. I can explain to him that the act of observing changes the thing observed; that we don't know something until we've seen it. So do we know if there are Moose on the farm? (DS asked that one.) Let's find out. There may not be, according to what we know from before, but we don't know if we don't look. I think not, but I'm not always right (is it OK to teach our childer that?). OK, so there were no moose, but that's Shroedinger's cat sort of stuff that a 2-year-old can almost understand. You don't tell him that the moose were there and weren't there but they only were definately not there when we went out and looked.

So how do I teach consequences? Can I teach that every action has an equal and opposite reaction? Yes. I can teach DS that if he does ABC then XYZ happens. And he can see that's logical - if he pushes a train, it moves. If he pulls the light cord in the bathroom, the light comes on. Push the buzzer and the bell rings. Hit Mammy and she stops cuddling you. Those are all logical reactions.

WRT smacking, that's rarely logical beyond the "you do that and you get a smack." Why do you get a smack? Mammy stops cuddling because she is hurt, the TV turns on because you press a button, Da reads a book when you take him one... why if I get my train set out when you've just put it away do I get a smack? Makes no sense.

DS is "destructive" and as a consequence my things have moved away from him and he may not touch my palmtop. He is also neat; he puts rubbish in the bin (great for me when I can't be bothered to move in the afternoon!). He does this with litter too. He has learnt that if he does something well for the first time, he hears the words "good boy" or "well done" - in fact he says this to himself if he has just done something he finds tricky and I haven't realised just how much skill he needed for this task. He has learnt to take pride in his achievements, which is great.

I am waaaay more carrot than stick though. I don't ignore unwanted behaviour but I do change it. DS learns to say please. DS learns not to pull the curtains (he saw my mum do that once, just drawing the curtains, and pull the whole rail down on top of her!). Everything, he learns. By learning natural consequences from the start I think it will help him draw consequences in the future. So if he learns that if he can't go near the road if he isn't careful, he learns to be careful near roads. He may not comprehend why, but when he does the consequence for me is that he realises there is method to Mammy's madness, and listens to my rules more because they make sense.

I really hope this works LOL.

BTW - friends. We like and respect each other. Parent-child - he does as I say, because he likes and trusts me so knows there's a reason for it. Both work well. But not changing parent-child to peers - we get symapthy and help about things children shouldn't worry about.