When my children misbehave, my first reaction is to take their cell phones from them, is this a good idea?
Yes and no. Generally speaking, my first answer is, you can take it away.But does that change the behavior? I'm gonna guess.
Probably not. So let's try a different approach.
When x, y, Z misbehavior occurs, now I'm brainstorming with them, what would be a consequence or something that you feel like would help
you change the behavior?
Now let me explain why that behavior isn't, is, doesn't work in our family.
Hitting somebody, doing something inappropriately, criticizing or harming another person, whatever, whatever that is, I'm trying to help my child understand what that behavior's doing.
So one of the things that we do on parent guidance, one of the things that happens is we have a course there on about our, our development,
and we have a course on our identity.
And what we've found is that especially at a certain point our,
as our identity goes, we become more laser focused.
So it's harder for me to see what's happening outside
because I just experienced what's happening inside of me.
So developmentally, I want to educate my child.
I wanna help them understand what the consequences are of actions.
And it's hard to do because again, they're more egocentric,
self-focused, their identity. And so what we're trying to help them understand is that their actions influence other people.
That's a really invaluable skill to have in this life.
And so it makes us more aware and sensitive of others.
So in this specific situation,
before I would take away the phone, I would want to educate
and inform and come up with a game plan with them
that they co-create a consequence with me.
Much more effective when they're part of the consequence
and the decision by them saying, okay, so
this behavior doesn't work, here's why.
So what do you think an appropriate consequence would be?
Before I've been taken away your phone, I'm not sure that
that's necessary at this point because it's not changing the behavior.
So what do you think would motivate you to change this?
And that's where I would go with it.
