Consistent education: what you should pay attention to

Consistent behavior in all situations

Parents should be as consistent as possible with their children. This means that your child’s behavior should be followed by similar behavior from you so that it knows where it is. However, if you allow yourself to be guided by your changing moods in everyday life, your child will have no orientation and will ultimately no longer take your opinions and wishes seriously.

Unfortunately, there is often a great temptation to avoid a conflict, for example when you are stressed or when strangers are watching in public. Then you close both eyes and swallow your anger just so you don’t have to endure the whining again. Nevertheless, what was forbidden yesterday must not be allowed today and vice versa! Even if it’s uncomfortable, once the rules have been set, they must be enforced! If you make it clear to your child from the very first year that your rules are meant to be taken seriously and that violations of them also have consequences, your child will try less and less to explore their limits.

Inconsistent upbringing and the consequences

Consistent education also means that your child has to bear the logical consequences of breaking the rules . However, it is important that the consequence of the misconduct, such as a punishment, is directly related to your child’s violation, because this is the only way they can learn something from the situation. It makes your child follow the rules. Because if it knows what follows, your child can decide beforehand how to behave and thus learns to act independently. Whoever plays with the food is probably full and can get up. Or if you bang your pocket money on the head one day, you’re broke for the rest of the week. When you ask your child to do something, you must already have in mind what will happen if he doesn’t respond. And alsoYour child should know where their behavior is leading .

Deviate from a rule

At some point, consistency will reach its limits. Stubborn insistence on rules is not good! As we know, exceptions prove the rule. Children easily understand what exceptions are when the rule still stands in the future. It makes sense to deviate from the rules in the following situations:

• When you realize that an old rule was or is out of place. Parents aren’t perfect. Then why shouldn’t they be able to replace one rule with a new, better one?
• When the child makes a good case for an exception to the rule. For example, if the child has promised a friend that they will return the borrowed excavator the same day and they have previously been forbidden to leave the house.
• In a clearly exceptional situation, for example, your child may stay up later at a family celebration or at the turn of the year.