From the time my biological son was old enough to talk, he’s known about the word “consequences.” When we make good choices, there are often positive consequences; and when we make poor choices, there will be negative consequences.

Lately, I’ve been struggling to find the balance for appropriate negative consequences. Rewards are fairly easy to hand out. But meaningful negative consequences, particularly for children who have suffered trauma, take some thought.

My daughter is six, and as I have mentioned, has control issues that manifest themselves in the area of toileting. She has had to forfeit her allowance to pay for training pants, but this is abstract, since she giving up something she doesn’t yet have, and never gets to see.

After the nth load of laundry dealing with this particular issue, I had had it. The last time she did this, I had her pull out her hamper, haul it to the garage, and introduced her to Mrs. Washing Machine, and her trusted sidekick, Mr. Dryer! She had load the washer, add the detergent (after I measured it out for her), and start the machine (I took care of the settings). After the appropriate amount of time, she had to go back and remove everything from the washer and put the laundry into the dryer. After another wait, she then had to empty the dryer, put her items into the hamper, haul them back to her room to fold and put away.

Needless to say, there were no accidents for awhile after that!

However, we were back to business as usual today, so we repeated the work cycle. This time, not only did she do her laundry, but she did some household laundry as well. I explained to her that as a consequence of her choice to soil her clothing, I had more work to do, and it was not fair to me, since I didn’t make the choice. Plus, it costs money for the water and laundry detergent as well as the electricity it takes to run the appliances.

My daughter asked if she will have to do laundry everyday. I told her that she will have to do laundry for as long as she makes this choice, in addition to continuing to forfeit her allowance to offset the cost of nighttime training pants and increased laundry loads.

It is my hope that by directly linking the consequence to the undesired behavior, she is able to make better choices.

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