Without tangible consequences parents will continue to use harmful emotional ones. This is reason enough to use them but there is another reason that is equally compelling. Without tangible consequences it is not possible for parents with 'badly' behaving children to say anything that is categorical.

Strength of character will not do it.

"Come in now Tommy it's getting late"
"No just another 10 minutes"
"No Tommy, you have already had an extra ten minutes, come in now please."

Tommy shows he really wants stay out, his mother is adamant that he has to come in; which one of them is making is making a categorical statement? The answer is always found in what happens. Two things have to happen for the child to "win" clearly he has to not come in but secondly, and crucially he must come in without a consequence for his refusal being applied. Parents mistakenly think that it is their job, in situations like this, is to get their child to comply at all costs, this get them into all kinds of problems including physically forcing their children. Their job is a much simpler one; to provide consequences if the child does not comply. It is the consequence or lack of it that will tell this child if his mothers statement is categorical or not.

When children fail to comply, parents often worry that this is because they lack authority. They have seen parents who have an air of authority and think that their children obey them because they have this and their own children defy them because they don't. Once again the converse is true, it is because these parents have children who obey them that they have this air of authority. Children are not swayed by intensely or your 'presence' or your air of authority but only by the memory of what happened the last time they refused to comply. Being intense and appearing authoritative appears to work only because, like Pavlov's dogs, they see these as a signal that something else, the consequence, is about to be applied. Posturing and bluster can work for a short time but every child will inevitably call this bluff. Consequences are always needed as the inevitable result of non-compliance even if, eventually, they rarely need to be applied.

The chairperson a major UK parenting charity told me she was particularly interested in the speech I had just given for them because "our charity takes a positive approach to parenting" and "we don't usually talk about consequences or sanctions." I tried to point out that it is impossible to avoid sanctions in the home. I reminded her that a previous speaker had talked of breaking down in tears of despair and anger in front of her boy, I said this speaker, without realising it, had been describing a powerful "sanction." Despair and anger are powerful interpersonal punishments, which, because they harm the child's self-esteem and increase the child's sense of power, make "bad behaviour" worse. Consequences, in the sense that behaviour A will always be followed by the parents response B are logically unavoidable. If the aim of this book is to help parents and children tormented by "bad behaviour" achieve positive relationships then which of their responses increase or decrease the problem is an essential topic. Consequences cannot be avoided, what parents desperately want to know is which ones are helpful and which counter-productive and this has to be something we talk about.

Even parents who say they do not use punishments or sanctions are almost always responding in negative ways to their children's "bad behaviour". To talk, as we do, about Mercury's Child's need for consequences because we champion an autocratic view of parenting. Perhaps this charity's chairperson is right to believe that parents will not create problems for themselves by "not thinking about consequences" but once problems have occurred parents will not be able to avoid them. Families that suffers from chronic "bad" behaviour desperately need to know that it is completely impossible to make a categorical statement without the careful use of consequences.

Television Wars

Prior to 2004 the few programmes concerning child behaviour on British television were despairing tales of the hopelessness of helping seriously badly behaved children. When a programme featuring my work with a violent teenager was broadcast it received 4.3 million viewers (more than the BCC's flagship "Johnathon Ross" programme) and the floodgates opened. It is difficult to assess whether all the ensuing programmes had a net positive or negative effect. On the positive side they encouraged despairing parents to believe that their own behaviour was crucial and that it was possible to change their child's "bad" behaviour. Perhaps the biggest negatives were that most of the programmes that followed only worked with pre-teenage children and they encouraged the myth - already believed by most parents - that parents needed to be more forceful and authoritative and introduce "naughty stairs" and send their children to "time out" in their rooms.

If a child who is not doing what you are asking them to do will nevertheless sit on a naughty stair or go to their room when asked it is difficult to believe how serious the refusal was in the first place. Of course really "badly" behaved children won't go when asked. This means that what ever the original problem of non-compliance was, you now have the additional problem of getting them to "time out" on top of the first one. The most important attribute of a consequence or sanction is that the parent is in control of it and can prevent their child subverting it. Deploying a sanction that requires the child to physically move from one place to another and stay there is, therefore, not ideal. Yes, if successful, it does provide a practical sanction and it does give parent and child a clear symbolic demonstration of the parents leadership but not, perhaps, in a house in which Mercury's Child is already using serious temper tantrums as a mechanism to divert attention away from an initial refusal. The biggest indictment of the "naughty stair" and "time out" is that to get children to go and to stay there without being tempted to physically force them is almost impossible.

Forcing

A friend of mine whom I had met through a mutual interest and who knew little about my work had a son who had been given a diagnosis of mild autism and was displaying behaviour that was causing them increasing difficulty. He asked if could look at a draft version of my book when I mentioned I was in the process of writing it. When I next saw him he said that he had only read a few pages. He shook his head "discipline" he said…. "I'm just not comfortable with that". Actually you will not find the word "discipline" at the start of this book, in fact the word is used for the first time here. It is a word that frightens many parents. Once he got this impression he did not read on. Yes, the position we firmly take is that badly behaved children desperately need consistent consequences but we adamantly deny the popular perception that these have to be used in a negative or angry way or worse still that they require the parent to be physically forceful or insensitive to causing hurt. What my friend and other parents and professionals who dislike the idea of tangible sanctions don't realise is that without sanctions parents invariably respond to 'bad' behaviour with much more harmful "interpersonal" sanctions. If my friend had continued reading he would have realised that this book does not advocate the use of "discipline" or "punishment" precisely because for many people these words have seriously negative connotations.

Parents often say to me, as we saw in the last chapter, that they have 'tried being firm'. At first sight is seems astonishing that a parent could "try" then give it up on an essential part of the parental role in this way, but they have discovered that being firm without consequences is just not possible. Misconceptions have produced some genuine fears about the use of consequences. Parents have been encouraged to stick with words and use persuasion because they do not realise that the goal of getting child who come from another planet to agree with them that now is the time to come in is about as "big brother" as it gets. Parents fear using consequences puts them on the slippery slope to physically forcing their children but physically force is never necessary sustainable or effective as a consequence. Force is counter-productive. The whole point of a consequence is that once the child has made it clear that they do not agree with your view they will still decide to comply.

Whilst we cannot insist that our child agree with us, or that they should want to comply, it should be our aim that they will eventually allow themselves, to comply. Therefore, it is vital that they are left to make the decision to comply for themselves, even if this is done reluctantly and has to be encouraged by our sanctions. Unless our children are in real danger we are rarely entitled to physically force then to comply.

Forcing is completely incompatible with the correct use of consequences. Often, when doing in-service training in infants schools, I would watch as the teacher would clap her hands or otherwise indicated to her class that she wanted them to stop what they were doing and congregate together so that the teacher could talk to them. Often as the children filtered to the congregation area, usually a mat, one child would stay on the periphery with that unmistakable air that small children can have of 'notice me I'm not doing what you said'. Eventually the teacher would notice them and ask them to come to the mat. If they still refused to come, to speed things along, the teacher of teaching assistant would often walk over to them take them by the hand and physically encourage (i.e. drag) them to the mat.

The decision to comply

This, at first sight, seems innocuous enough, except that the child has not actually made the decision to come to the mat. The fact that he ends up sitting on the mat solves the immediate problem but because he has not made the decision to comply he has received lots of attention, including very rewarding physical attention. This attention is gained because he remained defiant and has not made this decision. Now he will want the rewarding attention he received to continue once he gets to the mat and will be unlikely to behave well. With all this attention the next time he is asked to sit on the mat he is almost certain to repeat this whole cycle of behaviour. The frequency of the behaviour will go up. Solving the current problem - physically getting him on the mat - at the expense of the frequency of the behaviour is the most common behaviour management mistake. It may take a little longer to get the child to decide to come to the mat, the teacher may have to state and carry out a consequence - "Johnny, you need to come and sit on the mat because the free time you take now you will have to give back at playtime". Unlike forcing, this will accomplish the correct aim and encourage the child to decide to come to the mat, which in turn enables the behaviour to decrease and disappear.

It is equally common for parents of teenagers to see a particular outcome as their goal rather than their child's decision to comply. When children are refusing to turn-off a television or computer parents make the mistake of turning these off themselves. They, too, prevent the child from making the decision to comply. The child will often go back and re-turn the switch on, then the parent, in turn, will go back and turn it off. While this goes on the child will never come to the conclusion that the expedient thing to do is to turn it off themselves. If the parent angrily does it for them they cannot decide to comply and no training can occur. It is not the parent's job to force compliance in situations like this but merely to put consequences in place if their categorical is not carried out.

These are both mild examples of parents "forcing" children to comply but even at low levels physically forcing children can turn into abuse. Look at this mother's story

I am the single mum of a 5 year old boy who, ….There are lots and lots of aspects of Duncan's behaviour, which is difficult to deal with, but not impossible, there are only two things that I Cannot cope with and this is nail cutting and hair cutting. It all started before he was two, He started detesting having a haircut and he refused to have it done he would scream and make him self sick and would violently shake about to the point no one could get near him. Unfortunately, I cant just let his hair grow and grow (head lice etc) So every other month I have to physically pin him down and shave his head with the clippers. It is horrendous and I cry and feel so awful that I am physically forcing him to do this….but he's like a child possessed, he screams and begs and says "please mammy no!" he makes him self cough and choke …. to see him so hysterical is child abuse. ….I broke down in tears and he ran and hid under his duvet and wouldn't speak to me, he just made strange noises. I'm devastated. I went and apologised to him but he wouldn't let me touch him and comfort him, it is absolutely heart breaking and I'm disgusted with myself that I have done this to my beautiful son. He came round eventually, but this cannot go on.

Although it is pointless to seek to persuade the child our view is right or that they should want to comply parents must always let children comply under their own steam. It is completely counter-productive, as this mother discovers, to physically force a child to comply. The natural response of anyone being physically forced is to resist. One of the tentative suggested diagnoses this parent had received for her son was Oppositional Defiance Disorder, but any child being forced in the way that she describes will learn to be defiant. Hopefully no professionals would give a definitive diagnoses without attempting to discover the responses that parents are using. This mother's goal is that her son's hair and nails end up shorter, just that. The real goal should be for him to allow himself to comply with this outcome. Her goal is tiny and insignificant in comparison and when she disregards his right to allow himself to comply she immediately turns herself into a "control freak". The strength of this boy's determination not to comply is reinvigorated every time she forces him. Her disproportionate need to get hair cut has created a disproportionate response. Is spite of all this trauma this parent probably does not see herself as a parent that uses consequences or sanctions. This issue has probably now been given symbolic significance for her child and he is unlikely to allow her to cut a single hair on his head. In fact, if she feels she really has to pursue this issue then, first, she should strive to get him to agree to one symbolic hair being cut. Beware the new 'Victorians'

In the preface to this book we said that this was not a "back-to-basics" book, and that "the main purpose of this book is to encourage parents to analyse and avoid all polarised views of parenting." This desire to avoid an extreme view is not new; if you take an historical look at the changes in child-rearing advice, you will discover that it has always had a balance. Earlier writers, even the Victorians, were far less scary and draconian whilst being equally polarised. Some current writers on behaviour appear to have views that are a throwback to a time that never existed. Look at this "Victorian" article from The Times:

The father, whose baby had died from her injuries, claimed to have been feeding her using an "authoritative" technique recently taught to him by hospital staff. The method involved holding her head gently so that she could not move it, saying "no" while looking into her eyes and reintroducing the bottle to her mouth..

The word "no" is meaningless to the baby. It is just a loud sound that startles it and may make it relax its mouth for a second. Whilst it might be argued that a dispassionate nurse in a hospital could carry out this procedure, keep it within acceptable limits, and not persist if it is not working, it is difficult to see how ordinary tired, distraught, and sometimes traumatised parents could be expected to. Giving this advice was an accident waiting to happen. It is difficult not to wonder how this differs from a description of "forced feeding." What is really worrying is this is not really a Victorian account, I copied it word-for-word from The Times in 2004.

A split second before

The simple and traditional ABC model for behaviour modification always shows the child's changed behaviour as the end point - as the goal. This model may be adequate for animals but for children the model needs to focus on the decision that the child makes a split second before he complies. see chapter 23.