When Consequences Don’t Work on Your Teenager, and What You Can Do About It

One of the most effective ways of disciplining a teenager is by giving consequences. However, most parents would tell you that it doesn’t always work. In some cases, teenagers just don’t care what you take away or what consequences you give – they just don’t want to follow rules.

If you’ve been having a hard time disciplining your teenage kid, let me tell you that you are not alone. A lot of parents are also about to give up disciplining their teenage kids, but giving up is just not an option.
According to James Lehman, a behavioral therapist and he author of The Total Transformation Program, “you can’t punish kids into acceptable behavior – it just doesn’t work that way” – and he’s right.

This is probably the biggest mistake parents are doing. They keep on punishing the child again and again without really encouraging them to change their behavior. Note that there is a difference between punishing a child and punishing plus talking to him about the behavior – why he shouldn’t do it and what the consequences are if he does it again.

In order to make the consequences have an impact on your child, they should be “effective consequences”. What are effective consequences?

According to Lehman, effective consequences are connected to the behavior and are both time- and task- specific.

What does these mean?

This means the consequences should be connected to the behavior that you want the child to improve. For instance, you found out one day that your teenage daughter actually spent the night in a boy’s house with another friend instead of a girl friend’s house like she told you. A more effective consequence would be to ground her from any sleepovers for a specific period of time (eg. one month) and to verify with the supervising parent next time she goes on a sleepover again rather than punish by taking away all her internet privileges for a month.

The consequences should also be task specific, which means your child needs to accomplish something related to the problem. This should be a concrete behavior. Since your child spent the night in a boy’s house with another friend, I bet the other friend’s parent didn’t know about it so you can tell your child to come with you to the friend’s house so you and your child can tell them about what really happened.

Time specific means there should be a time limit on the punishment. On our scenario here, your child should learn that earning your trust back takes time which is why a month of no sleepover is just right.

Now, there are a lot of parents out there saying that no matter what they do the consequences they impose are just not successful. If you’ve reached this point, you need to take a look back at the length of time you’ve imposed the punishment. Was it too long? If it is, your child may have lost interest on the privilege you took away that she doesn’t really care anymore. It’s also possible that the time frame is too long that it couldn’t be possible for your child to be successful. Imagine banning your child from sleepovers for a year?

One last word, helping your child change his or her behavior will take time. A lot of parents expect their child to change overnight, but things don’t work that way. A lot of times, you’d find yourself executing step one over and over but it doesn’t mean that what you’re doing isn’t taking an effect your child. Helping your child improve his behavior isn’t a one-day process, your child needs to practice it again and again and you have to help him do it.