In this episode of "Brave Minds, Healing Anxiety and Trauma," Lisa Weiss, hosts a discussion with child therapist Leah Bahar and MSW intern Marissa Aitken. They explore the differences between punishment and natural consequences in parenting. The conversation delves into how these approaches affect a child's learning, emotional development, and family dynamics. Leah and Marissa provide practical guidelines for implementing natural consequences, emphasizing the importance of teaching children through relatable, respectful, and reasonable methods. The episode highlights the benefits of fostering trust and safety in parent-child relationships, encouraging open communication and emotional regulation.

[02:06] - Natural Consequences
[15:00] - Consistency and Patience
[16:46] - Collaborative Dialogue
[19:41] - Emotional Regulation
[24:07] - Supportive Environments
[25:25] - Universal Principles

Lisa Weiss (00:01)

Hello everyone and welcome to Brave Minds, Healing Anxiety and Trauma, the podcast brought to you by Brave Minds Psychological Services in New Jersey. On this podcast, we explore the journey of healing, resilience and mental well-being. Whether you're navigating anxiety, processing trauma or supporting somebody who is, you are in the right place. I'm Lisa Weiss, I'm a licensed mental health therapist here at Brave Minds and each episode we'll dive into real conversation, expert insights and practical tools to help you better understand your mind,and support your healing process. In today's episode, we're chatting with our child therapist, Leah Behar, and our MSW intern, Marissa Aitken. Marissa and Leah discuss the differences between punishment and natural consequences in parenting. They explore just how these approaches impact a child's learning, emotional development, and family dynamics, offering practical guidelines for implementing natural consequences effectively. So before we begin, please remember that this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It's not intended to diagnose, treat, or replace professional mental health care. If you're in crisis or need support, please reach out to a qualified provider. You are not alone in this. Your healing matters and let's jump in.

Lisa Weiss (01:17)

So thank you everyone for joining us today. I am going to have Leah and Marissa introduce themselves. So I'll have Leah go first.

Leah (01:25)

Hi, my name is Leah. I am a licensed clinical social worker and I've been doing this work for, I've been a social worker for about 10 years now and in private practice for about six. My focus work is with children and then in particular I work with children who have a diagnosis on that neurodivergent spectrum.

Marissa (01:45)

So hi everyone, my name is Marissa. I am a current graduate student earning my master's in social work. I'm an intern here at Brave Minds and I'm really looking forward to learning more about this topic.Punishment versus natural consequences, because it's not really something I'm too familiar with. So I'm really excited to be asking Leah some questions about it, because who better to learn from than Leah in this case? So I'm really excited for our conversation.

Lisa Weiss (02:14)

Yeah, wonderful. And I think this will be great just for our listeners too. I feel like this is not, it's definitely not a topic that we learn about in grad school, but I think it's just important for parents and caretakers to learn about. So Marissa, whenever you're ready, I'll have you jump into your questions.

Leah (02:15)

We in here.

Marissa (02:32)

Sure, yeah, yeah. And so I think like the first thing I was really interested in is could you talk about like...

the idea of just the definitions of punishment versus natural consequences and what that kind of looks like so that this way we can start to define the topics. Because I know we had talked about kind of in preparation for this podcast that as a society we've used guilt or fear or shame to kind of correct behavior, which is typically what we think of as punishment. But according to Dr. McLean at the New Jersey Psychological Association, punishment, he was saying, tends to be more of a form of payback, whereas natural consequences is more so, they're more so the outcome or result of the unwanted behavior. Or in other words, they're the natural result of a situation that kind of help us to learn how to change our actions for the future. does that kind of sound like how you think about it, Leah? And what are some examples to help our listeners kind of conceptualize this in their minds?

Leah (03:35)

That's a great question and really great examples in terms of the emotions you've identified and the experience of the child of how we would differentiate punishment versus natural consequence. We kind of pull back and we ask ourselves, how come these exist? It's for teaching. 

We want to educate and help guide our children through society and learning the norms and rules. And if we think about consequences, especially natural consequences, what we're showing our children is ex action has this direct result. And to bring a great example is, you know, it's just drinking water. How about this? You know, your child puts a glass of water by the side of the table and somehow it gets knocked over. Now we have two choices here.

You can yell at your child, right? And that would be punishment. And that's gonna bring up those emotions that you spoke about. That's gonna get us guilt and shame. And then really thinking about the reason we're doing this, let's answer this question. What does your child learn from this? Your child learned maybe that the world wasn't safe. Maybe I make a mistake and this mom, dad is now yelling at me versus if we help the child clean up the water.

And then we look at the table and we say, where's another place you can put that cup? Right? And thinking about what we're talking about is learning. Is they're learning how to navigate this situation. They're learning how to correct it for the future. And good chances your child's gonna spill something in school, in someone else's home, and now your kid has the skills to address that situation.

Marissa (05:11)

That is such a great example and such a great explanation too. think one thing that you really emphasized is the tool of learning in that case, that it's actually something that we can take with us and then also use throughout our lives too, not just as children, but so that we have skills when we're older, if something doesn't go according to plan or even just

I can see so many different use cases for that. So what an amazing, I mean, distinction between the two that there's actually something that we're learning from that.

Leah (05:48)

Yeah, and I think you make this great point of that. It's there with us forever, right? Now this future adult not only knows how to handle that situation, they know how to teach their child this information.

Marissa (06:00)

Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And now I wanted to go into too asking about the difference between natural consequences or just kind of doing nothing in that case. Because I know you talked about that distinction with teaching, but is doing nothing more so the absence of teaching? Is that how we should look at it?

Leah (06:24)

Yeah, in a way, right? If we've done nothing, we've not taught our child to feel guilt or shame if they've made a mistake. We also haven't taught our child, hey, let's figure out a solution when an error has been made. We've just simply not.

Marissa (06:38)

Yeah, yeah, that absolutely makes sense. So we're not taught if we're bad or how to fix it or, and we're just taught nothing. There's just nothing. Yeah, absolutely. That completely makes sense. So if we look at it in practice, I know you provided that example of the water. What does the parent teach when it comes to punishment versus natural consequences?

now that we're looking at those two cases.

Leah (07:07)

I think what happens, parents can learn about their child and parents can also learn about themselves, right? We can understand where our, how our children's brains work and how they see the world, right? Again, with that cup thing, maybe they want to put it there so they wouldn't have to reach over their plate because that spilled something last time, right? So opening up this dialogue is a great way for parents to understand their child's perspective of the world. And again, learning about

ourselves, right? When we as humans have this reactive moment, we're often responding to our own internal systems, our own experiences as being a child, our own experiences with our parents. And so it can really be this learning moment of thinking and stopping and saying, okay, what was done to me? What about that did I like? And what didn't I like? What would I want to change? And how can I use this moment to give that change to the world?

Marissa (08:04)

I think that you said that so beautifully in regard to how this kind of style of interacting with children can really benefit them throughout their lives. Like it can help them not only in that moment with their parent building trust and a sense of safety, but it also helps them if they become parents themselves and how then they parent their children. And it's a completely cyclical beneficial ⁓ relationship in that regard because you are working to build that trust and safety as opposed to the punishment, which I know you had mentioned before, more so kind of hits on that blame and that guilt there.

Leah (08:51)

Yeah, I am so into the idea of like very powerful questions. We obviously, we're therapists, we like to ask our questions. And I just think that it gives you this moment of really touching in with yourself and really touching in with your child. And, you know, take these moments to learn.

Lisa Weiss (08:58)

Thank You

Marissa (09:08)

Yeah, absolutely. And so if we're looking at this in practice, I know we had talked about some guidelines that can be helpful to keep in mind when coming up with these consequences for parents to help them navigate through what might be a different style to them. And so I know we had talked about Nelson's pointing these guidelines as the three Rs they're called.

So those Rs are one, we want the consequences to be related to the behavior. We want them to be respectful and we want them to be reasonable. Could you go into a little bit more about what that might look like in practice so that this way it could maybe serve as a guide for some of our parents listening.

Leah (09:42)

Yeah. goodness, sure. I'm gonna just change up our example here and go to, let's say your child always leaves toys on the stairs. Now this is a safety concern. People walking up and down the stairs, someone can trip. Again, we can go and we can accidentally step on it and we can yell at the child and sort of send it off on that path.

Or we can do what you said, make it relatable, right? Bring the child to the step, have them maybe even experience, okay, what do you think would happen? Grab like a toy that they like, right? Teach them through, show them this process. And while this doesn't feel like punishment, and I think that's where people get tripped up. They're like, but then what? But then my child, listen, no child who was sent to the room ever actually sat there and like reflected on their behavior. More often than not, we were sitting there like mentally angry with the person who sent us to our room.

Marissa (10:48)

That makes sense. That makes sense.

Leah (10:50)

And so, yeah, you're right, you don't get that release. And again, it's kind of then touching back in. Well, do you want that release because that was your experience as a child? Or do you want that release? Because maybe you were startled by almost falling down the stairs and now there's this projection of this emotion. So again, in thinking to these Rs too, I would almost add like check in with yourself first, right? As the parent, take that breath and think about it.

So we talk about relatable, respectable. This is relatable. You bring your child to the stairs. You show them the laws of physics that are gonna happen to them or to somebody else if that happens. It's respectful. You're teaching your child reality. You're not expecting your child to understand the larger consequences of the world. You're respecting where they are in their experiences in life. And it's very reasonable.

The amount of time that you would spend yelling at your child, sending them to your room, there's a temper tantrum, there's an explosion, that could take just as much time as just going to the sound.

Marissa (11:53)

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's really great that you mentioned showing the child to and in their own language of play, showing them with their toys and saying, hey, what would happen if we put this guy here and this guy here and he might have tripped on the stairs? And I think it really helps bring the situation down and it helps bring the... the tension that might potentially be present down to a place where there can be a conversation that's had in a way that is respectful.

Leah (12:25)

Exactly and even if there's still a sense of punishment Okay, so we've done the whole on the stairs yada yada and the toy is still there in that sense We can remove the toy if it's very temporary and it's well explained to the child like this is a constant safety concern This is gonna go into toy timeout for 24 hours Because I don't know that the toy knows how to be safe right we can even depending on the age of the child Put that on the toy to certain degree

And so I think that's also gonna bring us to maybe another question of, when can we do these little things that do seem like punishment?

Marissa (13:00)

Right, Absolutely, yeah. And what happens, you know, is there a, is there kind of a trial period for someone who's trying to introduce this into their parenting style right now? Is there a trial period that parents should look out for? Is there kind of like a period of transition that one could expect with this? And how might people navigate that?

Leah (13:02)

Yeah.

Yeah, great questions. I think with any time we're talking about behavioral change, we're gonna go low and slow. You're gonna start with one very easy change that you can kind of slowly introduce naturally into a system and give it a couple weeks to really take hold. Especially because what will happen is either...

You're gonna enter an autonomy battle with everybody in the home because you're changing. And that means you're taking away people's choice in how they act. And everyone's gonna have emotions about that. And it's gonna go everywhere. Or you're gonna get a honeymoon period. Okay, mom, I'm gonna be the best kid. I'm gonna follow all your natural co- And then a week later.

That kid is not able to mask anymore and it's just gonna go crashing down that hill. So, we talk about pick very simple behavioral changes and try them low, try them slow, get them solid. And then you build from there. And I find once you get that foundation solid, things are easier to build up. It's just making sure you have that solid foundation.

Marissa (14:30)

Absolutely, that completely makes sense. And I think too, especially if you have a few siblings around and you're watching this too, I'm sure that could even reinforce that even further. seeing it could complicate things where you could see, okay, well, they can start to press past the honeymoon phase. So maybe I can too, but at the same time.

Leah (14:51)

Bye bye.

Marissa (14:54)

You can kind of see how they react and say, okay, well, I can follow suit or I can try this out if they tried that too.

Leah (15:01)

Yeah, right. Exactly.

You make such a great point of families with multiple siblings and a good point of any sort of change is getting everyone's voice, everyone's point of view in. So for a family who's wanting to maybe change more towards natural consequences, I would say have a family meeting. Everybody sit down and write down an action or maybe a punishment that you kind of don't like anymore and what you would rather see instead or however you want to have that conversation.

Marissa (15:14)

Okay.

Leah (15:31)

It's about getting all the voices on the same page.

Marissa (15:36)

I love that. And what a wonderful way to make sure that everybody has a sense of autonomy in that place and also that they feel like their voices can be heard and deserve to be heard as well and that they can play a part in the family dynamic. Yeah, what a great foundation for developing that trust and that safety too.

Leah (15:52)

Yeah!

And again, it's teaching, right? We're teaching respect. We're teaching conflict resolution. So maybe your child goes out into the world and they're having conflicts with their friends. Okay, we're teaching them how to sit down and have conversations around changes, about our needs, what we want in the world.

Marissa (16:13)

Yes, absolutely. This goes well beyond parenting styles. This really goes into every facet of life. And I can just see so many benefits throughout someone's life if they are exposed to this form of parenting.

Leah (16:29)

form of approach of really asking ourselves what information, what lesson do we want our children to take away from this experience? And having, again, as I said, let that lesson be how to solve, how to feel confident in yourself that you can go out of your home, you can go into so many different environments, and no matter what, that you have the confidence in yourself to respond to those situations.

and understanding natural consequences in terms of how other people feel, in terms of the safety of our environment is how we achieve that.

Marissa (17:05)

Yes, absolutely, absolutely. So beautifully put.

Lisa Weiss (17:10)

I do have a question for Leah⁓ Leah, I'm curious about, cause I know you said the parents initial reaction. What do you recommend parents do when they have that initial reaction before they respond? Like how can they take care of themselves in those moments before responding to the child?

Marissa (17:11)

Yeah.

Leah (17:26)

Yeah, oh great question. It's probably gonna be based off of the person that you are and maybe how reactive you are. And it could be also a great chance to model the use of coping skills to your child. So this could happen, you could be like, you know what? I'm all over it now. I'm at 10, I'm angry, I have to walk away because I'm scared I'm gonna yell at you. Imagine what we teach our child there. That it is okay to be angry. That you can be safe when people are angry around you.

Lisa Weiss (17:48)

Mm-hmm.

Leah (17:56)

and that when we have that level of emotion, we can walk away and take a moment.

Or maybe you're just like, hey, I just want a quick breath. I want to like think about how I want to solve this for a moment. That's great. And again, we can communicate that to our child. We can model that skill use to our child. Or sit down next to them and be like, yeah, man, I don't know what to do either. Let's just sit here. take a

Lisa Weiss (18:14)

I love that.

Marissa (18:20)

That's amazing. And what a wonderful way to be honest too in the family and show that that's how honesty is good too.

Leah (18:27)

Yeah, and I think sometimes parents worry about showing their own emotions in front of children. And I think we can use our own emotions and experience to model emotional regulation and to model how it is to feel safe in very intense and scary emotions.

Marissa (18:44)

Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And I wanted to shift on to another question now. So I know we had talked about siblings too, previously in our conversation. Could you talk a little bit about what natural consequences might look like for children of different ages? How might parents approach that, especially if they have a few children of different ages in their own household?

Leah (19:09)

That's a great question. And to go for an easy answer, make that age appropriate, right? So let's really think about what that means. We use the example of the toys on the stairs for the younger child, using that language of play. And maybe that ends, I don't know, seven, eight, maybe depending on your child. Everyone sort of ages and matures differently. Okay, then we kind of get into more middle childhood. Maybe we want to use more questions.

instead of play, they have this sort of next level of cognitive approach and cognitive abilities and we can sort of say, what do you think could have happened in this situation and have them talk that through. They're at an age where they can do that, they have enough emotion, they're really at that age where they kind of want to know stuff, they're like, I got this, I'm at this. Right?

Leah (19:57)

And then, kind of tailoring up. And the hope is that when you have that nice foundation as they're older, it gives you ways to bridge it as they get to more of those teenage years where it could just be a sit down conversation of, you were late for curfew. I want to talk to you as the parent about the worry that I feel, about the disrespect that I might have experienced in this situation. That is natural consequence because it's not as though the child's looking forward to this really intense heart to heart conversation.

Right? And it's again, instead of teaching you, hey, you did a normal teenage thing. You pushed the boundaries. You tried something new. How dare you? It's okay. Let's talk about what happens when you push at boundaries. Let's talk about what happens when you don't show respect or listen or however you want to kind of phrase that to the people around you and what that does to the relationship. If you really talk about natural consequences, that's a big part of it, right? What is this doing to the relationship?

Marissa (20:53)

Yeah, absolutely. And I think...going off of that and learning rather than out of fear, but from a place of trust, just kind of, it emboldens that learning. It makes it such that you can use those skills throughout the rest of your life. It makes it so that you are not maybe fearful of pushing the boundaries where you can explore and do those natural teenage things and make the decisions but you know that you still have support at home, not fear.

Leah (21:27)

Yes, support at home, not fear. Yes, 100%. I say this to my parents, was like, look, the world is gonna teach whatever lesson you want your child to learn. Home is where they get to feel safe.

Marissa (21:39)

Yeah.

Leah (21:40)

consequences teaches us we're safe in our emotions, we're safe in our choices, and we're safe in our relationship.

Lisa Weiss (21:46)

And I think to growing up in that sort of environment, just like as they start to, you talked before about building that foundation and as a child gets older, it's almost like they know that they have that space to rely on parents, especially going through those really difficult middle school, high school years that like parents are gonna have their back and there's no reason to be afraid. And I think that those lines of communication for when life gets hard,

Leah (22:12)

Yeah. brilliantly said, yes, it opens up lines of communication. Your child has something happen to them and they're not, my god, what's my mom gonna say? I can't tell them I have to solve this on my own. They're like, my god, let me go to my mom. Let me go to my dad.

Lisa Weiss (22:30)

Yep.

Leah (22:30)

And that is game changing when we talk about relationships and especially think that really looking at this in the perspective of like the history of psychology, it's almost rather new, right? For a very long time, it was sort of discipline in childhood and it's really moving more towards conversations and understanding.

Lisa Weiss (22:46)

Yeah.

Marissa (22:52)

Yes, and I'm really excited too as this kind of newer approach. takes hold, I'm excited too to see what this looks like on a community level and how this reshapes the way we manage teams or work together or show up in our communities. I think there's so many benefits that can be found from this approach. And so it's really interesting to think about how that will look in the future when this generation gets to the stage where we are working in our communities.

Leah (23:01)

no. yeah.

Marissa (23:24)

and out there in the world.

Leah (23:26)

Wow, you took that to such a different point. I was thinking more, maybe it's like an age thing where I'm at the age where my friends have children now, right? Or my older sibling in that age they have. And you can see this happening. You can see this reflection of we were just sent to our rooms. Nobody asked us what was wrong. I'm gonna ask my kid what was wrong. And you can see this change now. And you adding that idea of the communities, I'm thinking of those kids, like what they're gonna be like as these members of the larger community. It's such a nice thought.

Marissa (23:57)

Yeah, it's really hopeful and exciting to think about, to see this direct line in this approach and the work that you have with clients and you both have with clients, just to see how that will translate on the larger scope of things, because it absolutely will. And to think about all the benefits like conflict resolution, that I can think of so many cases where that could be so beneficial on a larger scale.

And so to get to know that these are skills that are being taught young and kind of nurtured as children grow, and it's very exciting.

Leah (24:35)

Yeah, I agree full-heartedly. And it's a lot of fun, man, because like, it is just a lot of making up silly stories. I always joke any time a kid does knock something over, I'm like, there must be like a wizard that lives in the corner and that does magical things. Because none of us could have done that, right?

Marissa (24:40)

You

Absolutely, absolutely. I hope you name your ⁓

Leah (24:56)

No, the wizard can't be named. Cuz then we would know. the wizard- I mean, you can't- the magical wizard- talk about me.

Marissa (25:01)

That's true, that's true.

Lisa Weiss (25:04)

that so much. That's like the best, one of the best parts about being like a child therapist and working with kids and working with families and really changing the narrative. And I think that's a big part of what we do here at Brave Minds of, rewriting that narrative and healing that intergenerational anxiety and trauma just by the work that we do with kids and with, adults, parents.

Marissa (25:24)

Yes.

Lisa Weiss (25:25)

if the listeners could take one thing away from today's episode, what would you want that to be?

Leah (25:30)

what do you want your child to learn? What do want them to walk away from with this experience?

Marissa (25:36)

And I think what precedent would you like to set in your relationship with them? Yeah, what would you like to see out of that relationship and how would you like to foster that?

Leah (25:40)

Yeah.

Lisa Weiss (25:49)

That's so wonderful. this is such an important conversation to be had. And I appreciate the both of you so much for opening up this conversation. And I hope it is helpful for our listeners. if anybody listening is interested in working with Leah, you can find out more information on our website.