Consequences on the Fly!

Yesterday I was with some friends and was watching all the kids in front of the restaurant waiting to be seated. I was the only parent out front at the time. My friend’s youngest daughter who is almost 6 yrs old started throwing a fit and threw down her hair tie. I said xxxx please pick that up. She got upset, not necessarily at me, but at the situation that made her throw down the tie in the first place (which I still don’t know why) and took off running away towards the parking lot. I called after her and she went further away. I told the other two girls to stay there on the bench and went after her. Her mother is on day 3 of the consequence system in her house- so I told her daughter if she didn’t come back with me she would get a consequence – she refused and told me she was not going to do any consequences anyways. I said really.. well, actually, now you have 5 consequences for running from me, not listening and then refusing and being disrespectful. She then decided to cooperate and follow me to the bench, and I instructed her to sit on the bench for a bit. I ignored her, did not lecture her at all and waited like 5 minutes or so and then told her to go pick up the hair tie and come apologize to me. She did.. and did it beautifully.. With NO TEARS at all..even getting the consequences was done with no tears… I was so proud of her. After she apologized we all walked around to the back to look at the boats and she held my hand and was like my best friend. She was testing me and I got her respect after this incident. I saw her today and she was bragging to me about the consequences she has completed for this incident. I loved this.. it was cool to see the transition of this system working at it’s finest with someone else’s treasures.

I gave her 5 consequences because I needed her to understand this lesson BIG time. It was very dangerous running away from me like that (especially in the parking lot) AND also for her refusal. This was my using The Consequence System outside of the box.. and I asked my friend if I could use this situation to be able to give you all an example of this and how it can be used it this type of situation.
The work is worth it, your children are worth it!