Consequences for Little People!

I've been writing about how we do discipline in our house (at the moment)... I mentioned that Little Miss has 3 rules:

• listen to grown ups
• eat what you're given
• don't give me any sass!

But rules mean very little to me without a consequence...so, Little Miss O's consequences are the things that matter most to her:

• No snuggle time in front of the TV with Mummy/Daddy
• Time out 
• No stories
• No dessert

These are all things that Little Miss O loves to do and they're also natural consequences. Breaking the rules in one way or another wastes all of our time. When we waste our time with 'unnecessaries', we have less time to do things we like - such as snuggle time, story time etc. Timeout is also a natural consequence because when you upset/frustrate people in grown up life, they generally prefer you to be removed from the scene until you fix up! : ) Bedtime is fixed, not flexi, so Little Miss still has to go to bed at the same time regardless of whichever delaying/rule-breaking tactic she has used 3 hours beforehand...

It has been 7 days now of her new rules/consequences and you know what, she has eaten every single meal (bar the first initiation day where she learnt the hard way!), she has done so at the designated times and she has been able to have her dessert everyday! I love eating dessert with her so am super psyched that I don't have to keep with-holding her ice-cream/crumbles because she didn't eat her main meal! We've had extra long snuggle/TV time and we've had too many stories that I have lost count! Everyone is happy and I actually think she likes her rules.

She keeps saying ' I want to follow my rules because I don't like con-sequences!'...LOL I'm offering her lots of praise and she's doing really well. She's getting praise from strangers too which really helps her to know how well-mannered she is being...

I know it has only been a week, but I think its a sign of good things to come.

What discipline tactics have you used successfully with your kids?