The Importance of Allowing Natural Consequences to Teach Our Children

In this week's class discussions, one of the things that stood out the most to me was how as parents, it is important for us to allow the natural consequences of our children's behaviors and actions to teach them rather than us trying to interfere with these natural consequences. At first I was thinking that the reason that many times parents interfere with the natural consequences of their child's actions and behaviors is because they want to rescue their child from being potentially embarrassed or emotionally hurt. But when parents interfere with the natural consequences of their children's choices, they are denying their children the opportunity to learn important and vital lessons that can help them learn important information for their future decisions in life. I strongly believe that parents should allow the natural consequences of their child's behavior and actions to teach their children.
There are some exceptions to this idea though; parents should allow the natural consequences to teach their children except in the following three situations:

1. The natural consequences are too dangerous;
2. The natural consequences are too far into the future;
3. Others are adversely affected by the natural consequences.

If parents interfere with the natural consequences in other situations that do not fit into the three situations listed above, the parents are likely to be denying their children the important life learning lessons that accompany these natural consequences. I have a couple examples of my own in regards to this; when I was in high school, I didn't really like talking on the phone unless I was talking with my friends. Every time that I needed to call someone other than my friends, I would ask my mom to call them for me, whether it was my boss, a store to ask them a question, or my high school teachers or staff members. There were times that my mom would call for me if I was busy doing something else, but for the most part she would make me call them no matter how much I didn't want to be the one to call them. Because my mom had me call people that I needed to talk to in order to get certain information, I learned how to properly and effectively communicate with people over the phone, and I am no longer afraid or reluctant to call people and talk to them. If my mom would have just called everyone for me, she would have denied me the opportunity to learn how to appropriately communicate with individuals over the phone, and it is likely that I would still ask her to call people for me. I am glad that my mom allowed the natural consequences to teach me the importance of calling people on my own; without it, I don't think I would be as comfortable talking on the phone as I am.

Another example that I have experienced, especially being here at college, is financing and budgeting my money. When I first started attending college I didn't have a job; I mostly relied on my savings and the money that I saved from my previous job back home. Coming from a very small town where the closest store is an hour away, I never really had too many opportunities to spend money. So when I came to college and there were stores all around me, I didn't really know how to effectively budget my money. I remember calling home to my parents and asking them if they could transfer some money into my account so I had more money to spend, and if I really needed it they would, but many of the times they told me that I needed to learn how to budget my money. They gave me $50.00 a week, and I had to learn how to budget it effectively in order to make it last and get the things I really needed. If I ran out of money, I knew that I wasn't going to get any more until the next week. At first I was really bad with budgeting, but after a couple weeks I got the hang of it and I did really well. Although it was hard at first, the natural consequences of running out of money and not having any until the next week taught me the importance of budgeting my money. If my parents would have just given me more and more money, I wouldn't have learned the important and vital lesson of saving and budgeting money. After my first year of school I got a job, and because I had learned the lesson of budgeting money effectively, I was able to appropriately save, budget, and spend my money. If I hadn't learned that lesson, I am sure I would still be struggling with budgeting my money. So I am definitely grateful that my parents allowed the natural consequences to teach me important life lessons. 

Even though it may be hard to watch your children struggle at times, it is important that we allow the natural consequences to teach our children; it is from these natural consequences that they learn some of the most beneficial and important lessons of life. There are some circumstances that natural consequences should be interfered with, but for the most part, we as parents need to allow these natural consequences to teach our children important lessons in life.