consistency, consistency, consistency g. m. johnson, phd A few comments in explanation of the concept of "consistency" in parenting children. [This is a shrink think write-down of a brief few comments in answer to a question from Petra -- a surrogate child who after almost two decades of telling me she wanted to figure things out for herself has finally begun asking some questions.] |
A repetitive word, repeatedly heard in the lectures one gets about parenting is "consistency." "Be consistent." "It is important to parent with consistency." Consistency, consistency, consistency. It is one of the most consistent pieces of advice that is heard by all new parents and all parents involved in struggling with a challenging child.
Consistency basically means that things are the same from one time to another. Consistency makes the world predictable and less of a chore to deal with. When one discovers that stairs everywhere are consistent in that they lead somewhere, they support you as you step on them and if you don't pay at least a little bit of attention you can fall down them and falling down them hurts -- then one need not slowly and carefully check out each stair of a set of new stairs. When you discover that a set of stairs is pretty consistently supportive, consistently connected to a doorway or a floor and consistently painful to fall down, you have less to think about compared to how you would have to deal with stairs that were very different some days than they were on other days.
There is a lot to think about and figure out in life. Things and people that are consistent from one experience with them to the next allow a child (and everyone else, for that matter) to have more brain space for other thinking.
Consistency is important with regard to schedules and consistency is important with regard to interactions with people. When a child doesn't know if he has to go to bed when he is told to, there is a lot of thinking and haggling that seems a good idea when involved in fun things. He gets in a lot more arguments and has a lot less brain time and brain space to devote to figuring out life when there is no question about when bedtime is.
When a child knows that dinner is always a certain amount of time after dad comes home and dad always comes home a certain amount of time after Sesame Street ends, her stomach begins to get ready to digest dinner at an optimal time, she knows about how much time she has to play with her toys and instead of using her thinking time and thinking energies on figuring out when dinner might happen, she can use her thoughts and energies on thinking about and figuring out her world in other respects.
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Feeling happy and being able to optimally handling life requires a lot of thought. Everyone -- especially children -- function better, learn better, have better interactions with others and and are generally happier people -- when they do not need to spend time and energy on thinking about issues like whether or not directions are optional, when mealtime is, when bedtimes is, what the rules are.
When a child's life is consistent, he or she has more brain to devote to other things
When a parent is consistent in expectations and responses to his or her child, the child more effectively and more rapidly develops values, self-esteem and an understanding of the world. Inconsistent parenting causes confusion, poor self esteem and goofy, sometimes very negative, values. This is because a child is constantly trying to figure out how life works and tends to assume that everything that happens happens because he or she did something to make it happen.
A child who one day is yelled at for spilling his milk and then the next day is forgiven for leaving his bike where a car drives over it and destroys it tries to understand these differences on the basis of what he did or did not do -- not understanding that these reactions were because of extreme differences on the part of the parent. This is one of the consequences of parents who are using drugs or drinking -- one day everything is awful, the next day things might be no big deal. The child tries to understand why he or she is causing his parents to drink or be so inconsistent. This all ends up damaging the child's understanding of the world and his or her self esteem.
Consistency between people and places is not as important as consistency within peopel and places. That is, it is much more important that a father be consistent from one day to the next than it is that both parents be consistent between themselves, or that parents have the same reactions and expectations that teachers do. It is more important that the rules at home stay consistent than it is that home and school have the same rules.
This basically mirrors the world. We all must learn that there are different expectations at school than at Aunt Sally's. At school we're supposed to listen to the teacher, keep ourselves in our desks, etc., while at Aunt Sally's it may be fine to run around, explore, talk without raising our hands or go to the bathroom when we want without getting permission first.
That's the long and the short of this particular shrink think, I think.