Pay now or pay later; Parenting Advice that Works!

There are a large number of lessons we have to learn from infancy to adulthood in order to make us functional, happy, well-adjusted, self-supporting adults.  As a matter of fact, there are hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands. We learn most of these lessons from observation, being taught, or common sense realization. Others, we learn through experiencing consequences to our actions.

As children we may be taught the importance of sharing, why we should not hit others, and why we use the toilet and not our pants.  As we get older we generally learn things that are reflective of our age and maturity.  If the sign says, “walk” but a car is speeding through, don’t walk.  Don’t eat random wild mushrooms if you are not a mushroom expert.  Don’t take a nap on a railroad track.

However, not everyone learns these foundational lessons at the same pace. While a particular lesson may be obvious to one person at 10 years old, another person might not get it until they are 20.

Often, the longer it takes to learn some of these lessons along the path to adulthood, the more extreme the consequences of learning them may get… “Pay Now or Pay Later!”

To illustrate this concept, lets take an example; don’t swear at people.

A 5 year old may learn this one if such an act is met with an appropriate response or consequence.  I have found immediate reactions, scolding, and humiliating to be relatively unproductive of desired results and conducive to resentment and repeating the behavior later.  A response I used with one of my children who hurled the “F” word at me was based on the realization that basically there was nothing I could say in the moment that wouldn’t sound angry, pejorative and reactive.  I simply let him know I was so disturbed that it would likely take me several days to figure out a response.   That gave the child a while to ponder the act and the appropriate consequences and wonder.  

Several days later, I brought up the subject up again in a calm way.  The child said, of course, “he was just upset” and actually didn’t mean it.”  I responded that in my life I had a different way of relating to people who were kind and used words mindfully, as opposed to those who swore and called me foul names.  I told him he would need to decide which group he would be in, realizing that our relationship would change should he continue to swear, as I protected myself   from further verbal assaults.  He chose to be in the kind group and never swore at me again. If the child does not learn the lesson, however, he may curse at a teacher at 11, lose recess privilege and have to write an essay about foul language. 

If he hasn’t learned it by the 10^th grade, he may exhibit the same behavior and get suspended for several days.  If the college freshman hasn’t learned it, he may curse at an employer and lose his job.  If young man does not learn this lesson by age 20, he may swear at a policeman and get booked and taken to .  If a grown adult still hasn’t learned it, he may swear at a road-rager or mentally unstable person and get beat up or even killed.

Hence, the practice of  “Pay Now or Pay Later” is illustrated.  You can choose when to learn the basic lessons of life.  It is clearly up to you.  Generally, the cost is lower and less painful the earlier the lesson is learned (as in now), and more expensive “later”.

So it is perhaps worthwhile to remind young people it is better to learn from mistakes while the stakes are still low.

Rick Copyright 2011