The Worst Behaviors We're Seeing Are a Direct Result of No-Consequences Policies

Schools and parents are creating a lot of the most severe behavior problems that we're seeing these days, and they're doing so by not having a boundary, not having any consequences, and letting kids get away with stuff that up to this point in human history nobody got away with.

See, normally bad behavior is constrained by retaliation, right?

If you do something terrible to other people in life, they retaliate, they call the police, they clock you, whatever.

And now we have created a situation where in schools kids are protected against retaliation but free to hurt other people.

And this is kind of a terrible situation for everybody because everybody else has to witness violence.

Everybody else has to be victimized by violence.

Kids get furniture thrown at them and nothing is done.

And we're seeing...

new policies now that actually encourage this in the form of classroom evacuations, never removing a child from school, never sending a child home, always returning the child to class as soon as they're calmed down.

And as a result, there's no real reason that that child should ever have to change their behavior.

And I'm talking specifically about younger students.

I'm talking about students who do not have IEPs, who do not have special needs.

So IEP moms, don't come at me on this one.

I'm talking about...

Kids without special needs.

I'm talking about kids whose problems are created by school policies and probably to some extent by similar parenting that just says you can do whatever you want and it's fine and there aren't going to be any consequences.

As I've said before, I think this is a terrible way to set kids up for their future because if they learn that there are no consequences to their actions, they're going to find out the hard way that that is not the case.

And I saw a great quote the other day from a teacher that said, and maybe a foster parent who said, I want my kids to experience consequences from people who love them before they experience consequences from people who don't.

I thought that was one of the best quotes about consequences that I've ever heard because it really captures the sense that consequences are part of teaching.

They're part of how kids learn cause and effect and learn that their actions affect other people and therefore need to be controlled out of concern for other people and out of self-interest that you don't just do whatever you want and get away with it.

And I feel like we've created so many systems now that actually reward kids with attention and power and control and work avoidance and just all the things that are rewarding for getting you know, doing terrible behavior.

You get, you know, hurting other people, tearing up the classroom.

And I've seen policies like, you know, if they're tearing up the classroom, we're not allowed to stop them.

We have to just let them tear up the classroom, rip things off the bulletin board, overturn furniture.

And that's just not how the world works.

I just think we can't teach lessons like that and expect good results later in life.

So let me know what you think.

Are we creating this problem?

I feel like The numbers have increased so quickly that there's not really an organic explanation.

There's not a health explanation.

And certainly the pandemic was hard on everybody.

But I think we're creating a lot of these behaviors by the way we're treating kids.

Let me know what you think.