Day 8: Teaching young adults about consequences is of utmost importance

 

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Consequence means what will happen, the impact of your decisions.

When kids are young and don't know much about causality, it would be foolish to give them tasks which have big consequences. For e.g. expecting them to carry a fragile object across the room and then trying to make them understand the consequences if it breaks. For kids, the act of breaking a glass of water would be at best confusing. What happened ? It is just another thing that needs to be swept up right ? Also, if we make a big fuss about this, then some kids would recognize that as a "celebrity" moment - they will be talked on, talked about and so on. Which can probably lead them to think that this "breaking" is good. We are famous now.

Once kids grow up and start understanding social connections, or making real friends, then it should be mandatory for parents to teach kids about consequences. There is a lot that we are not told. How simple actions like where to put trash, the consequence of not cleaning up after, the consequence of wasting food, the consequence of not saving money etc etc. Most of the time, adults fail to realize the disproportionate impact of a simple mindset change this can have when told at a young age.

Bottom line is - Understanding actions of our consequences is fundamental to growing up. This learning never stops. Long term consequences of "not" teaching kids about consequences will hit us hard when we will not be.