As mentioned in the Chip System, training can be done using both a 'carrot' (the Chip System) and a 'stick.' Because I often found myself scrambling to pick a punishment to meet the immediate crime, I decided to use some uninterrupted thinking time to help prepare for the inevitable events of the future. We are all sinners, so we can expect the violations to occur. The challenge is being ready to meet it with the proper response. Unfortunately, most violations do not occur in those moments where we are clear-headed, well-rested and eager to share the good news of how Jesus came to forgive and save sinners. Rather, it's when you're on the phone, another child is crying, you're right in the middle of a deep thought or juggling multiple recipes in the kitchen. 

Another common challenge I encountered was having a way to remember what punishments were doled out for the violations that would occur (almost like clock-work!) minutes before exiting the house. We'd leave for the day and by the time we came home, everyone would forget, continue on with a fun afternoon, head to bed and then it would occur to me that said child should have completed their consequence and now it was too late. 

What is the Consequence Jar?

The Consequence Jar is a color-coded consequence system that matches appropriate consequences based on the type of violation. For example, disobedience should be addressed more severely than chewing with one's mouth open, but you may be training both things and need different options. To spank a child for forgetting to say please or thank you clearly is too drastic, but we can't always think of the creative alternative in that moment.

In our home, we have five violation categories: disobedience, not taking personal responsibility, lack of manners, poor attitude and relational violations. Each category has 5-10 appropriate consequences for that type of offense. So when a child disobeys, they are instructed to go draw a red consequence. If they demonstrate a poor attitude, they are told to draw a green consequence and so on. Note that you can scale the consequence up or down for age right on the paper. If the consequence is writing a sentence respeatedly, the oldest child might be required to write it thirty times while the youngest might only need to write it five times. We've chosen to assign exercises for manners violations to help them work on these skills while promoting physical exercise. When they neglect one of their expected personal responsibilities (such as leaving socks on the floor, not cleaning their room, forgetting to unpack their bag or leaving their items in the car), the consequences are to do extra (and usually undesirable) chores around the home. Our thinking is that if Mom had to use her time to clean up after you, you can use your time to clean something for mom.

Benefits of the Consequence Jar:

1. Rather than allowing our emotional barometers to determine the consequence in the moment, we can more equitably and reliably pre-determine what kinds of violations deserve particular types of consequences. This will provide far superior training for our children than the daily 'reading' of how much they can get away with because Mom or Dad is in a good or bad mood today.
2. The consequences are pre-written and can be tacked under the child's name and only removed once served. This eliminates the potential of forgetting to follow through if the consequence can't be served immediately for whatever reason.
3. When the child draws his or own “fate” from the jar, it helps them to recognize their responsibility for the wrong.
4. The Consequence Jar removes all emotion from the equation. You aren't choosing a consequence in anger and by the child selecting it themselves, it doesn't feel like something the parent is arbitrarily doing to the child.
5. It runs on its own once it is set up. As the parent, you simply identify the type of violation and instruct the child to go draw and serve the proper consequence drawn of that color.

Steps to Creating Your Family's Consequence Jar

1. Brainstorm the types of offenses commonly made in your home that you are ready to address. If the list is long (particularly if many of the things are new to the child), prioritize it to only work on a few at a time. Be patient, raising children takes 18 years – you don't have to fix everything at once. Besides, it is better for the child to focus in on a couple of things than get overwhelmed by a lengthy list.
2. Categorize the kinds of offenses and set a color for each category.
3. Brainstorm a list of punishments that would be fair and effective for each category. Some will have more severe consequences than others. Remember that consequences should be painful – the pain of staying the same needs to be greater than the pain of change or nothing will happen.
4. Write out the list of consequences (one per paper strip) on the proper colored papers, fold them all up and put them in a jar, shuffling them around. Make a label for the outside of the jar to keep clear which color is for which type of offense.
5. Have a family meeting and set very clear expectations. Help the kids see what's not going well, why it's a problem, how to fix these things and what should be done instead. Then share with them what some of the potential consequences will be if they continue this behavior. 
6. Commit with your spouse to being consistent for at least 21 days. Habits take time to form and if you really want to see your kids succeed in your training program, you need to stick with it, even when it's inconvenient.

For some ideas of what needs to be trained and possible consequences to help you get started, download our FREE Consequence Jar Sampler by providing your email below!