Description of discipline technique:
When David was nine, and Laura was twelve, they used to drive us crazy with their constant arguing and bickering.

In desperation we sent them to their rooms one night with instructions to each come up with a half dozen appropriate consequences that we could apply the next time they started to argue.

The next day we were presented with a list of consequences. Some of them looked pretty good, so we arranged them around the perimeter of a board and put a spinner in the center.

Then we hung it up on the kitchen wall. And waited.

Just the presence of the board hanging on the kitchen wall had a calming influence on their behavior. Eventually and inevitably, however, trouble started up once again and out came the board. The tension was broken when they spun and it landed on the most dreaded consequence of all. Hug and Make Up.

Peace reigned in our household for nearly two weeks before they had another blow-up and we had to bring out the board once again. We could hardly believe our good fortune.

If the board is so effective in maintaining sibling harmony, we thought, what about some of the other behavior problems that we were always having to deal with.

It seemed, for example, that the kids were always leaving the lights on. Didn't seem to matter what we said or did, they'd always leave the lights on when they left a room.

Couldn't we use the board for this situation as well?

Eventually we added more themes to the board. Excessive Arguing was accompanied by Leaving the Lights On, Not Putting Things Away, A Job Poorly Done, Stretching the Truth, Taking Without Asking, and in recognition that just as errant behavior needs to be modified, especially good behavior needs to be rewarded, we added The Wheel of Just Desserts.

In order to accommodate all of the themes and their respective consequences, the board had to be re-designed. We put each them on its own removable disk with the consequences around the perimeter. The board had become The Wheel of Dreaded Consequences. http://www.consequences.ca

Appropriate age group(s):
3-16