In the
picture you see a young man receiving a consequence.
An hour and
a half earlier, when he arrived for his lesson, he and mom didn’t make it into
the barn like they usually do. I finally went over to the car to see what was
going on. When I got there a very low energy boy disembarked, leaned on mom and
with long face and slow words informed me that he was tired. I asked him what
the point was. He wasn’t sure about riding. My next question was to ask him if
I needed to go catch Pepper (who is one of his favorites). His energy began to
change, interest coming to his face and he told me to go catch him.
By the time
he started tacking up his energy was where I like to see it and he was focused
and in a fairly good mood. A few minutes into his ride Pepper shook with him –
he grabbed and stayed on and didn’t get scared – in fact he looked pretty
pleased because not long ago Pepper shook a rider off. His ride was a good one
and mom and I talked about kids, character, life lessons and the ability to
control one’s energy. We also talked about consequences, positive as well as
negative and that all behavior produces one or the other.
As he was
untacking I talked to him about consequences and asked if he knew what they
were. He said yes and his first example was of negative. I asked if he had
experienced positive consequences too. He said yes. I then told him I thought
he needed to experience a consequence for his behavior today. At this point, he
looked a bit worried. I told him I was
pleased with the way he got his energy into positive mode and had a good ride.
I then told him I thought he needed to go with me on the ATV to put Pepper away
– that was his consequence. His face lit up and he thought that was a pretty
good consequence.
By the way,
do you like my red-neck horse transport?
Thank you
Kerianne for the photo. 10/29/12
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