Have you ever given your child an illogical consequence? I have. I learned how my kids tricked me too. Don't make this mistake.

Being a working mom, like many of you, I was so busy. Although I loved gardening, I never had enough time to weed the rain ditch in front of our home. When my boys misbehaved I thought I had the perfect solution. "Go out to the ditch and pull a bucket of weeds," I'd order.

I never noticed how quickly they pulled the weeds. I did wonder why the ditches never looked weeded. Since I was usually working in the kitchen, the boys would open the front door and yell up the stairs, "Here are the weeds, Mom." I'd look down the stairs and nod, "OK." Then I'd go about fixing dinner and they'd go off to play.

Now they're adults. They recently told me their "dirty" little secret. They loaded their buckets with dirt and weeds from our compost pile. They also pulled out a few fresh weeds to top off their buckets. They knew I'd never come downstairs to check their buckets. They knew I'd never guess their "dirty" little secret.

So what did I do wrong? You got it. Two things:

I didn't check their work closely.
My consequence for their misbehavior suited me but it didn't suit their conduct.

My consequence wasn't logical. What can you do to avoid my mistake? Make sure your consequences are logical. How? Make sure they fit the misbehavior.

Here are 5 examples:

If your children fight over the TV controller