Do you need to enforce consequences?
Children are amazing. What they do, how they play, how they learn, their competence and so many other things about them are simply astonishing.
They are excellent at living life and have so much potential doing what they do just by following their instincts.
Adults think they need to be actively teaching them by demonstrating, explaining, pointing out mistakes and correcting them, encouraging certain behaviors, praising particular acts and protecting them on an exaggerated level.
Unfortunately all of this is not just UNNECESSARY but also LIMITING and often DAMAGING depending on the degree of interference someone applies.
The less you interfere and the more you let children be and do what they know best - following their natural curiosity - the more of their immensely powerful instinctual traits they will retain for the rest of their lives.
You might say that children need to be told what they did wrong and that you need to enforce consequences to their wrongs in order for them to learn from their mistakes and not repeat them. However, as a full-time mom of 2 girls who've never gone to nursery or school and who have been able to explore the world around them as much as you could possibly imagine (because if I´m good at ONE thing it's granting children the freedom to do exactly that without me interfering unless serious danger is in sight), I can give you many examples of how no to little interference works wonders in the way children learn about different topics but also in regards to human interaction, social behavior and emotional regulation.
Let's look into restraining from enforcing consequences a little deeper.
Everything we do has consequences.
E V E R Y T H I N G.
So just by stating this truth, you can see that there is no need to enforce any further action because children see and feel the consequences of their actions first hand.
But let me explain this further by giving you a few examples from our life:
Lima (6 years old) is angry with Bo (3 years old) and pushes her. Bo falls and starts to cry.
The consequence of Lima´s action is that Bo is hurt physically and emotionally.
She can see that and there's no need for me to point it out to her, explain anything or tell her off.
I tend to Bo giving her a hug and rubbing her sore knee being calm and not saying much.
This shows Lima how to act when somebody is hurt - whether we were the ones causing the pain or somebody/something else. Me staying calm shows Bo that getting hurt is not something to cause a drama over and she can calm down very quickly.
If I were to get angry with Lima and say something nasty to her, blaming her for Bo´s pain, Bo would learn exactly that behavior when Lima or somebody else hurts her, on purpose or by accident, which does not contribute to a peaceful resolution of arguments.
Being a good example is the best way for children to learn how to behave appropriately within our society or your family culture. However, for me personally the goal is to accept people the way they are and respect their decisions for themselves and their lives. This doesn't mean I let people walk all over me; of course I set my personal boundaries if their decision affects me, but keep in mind that our boundaries are often tainted by our conditioning and sometimes we think we must put limits to other people's choices that have nothing to do with us when we really think about it. And apart from that, there´s no reason why we can't say No just as friendly as we say Yes.
I´m not perfect. Sometimes my conditioning kicks in and and I react in a way that I know is not ok and in most cases I apologize but I can see that it often has two effects on my daughters:
I hear them speak in the same tone I spoke to them in my ´weak´ moment
I hear them apologize to one another more often
When, let's say, Bo speaks to Lima disrespectfully, I cannot get angry with her and tell her not to speak like this to people because she's simply copying me (or someone else who she heard speaking like this). I need to correct this behavior within myself.
Here's an example of how unnecessary it is to give advice:
Lima and Bo are jumping on the bed while I'm working in the living room. I hear them laugh and speak and shout and fall and help each other and hurt each other and apologize to one another etc.
Then Lima comes crying to me and says that Bo boxed her in the face all of a sudden. I hold her and while hugging her we walk into the bedroom where Bo looks like almost everything is ok (she knows that she's hurt Lima but is not too concerned about it).
I keep completely calm and quiet, Bo and my eyes meet briefly, Lima looks up at me and says ´I´m ok´ and they continue playing. Lima says ´Look what we´re doing!´. I stay and watch.
They´re jumping around, Bo says ´do the thing where you jump in a circle´. Lima takes Bo down onto the bed like a wrestler without hurting her, grabs her legs and starts jumping around in a circle on the bed pulling her along to whichever direction she goes. She almost steps on her head but I know it's not by chance she misses but I do notice that she's about to put her foot on Bo´s hair which will pull it and probably hurt. I don´t say anything.
Then it actually happens and Bo says ´Ouch ouch ouch ouch, you stepped on my hair´. Lima lets go of her and they continue playing. I give them a smile and walk out. 5 min later they run to me, both with hairbands in their hair and ask me to put their hair into a bun so they don't step on each other's hair.
No need to interfere or give advice in any way.
This applies to almost any situation you can imagine.
A combination of trust, common sense and seeing kids as equals is a good recipe for child rearing.
From now on, try to hold your breath when wanting to give advice, warn, teach or comment on your children's activities and instead observe what happens when you don't say or do anything.