Wet Shoes

Consequences are a part of growing up, parents helping children to develop self-control by being able to envision how their decisions play out over time.  One such child had the habit of leaving their shoes wherever they took them off and no amount of telling them not to proved useful.  So one night, after he went to bed, I put his shoes on the back porch and it took him twenty minutes the next morning to find them.  Didn't quite get him to change his behavior, so the next time the shoes were thrown in the yard.  Obviously capable of learning, he found them quite quickly this time.  Not quite getting it, he left them in the middle of the living room a third time, and again I pitched them into the backyard.  The next morning he easily found them, but as it had rained overnight, they were quite wet.  He never left them in the middle of a room again.