NY Post: What is FAFO parenting? This latest trend encourages ‘natural consequences’
WSJ: Goodbye Gentle Parenting, Hello ‘F—Around and Find Out’
Gen Z has a clever approach that might work.
- Rediscover the old knowledge.
- Rename and rebrand the idea.
- Flog it on social media until it’s trending.
- The idea becomes common knowledge.
These two articles explain FAFO parenting. It used to just be called parenting.
The WSJ article isn’t entirely sure what FAFO means.
FAFO parenting goes by lots of names: Tough love, authoritative parenting, or, as Dillon once put it, a method to “out-feral their feral.”
The NY Post article has a better sense of it.
Known in 2025 as FAFO on social media, the parenting style encourages kids to ‘find out’ the natural consequences of their behavior that they’ve been warned against (as long as they’re not in serious danger).
Natural consequences are the key to the whole thing, along with keeping the child out of serious danger. Every day, parents make scores of decisions about their child. The parent has to be clear on the principle to make a spontaneous decision.
Carla Dillon tried lots of ways to discipline her rambunctious 13-year-old, including making him write the same contrite sentence 100 times. But when he sprayed her with a water gun at a campground after she asked him not to, she saw only one option:
She threw him in the pond, clothes and all.
“Some of the best lessons in life are the hard ones,” she said.
That is not a hard lesson, it’s an alpha dog lesson. A rambunctious 13 year-old boy would think that’s funny and get the point. Even if the kid was shocked and appalled by the lesson, he will look back at it and laugh. Making a boy write something a hundred times is disconnected from the offending action, and seems spiteful and mean-spirited.
It takes some processing to make that a natural consequences anecdote. Something like, “if you irritate someone, they may respond in kind.” It was a dominance lesson. The WSJ article starts to get to the idea.
Won’t bring your raincoat? Walk home in the downpour. Didn’t feel like having lasagna for dinner? Survive until breakfast. Left your toy on the floor again? Go find it in the trash under the lasagna you didn’t eat.
In these three examples, the parent might warn the child, but the parent is not punishing the child. There isn’t any punishment at all. Perhaps the child doesn’t mind walking in the rain, isn’t very hungry or doesn’t like that toy.
Natural consequences give the child agency. What the kid does, actually matters. The child learns to make consequential decisions. If there is a negative consequence, the child has no one to blame. Mild suffering builds resilience.
WSJ starts to miss the point again.
Parenting that’s light on discipline has dominated the culture in recent decades. But critics blame the approach for some of Gen Z ’s problems in adulthood. They cite surveys that show young adults struggling with workplace relationships (was it because their parents never told them “no”?) and suffering from depression and anxiety (was it because their parents refereed all their problems?).
FAFO and natural consequences are not harsh discipline, it’s just the indifferent world responding to the child’s decision. FAFO is not about saying ‘no’, it’s about saying, “Are you sure? It looks like it may rain later.” A young adult who has never made a decision and lived with the results, might be surprised and unprepared when entering the indifferent world.
From the NY Post article:
I’ve always believed in FAFO, and now that my son is almost 18, I can say that for us, it’s worked. He’s usually responded very quickly to the tactic, after seeing the natural consequences of his behavior.
It’s worked on everything from not doing homework or studying for a test, and being disappointed in the results, to having a mate tell him your breath stinks when he skipped brushing in the morning.
School is where it gets tricky. The action and the consequence are too far apart. I have had parents who are trying to instill some independence in their junior or senior, and take a mostly hands-off approach to school.
The trick is to do the old Ronald Reagan approach. “Trust, but verify.”
Trust your 17 year-old child to manage his time, but verify by keeping an eye on the online grade book.
As a teacher, natural consequences worked great for tardy students.
The school policy was that if a student is tardy three times in a quarter, the teacher is to write an office referral. If the student gets three office referrals for being tardy, the assistant principal would assign a detention to the student.
The policy was something like that. It was a type of natural consequence, but the detention was too far removed from the tardies. I never followed the procedure because it seemed too bureaucratic and ineffective.
My policy was, “If you aren’t in your seat when the bell rings, you lost your chair privilege and have to stand for the period.” No record keeping, no write-up, no nothing.
Do that twice, and any student who had to stand will maintain the policy for me. The tardy student looks like a prickly sourpuss if he complains. Since I taught science, there were counters on the back and sides of the room. Leaning on a counter to take notes wasn’t a big deal. The actual consequence was the awkwardness of being the only person standing.
One day, there was a fight in the cafeteria just before students came to my class. Not a big fight, just two kids grappling on the floor. Fourteen students were three minutes late to my class. NoRo students are nice kids and we were chummy. As they entered, they told me about the fight. “Huh, that’s interesting. Who was fighting? Oh, what are you guys doing?”
They forgot or naturally assumed that the policy wouldn’t apply to a crowd of students. Of course they were incorrect. I knew which eight kids I’d been talking to for three minutes. They were surprised and a little amused, so stood without grumbling.
No one ever complained, it was easy on everyone, few students were ever tardy and there is no way that policy would be permitted now.
Nearly all of the FAFO anecdotes involve boys. At a young age, boys and girls diverge. Boys are a pack, girls are a herd.
Boys respond to decisive consequences, but can rebel against authority. Boys like to know how things work. Natural consequences are the result of how things work, without an authority figure imposing a punishment.
Girls respond to social pressure and conforming to the norms of the group. FAFO is different with girls, but they also need to be permitted to make decisions and live with the consequences.
One situation that comes up with boys and girls isn’t FAFO precisely, but it is aligned. Parents sign their young children up for T-ball or soccer. When the kids get around middle school age, they want to choose their own sport or activity. When friends my age had children in this phase, most had a rule. If you join a team, you can’t quit until the season or class is over. If you make a commitment, you have to see it through.
I don’t know if current parents see it that way. Children are over-booked, everything is expensive and activities make time demands on the parent. It’s easier on the parent to capitulate.
Becoming an adult means developing the ability to make a decision, and accepting the consequences. It isn’t always fun. If a young child has never jumped off of the couch, as a young teenager, jumping off of the roof may seem like a splendid idea.
The photo at the top of the page is from a TV show called The Little Rascals. It started in 1922 as Our Gang film reels. Many episodes are available on Youtube, and it’s wild. Even though some of the kids dress better than my former colleagues dress for school, it’s not obvious who is raising them. They probably have parents, but they aren’t supervised.
For some reason, they have access to old barns, sheds, donkeys and goats. Occasionally there is a pet monkey. They lived with natural consequences without regard for the appropriateness of the peril. People that age became known as the Greatest Generation.
Children need to face challenges, make decisions and endure the consequences. Little challenges for a little kid, so that big challenges aren’t a surprise to the young adult.
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