When the punishment turns out to be fun....

[DrFaroohk]

Say you punish your kid for something. Caught him cheating in school while using drugs and stealing. So you decide to punish him with <insert punishment here>. Maybe some sort of manual labor, a long tedious chore. For my example, say you tell him he has to reshingle the roof. That's his punishment for all his misdeeds.

A day into it, you realize something - he LOVES reshingling the roof. He thinks it's the best job ever. You can clearly tell that he is enjoying himself like he never has before.


Do you change the punishment to fit him better? Or just go with it?

[SongsOfDragons]

O.o I can see the, uhhh...interesting conundrum for the parent. Non-parent me finds it rather hilarious.

Um...jump on the chance of finding a potential career trade he likes and is good at and get him a shingling apprenticeship?

[jackfaire]

I would say it depends on the situation. I was watching my nephew once and he was misbehaving. I really didn't have a lot of punishment options open to me so I made him do push ups. He ended up loving them but he stopped misbehaving and wore himself out doing them.

If re-shingling the roof starts getting him away from the behavior you were worried about then I would say that's the best kind of punishment.

[Mishi]

I'd stick to it, because otherwise the kid/s don't learn anything other than "Mum is vindictive and changable, I better hide my misbehaviour better". Which, to me, isn't the point of discipline. Besides it's something positive for the kid/s to do and it rewards them by helping them feel useful and teaching them valuable life skills.

[Iseeyouthere]

Also: I'll add that giving them something to do, mainly in growing boys, to burn that testosterone that they have. Less focusing on doing the wrong thing that way.

[HYHYBT]

Leave it be... but perhaps best not to use that again as a punishment.

Especially with the trouble you can get in if he falls off the roof

[DrFaroohk]

lol yes, well, anything. Say you take your belt to him and he gets a jolly out of it. Whatever.

The dick part of me feels like "That was the arrangement, now tough shit if it doesn't pan out. You should have thought of that." The other side tells me "It's not a punishment if it's fun."

[guywithashovel]

As others have suggested, if it uncovers a hidden talent or interest, then maybe that could lead to some constructive behavior that could give the kid something worthwhile to do with his future spare time instead of getting into trouble. Of course, the roof probably isn't going to need to be reshingled very often. Also, I kind of feel like I'm quoting a child psych book.

In the movie "Swimfan," the main male character told a story about how he got into trouble as a younger kid and got sent to a juvenile detention center. While there, he was assigned to clean the pool, and while doing that, he found that he really liked swimming and was good at it, and after that he joined the swim team at school and got his life on track. Yes, that's a fictional story, but something similar could probably happen IRL, too.

[BlaqueKatt]

The other side tells me "It's not a punishment if it's fun."

look up the actual definition for punishment.....

a penalty inflicted for an offense.

roofing could be a penalty, even if he enjoys it, it's still hard work(Punish-to put to painful exertion, as a horse in racing.), as hey, maybe he'd rather be reading a book, or hanging out with the kid down the street.

[Rapscallion]

In the end, your roof is reshingled and you didn't have to do it. Result!

Rapscallion

[blas87]

Somehow, the school systems always have had it wrong.

Punish kids for missing/skipping school by suspending them? More time off of school? Hell yes!

Oh sure, detention sucked. But I got the easy teacher who was too busy chatting out in the hall, so I wrote notes or slept. And this was before I went to the school that went until nearly 4 pm, so detention was over early enough to get to work anyway.

[HYHYBT]

This is why they invented ISS (In-School Suspension). Counts the same as a suspension, and you're separated from everyone else the whole day... but you still have to go to school. (As a bonus, our school had it in a back room of the gym, which was the only building not air conditioned.)

[blas87]

I never got ISS, but from walking past there waiting for a friend a time or two, looks like they had teachers who let them sleep and go to the bathroom whenever they wanted.

[SongsOfDragons]

At my secondary school, ISS was used - they were a savvy lot and already knew that just sending the kid home was counterproductive. Now my school - bit of background - had two sites, Luker and Wormestall. Luker was for Years 7-10, Wormestall for most of Year 11 and Year 12 ans 13, or Sixth Form. Both sites were dominated by two gorgeous old (L = 1909, W = at least 1700s) buildings.

We had a room called the 'Duty Room' at the end of the Luker main building where you were sent if you were seriously disruptive in class. It was always manned and the desks were sectioned off. Being escorted there meant a review of your behaviour and a detention or six. I don't know, I never got sent there. :P ISS was a later stage, and it wasn't held in a room - you had to follow your form tutor around all day for a week, and sit in whatever class he was teaching and get on with your essays or maths problems in silence. The Year 7s would giggle and point, the Sixth Formers would look down on you and were perfectly allowed to turn around (on behalf of the teacher who couldn't) and yell at you to shut the hell up before you embarrass yourself further. My Y13 English Lang teacher had a lot of these - a room full of adults seemed intimidating enough.

I don't know how effective it actually was; we had about the same discipline problems as the average school, though with nothing actually serious.

[Mishi]

We had that at my school too, my Year 11 Maths class was the worst one to be sent to for ISS. We were allowed to yell at them to shut the hell up and do their <expletive> work. They sat outside of the classroom but behind a shatter-resistant window, so every time they put their head down to go to sleep instead of concentrating on their work, a multitude of light objects would be thrown at the window. Surprisingly, we didn't have any repeat offenders. Highschool in an outback mining town so of course it was a little rough.