Izabel Laxamana Suicide and Public Shaming

[mathnerd]

Another thing is that once your child's punishment has occurred, that needs to be the end of it. Punishments shouldn't, in general, last more than a few days. Cutting someone's hair is not generally a good idea as a punishment, unless hair cutting is a logical result

(For example: You don't take care of your hair, you never wash it, you're not doing anything with it and it's starting to smell terrible - You're forced to get a haircut. We told you to get a haircut before, you didn't, now we do it for you.)

I mentioned this somewhere upthread. I have shaved a kid's head as a punishment, but it was due to hygiene issues, and he had a month to correct the problem and knew ahead of time what would happen if he didn't. Plus he's a boy, so rocking a shaved head isn't much of a social embarrassment. Truthfully, two of my three kids have their heads shaved now by choice. The third sports a bright orange afro-mowhawk. (I don't care much about hair, as long as it's clean.)

[Aragarthiel]

But that doesn't take into account the possibility that the method of punishment enforced the idea that 'You are a problem' rather than 'You need to stop doing this because it is a problem.'

I wish everyone understood this. I lived an aunt and uncle who grounded me for six straight months over a spattering of small issues (a jar of peanuts my sister ate and blamed on me, I was caught eating sprinkles out of the pantry, I lied about a homework assignment I'd gotten an 87 on instead of 100, among other things). Every single time I was taught that I was the failure, and I'm still struggling with that today. They pushed me down the road to depression that ten years later I'm still working to get out of. Over sprinkles and peanuts.

Before I had my daughter, when I was reading through all the "mandatory" parenting books, every time I came across discipline, it stressed that I was never to tell her that SHE was bad, but that her actions were. A lot of the people I discussed it with didn't see much of a difference, which was disappointing to me. Even now, during those times when I reach my breaking point with her, I never tell her that she's bad. She doesn't deserve that. Getting into the trash is bad, tearing up papers Mommy needed is bad, climbing on the entertainment center is bad, but that doesn't mean she is. She's wonderful, smart, she loves to sing and dance and play music and give hugs and kisses, so just because she did one thing I didn't like, it doesn't negate all of the good things.

Hyena Dandy, thank you so much for pointing out what so many others forget.