The Great Big Punishment Page

We hear an awful lot these days about how punishment is supposedly bad for children and young people. Most of us have also been told that punishment doesn't work and that it causes more problems than it fixes. I think this is because people have confused two words: punishment and punitive. Being punitive is being mean and that never works. Ever. Punishment is simply working the economics of the situation by saying that if you want to behave that way, fine, but it's going to cost you this much. If you make the unacceptable behaviors really expensive then they simply won't be able to afford them any more.

What's even more inteteresting though is that when you look at the scientific journals to see what the actual evidence says, there is something like forty years of research which shows that punishment is an effective way to change behaviour. The problem is that something like fifteen years ago it became unfashionable and we stopped studying it. 

It's also interesting that the adult world works using punishment as well. What happens if you don't pay your taxes? Or you speed? Or drink and drive? Or rob the odd bank? We get punished if we do things wrong. I've had a speeding ticket. It didn't shame me, or emotionally harm me, but it did annoy me because I had to pay the fine, and it really motivated me to slow down.

It's also true that punitive systems of justice in the adult world end very badly. Dicatators tend to be overthrown and imprisoned and/or done away with. The lesson there is that if your system of justice isn't fair, and worse still if it's mean, you will come to a bad end.

You have to be fair, and you can't be mean.

The thing about teenagers is that they have this way of making you feel like there's nothing you can do to them, of making you feel completely powerless. This page is my way of helping you to get back the high ground. Rewards, praise, and reinforcement are all good and useful things. They're important and should be used liberally, don't get me wrong, but you also need ways to make them stop and think about whether or not it's worth their while to do things they shouldn't.

So in that spirit here are 25 suggestions from my book, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Teenagers", to get you started:

1. Ground them, remembering that occasional big groundings for extended periods of time mean you’ve used up that punishment as well, so be economical.
2. Take away their allowance.
3. Housework.
4. Gardening.
5. Pick a large pile of something up from one place and put it in another place. Anything you have in large piles would be fine.
6. Restrict access to the family vehicle.
7. If they get a speeding ticket they don’t get the keys back until the ticket is paid.
8. Take away computer time.
9. Take way internet time (do this be disconnecting the modem from the wall).
10. Take away their mobile phone.
11. Restrict the amount of time they are allowed to do favourite activities (eg they might not be able to play sport at the weekend).
12. Paying for whatever they broke/lost.
13. Give way something of theirs to some needy charity.
14. Take away their bedroom door if they’re rude or they slam it.
15. If they won’t pick up their clothes then hang said clothes on the front fence… including their smalls.
16. If they won’t pick up their filthy clothes dye them pink (probably works better for boys).
17. Auction off their precious things at any one of a number of online auction sites.
18. Put all their messy stuff in a big black plastic bag and either impound it or bin it.
19. Take away essential make up (probably works best for girls and/or cross dressing boys).
20. Take away one shoe, not both, just one.
21. Make them suffer through a number of family movie nights where you deliberately watch something you know will bore them to the point of physical pain.
22. When they have friends over it is only allowed to be in the family area and not in their room. The fact that you are around when their friends are there will distress them almost to the point of mental breakdown. You can add to this distress by making sure that you talk to their friends at length whenever they are there.
23. Give them a set number of ‘nice things’ they must do for you (eg 3-5). The ‘nice things’ must be judged by you to be heartfelt and genuinely nice to count.
24. They have to endure a prescribed number of hugs from you. These can be distributed at any time, and must be met without wincing, sneering, or whining.
25. They have to write a poem about how great you are to get something back they’ve lost for rudeness (eg an iPod or phone). It must rhyme.

Over time I want to add to this list with the suggestions parents send in to me. If you've found some crafty punishment strategy that works then by all means send it in and I'll post it so we can all benefit from the shared wisdom. Just email me (please put 'punishment page' on the top line) but make sure you 'anonymize' the details. My hope is that over time this page can be become a repository for the collected global wisdom of parents everywhere looking for new and creative ways to make their teenage children see the error of their ways.

Enjoy.

From Jill:

My way of punishing my 12 and 13 year old sons when they started fighting was to withdraw myself. Instead of sending them to their rooms for 12 and 13 minutes respectively, I sent myself to my room for 45 minutes. They were not allowed to talk to me for that time otherwise I would start the time again. VERY effective when I was cooking dinner. Also I got to spend some quiet time reading or relaxing. I only had to do this 3 times before they got the message. Love playing little head games with them.

Another thing I do is say “Right, right”. They ask “What do you mean Right?” I then say “I don’t know yet but Right”. This gives me space to think about how I will punish them. Sometimes it’s not until a day or two later when they ask me for something that I say “Well, no. Remember when you did/didn’t do ........? Well this is your punishment for that incident”. I tell them I have a long memory and heaps of patience.

(Thanks, Jill, you're first up on the big punishment page!)

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From Carina

I don't have the pleasure of teenagers yet, and have 3-4 years before that happens. However, i heard some brilliant advice for punishing teens on the radio last year. 

 Instead of grounding, a mother went to school with her teenage son for the day. He had to introduce her to each class, and sit with her at interval and lunch.

She said that at the start of the day he was walking at least 1 metre behind her in embarrassment, but by the end of the day they were laughing and had bonded really well over the day.

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From Renee

When the 19 year old was 14 , he seemed to never have 'homework'. So I went to a parent-teacher interview and asked each of his teachers to humour me by signing off his expected homework activity daily in a notebook that I had bought for that specific purpose. The 14 year old then had to produce to me the notebook (daily) to 'peruse' and then witness his homework 'duties'. The consequence of producing an unsigned notebook would have been to have my pleasure of 'hanging at school with him'. He had an initial time of 'notebooking' for 2 weeks after which I extended for another week because I could. Outcome: homework completed by a begrudging son.

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From Glenys

One of the things I have done out of desperation was removed everything from his room, leaving only his bed, clothes, and book shelf (only because it was too heavy).  I removed all his toys, special things, favourite things, and hid them in the garage because he stole Pokémon cards out of another boys hand at school.  I got the phone call from the school telling me what happened, left work early and had it all done before he got home, and had the pleasure of watching his face when he saw what I had done.

 I have heard of someone taking everything out leaving them only the mattress, blankets and the clothes they were wearing, which meant they had to wash what they were wearing every night.  Not sure if I can go that far, but desperate times, call for desperate measures.

 I made him give back the cards he stole, and all of his as well, and he wasn’t allowed to collect any more, as I was sick to death of hearing about Pokémon cards and how unfair people traded, blah blah blah – I now hate anything Pokémon.

 It might have been harsh punishment, but there was a lot of back chatting going on leading up to it, not listening, doing only what he wanted to, and not doing anything properly because he was in too much of a hurry to get back to his game boy or whatever he was playing with.

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From James

The other day our daughter had to be told to do her chores for the tenth time and she'd neglected to feed the cat (poor starving puss and I were unamused), so she won't get paid for chores till she proves she can do them reliably.

 I donated her pocket money to the Christchurch quake appeal. Until such time as she gets more responsible, I will find a worthy cause for her dosh each week.

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From Toni

Program sky to require a PIN number for every program (this works for 12 year old who was spending too much time watching TV in morning instead of getting ready for school). Give the Teenager the PIN. Change the PIN  as punishment for a set period of time.

 I also have a verbal contract with my 17 year old daughter. She was allowed the bigger bedroom if she kept it tidy. Break the contract and the punishment is to move back to the very small room her sister currently occupies...not much room for her double bed in there!

 When my 17 year old daughter was about 13 she stole a wallet a purse from a bag shop. She was in school uniform at the time. Lets say i was less than impressed. The shop had a lovely photo of her but luckily the Shop owner and i came to an agreement and he didn't call the police. The following punishment was issued:

Informed school of crime. Meeting with principal and community constable to make daughter aware of consequences (and to frighten the life out of her which it did). Daughter paid the $80 the purse was worth from her own pocket money to the school as a donation as she had been in school uniform. This was considered reparation for damage to school reputation.

As she was meant to be attending dance classes at the time of the theft, during the time she was meant to dance (approx an hour a day for 5 days) she instead worked for the shop owner doing what ever tasks he assigned her. This was for a whole term. 

She had to return the purse to the shop owner.

This may seem a little harsh but she is 17 now and we have never had a repeat incident.

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From Niamh 

I tried to take my daughters phone from her when she was 17, she refused to hand it over and she’s bigger n stronger than me so in one of my few moments of mad but clear I walked away; she thought she’d won!!! She headed to school and I went to her room and took her charger. It was another day and a half before she realised and her 5 day grounding started then plus two days for not handing it over in the first place. Worked a treat.

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From Megan

I’m no expert on parenting but this worked well for me – each child is different and everyone’s parenting skills are different. I parent the way my parents did – dad had a great saying: ‘you are only going to get as much sh*t as you are prepared to put up with and I’m not prepared to put up with any’. You knew where you stood with my folks and my kids know where they stand with me. The technical term is BOUNDARIES.

I’m a mother of 5 (only one at home now)and although they are not angels by any stretch of the imagination,  the best punishment I ever dished out was by saying: ‘You think of the punishment and if it doesn’t meet up to what I am thinking I will make the punishment longer and harder’

Without fail they always came up with some dastardly punishment way worse than I ever dreamed of. Worked for me.

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From Nicki

When going on a school trip with my son who was ten at the time he started showing off in front of the other children in my group.  I said I would hug him or the class mate in front of his friends.  He is now 13 and his sister is 11 and I have used this in many group situations where they are beginning to become unruly.   My daughter is not bother yet by public affection but it certainly has worked with everyone else.

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 From Karen

The most effective punishment for 15 year old girl was to take away her privacy - we took her door off the hinges. She is a very "staunch" sassy and non emotional teen and that is the first time I have seen her cry and beg. She had to earn it back - which took a few months.

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 From Sandra

My daughter is now a 4th year uni student and a great young lady of 22....but let's just say her teenage years were a tad more than challenging at times and often I chanted these  words  to myself......."if it doesn't kill you, it'll make your stronger...if it doesn't kill you........over and over again.  Anyway, my favourite punishment was as follows

On her 14th birthday, she had a friend stay over (which I was not overly fond of)  I knew they were up to something...so peeked out of the front door, to discover their sweaters outside her window..they were getting ready to sneak out!!!!  By this time we were sick of her lying and sneaking around and all-round bad attitude.  To cut  a looong story short.  We grounded her for two months, took her phone away, she wasn't allowed anywhere without us, this included her being dropped off and picked up at school, which was a 10 minute walk.  She wasn't allowed her bedroom door closed, she wasn't allowed to received calls at home, no friends over.  We explained to her, we didn't take any of her privilages or rights away but that she had "lost" them by her bad behaviour and that those rights and privilages were earned by respect towards those around her, which included her family home, where everything did not revolve around only her but all four of us and by her change of attitude and behaviour, she would earn her rights and privilages back.
We stuck to the two months.  She pretty much knew we meant business and that unless she discussed a change of boundaries with us, it was there for a reason......it was hard but worth it and a good for her younger brother to see as well

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From Gen

I am not a parent of a teenager... YET! But I have a great friend who has a 14 year old son and recently witnessed a great punishment.

 "J" had been lying to his Mum and Dad about the behaviour of the other parent. His Parent were seperated and this occured every time he was in the opposite household. Basically playing them off aganist each other. 

Then one weekend they actually figured out what was going on and when His Mum approached him about this... he took off. His Mum has 3 younger children in the house as well and was unable to follow.. not to mention it was 5pm and getting ready for the young ones dinner. So all the friends and family in the area got a text and we all went out looking for him, the police were rung etc etc.

 At 11pm "J" strolled back into the house.. looked at the police officer and said "what's happened?"... The policemen replied "Your under arrest."   The look on "J's" face was priceless apparently. And after talks with the police and his parents the following punishment( for the lying and wasting of everybodies time) was issued... "J" had to go every persons house that had been out helping to look for him and apologise and then had to one hard labour job for each household... mowing lawns etc....

He washed my car for me!

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From Trish

Tell your kids (probably more effective for girls than boys) that you won’t buy them any more clothes if there are clothes, clean or dirty, on their bedroom floor.  You have to make it clear that this doesn’t mean that a clear floor always leads to clothes purchases, rather that an un-clear floor means definitely no clothes purchases.  Subtle difference.  However, I have to point out that  I think this saved me money, rather than led to tidy bedrooms! J

Another one.  One of the things I would do when I got sick of listening to my kids fighting was to get out a cassette recorder and start recording them arguing.   They hated it, and invariably it would lead to them to stopping.  Forcing them to listen to anything that I managed to record was also a good punishment – they hated hearing it!

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From Stephen (single dad of 2 girls 13 and 15)

My most effective punishment is to take away my 13 year olds hair straighteners  ...the beauty is I haven’t had to follow through yet as the fear of going to school without the perfect fringe is enough.

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From Megan

Take away their bedroom door if they’re rude or they slam it

 I like this one, I think it could be effective.

My son is 10 years old and he is always slamming his door, my brother - in - law has threatened to take it off a few times, but I think it needs to happen.

Its just my son and I at home and sometimes he drives me up the wall and he is not even a teenager yet!!

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From Rachael

just been reading your 25 punishments online and there was one about making your teenagers have to watch old family movies . it ocured to me the prehaps you could do that with music make them have to listen to your music that you no they hate at home and in the car for a certian period. Have not tried this with my own to teenage boys yet but thought it worth mentioning as its simular to your tv idea

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From Karen

I've educated teenagers who are withdrawn from mainstream education for 10 years, so I am well versed in adolescent behaviour management.

Most effective instant consequences are chores and attention withdrawal. It's all about consistency, consistency, consistency. As a leader/parent you must respect a rule if you expect anyone to follow it. Hypocrisy is a teen's greatest weapon.

If my students/children don't follow an instruction, clearly they don't speak english. I have been known to pick up a foreign phrase book and spend hours communicating in an alternative tongue.

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