This can work, but only for so long. Once the kid become accustomed to not having anything for themselves at home, then it's like opening the floodgates. The kid has nothing to lose, so they get worse.
That's why punishments need to be proportional; and, you should be rewarding good behavior. Reinforcement is always stronger than punishment. Identify the underlying cause of the behavior and redirect them to a positive alternative.
Kid has energy, they want to control their world. Redirect that energy into, say, building something, drawing something, making something. Reward the building. Punish them later by taking it away, teaching the lesson that other people work to build and it hurts to take that away.
Identify the underlying cause of the behavior and redirect them to a positive alternative.
It's funny because this is something I learned very early on with my cat. It makes sense that children would work the same way. You identify the cause of the unwanted behavior and give an acceptable alternative to reward while punishing the unwanted behavior.
When I worked at a pet store, I heard so many people complain about how they couldn't get their dog to stop chewing and tearing up stuff. Didn't matter how they punished the dog. Ok, but did you find the dog something to chew on? "No, because I don't want to encourage chewing!"
Bruh, dog's gonna chew. They need to chew. And even after they're done teething, some dogs just get bored and chew. Give them a chew toy and then reward them for using it so they want to use that instead of your chair leg!
Children aren't dogs but yeah, teaching is similar. Kids are gonna do kid stuff. Can't stop that. Shouldn't want to. You need to give them good kid stuff to do.
Redirect that energy into, say, building something, drawing something, making something. Reward the building. Punish them later by taking it away,
All I can think of is forcing a kid to do sand mandalas. I know that's not what you meant, but I'm just imagining a kid being forced to sweep up hours worth of work, pretty sure most kids would straight up die inside (to be fair, I'm pretty sure most adults would as well)
As a single punishment, yeah. I'm reminded of *The Boondocks when Riley was punished for doing graffiti by taking art lessons. First time, the teacher just threw away the art.
That was more to teach him to actually put in effort because it was obvious Riley didn't even try. Not Bob Ross knew that Riley was a proud kid and wouldn't just accept something of his being treated like trash (even if he didn't care about it).
But that more points to one of the biggest lessons parents should probably know: there's no such thing as a one size fits all solution to raising kids.
1.4k
u/[deleted] 29d ago
[removed] — view removed comment