Tell Us Your Harshest Punishment (children, health, behavior, taught)

[jimrich]

Originally Posted by somebodynew

I don't understand punishment. How does it connect the child to the thing that is being done wrong and why?

It doesn't HELP a child connect mistakes with reasonable consequences and SOLUTIONS, which is why we began going behind our parent's menacing backs, just like all the other "overly punished" kids, to do our "thing" and avoid their viscous punishments which were NEVER meant to "teach" us anything but only meant to satisfy their needs for REVENGE and SOOTHE their anger. They never thought even once about HELPING us to do right, improve our behavior and continue to have respect and love for them and our selves. They HELPED us to lose respect and love for them.
Moderator cut: delete

[jimrich]

Originally Posted by Marlow

...and a sharp word from him was all it took to make us toe the line. And all the other kids in the neighborhood, too!

Our dad was like that so we obeyed him out of dreadful FEAR - not from respect or love. We were never taught right from wrong but were only taught to be deathly afraid of our menacing dad, the cops, the "disciplinarian" at school and some other scary adults but never about right and wrong so we did all kinds of bad things when nobody was around to scare and thus stop us. My idea of right was: do whatever I want but JUST DON'T GET CAUGHT! And wrong was: I foolishly messed up by letting some adult CATCH ME in the act. I was taught to GET AWAY WITH whatever I could - not to do what is RIGHT!

[jimrich]

[quote=breeinmo.;46631086]I always tried to make their punishment fit the crime and for it to be a teachable moment. I have two boys, so if they fought,
Our parents never did get it that we fought only because our very stupid parents had FAILED to teach and model love and respect in the family but plenty of contempt and violence so our fights were actually inspired BY OUR NEGLIGENT PARENTS! We could have and should have been best, most respectful friends If ONLY our parents had allowed us to be!

they had to hug each other. They hated that,
Of course they hated it since they were never taught to LOVE & RESPECT each other. We would have NEVER hugged each other and if dad had FORCED us to do it, we would have NEVER come around to loving and respecting each other when dad was no there to MAKE us do it. Mom and dad both systematically trained us to be ENEMIES!

and I can count on one hand how many fights they had.
LOL, how about when you weren't there to STOP them?

They didn't do their chores? The were given more.
Same with our dad who NEVER ONCE explained to us why we needed to do such and such and then inspire us to do things for and with him. His basic attitude was "Do what I say OR ELSE!"

One time they joined other kids and smeared food on peoples cars.
That's all about inadequate parenting that somehow FAILED to teach right from wrong and responsibility in all of those kids. We did stuff like that 'cos we hated most adults and our parents FAILED to teach us about dignity and responsibility so we got away with all that we could - OUT OF ANGER!

I went and destroyed a few items of theirs that they loved, right in front of them. That taught them how much it hurt to have your property messed with.
Or did it only teach them not to ever get caught again or YOU will hurt them but nothing about natural consequences or right & wrong. They did a "wrong" to someone and then you did a "wrong" to them but there is nothing about doing RIGHT in this story!

Whenever they disobeyed I sat them down and explained what they did wrong and the consequences they caused. They also had things taken away.
Did it ever occur to you that something was missing in their training which MIGHT BE causing them to "disobey"? We "disobeyed" because we had LOST respect and love for our parents a long time ago but never dared to tell them that to their ignorant faces. Our parents, not us, set up all the conditions for us to misbehave, disobey and do bad things while happily believing that they were two PERFECT parents!

I talked to my kids, a lot!
Do you, or any parent, ever talk WITH your kids? Do you allow them to honestly tell you what they feel and thing WITHOUT FEAR OF YOU? Do you understand WHY your kids messed up a neighbor's car? Are you kids free to speak their minds and hearts to and with you or are they AFRAID of you?

Either I'm forgetting a bunch of stuff they did, or I was lucky and they were pretty good kids.
LOL, pretty good TO YOUR FACE? How are they when your back is turned to them?

Now days it seems parents just yell at the kids and the cycle continues.
Parents now days are just as inadequate as in my day but just a little bit better at teaching and modeling sensible behavior and morals.

I was lucky to raise my boys before cell phones and computers though, parents today have it much rougher imo.
The family drama is exactly the same as it ever was - good parenting produces good kids, bad parenting produces bad kids. And therapy MIGHT help all of them.

Mine had video games, but they were put in every sport and activity I could find. I believe in keeping kids too busy to get into trouble. Idle hands ya know.
Stupid, careless PARENTING gets kids into trouble!
Our parents kept us pretty busy on their (not our) farm but we still managed to slip in a few nasties right under their ignorant noses! Sneaky hands, ya know.

[jimrich]

Originally Posted by heavyweight

Thanks to everyone who contributed on a potentially sensitive topic. Even going out of your way to tell me to mind my own business. hehe

Crimes against helpless children is EVERYBODY'S business and I wish we'd had CPS back in our day.

[dazzleman]

I was never punished really harshly as a kid, though as a teenager, I developed an increasing fondness for breaking rules. I was lightly spanked, given time-outs, grounded and had privileges restricted.

Still, I was never caught for the worst things I did, at least outside of school. But I didn't really do that much. I did a lot of underaged drinking, damaged road signs on occasion and threw snowballs at cars.

I never really got into trouble in school until high school. But in high school, I spent a good number of hours in detention after school. Aside from just sitting there bored out of my gord, I was sometimes assigned to write lines, punish assignments (a composition on "life inside a ping pong ball") or to do various forms of janitorial work as a work detail.

I developed a pretty transactional view of punishment. I learned that I could handle it to a point, and it was simply the price to be paid for doing what I wanted to do. I knew what the rules were and why they were there, but sometimes I felt the need to break them. The way to deter me was to simply make the price too high, by making the punishment harsher.

[jimrich]

Originally Posted by pkbab5

There is no "right or wrong". There is just "if you do A, then B will likely happen, and you need to decide if it's worth it to you".

The A & B morality is what we were taught but it somehow got twisted into: Do 'A' but ignore 'B' and hope you don't get caught! 'A': steal from the neighbor. 'B': Which could lead to dad beating you. Conclusion: to hell with dad (B), I just won't be caught!
It might have HELPED us to have been taught that A (stealing, lying, cheating, etc.) is either RIGHT or WRONG under such and such circumstances and may lead to B (the consequence). We were both convinced that we could get away with anything and had NO IDEA what Right or Wrong was other than that our dad could and would severely HURT us if we were ever caught.

[jimrich]

[quote=pkbab5;46632659]
Say my hypothetical child is 3. He is in preschool, and wants a toy that a classmate has. So he hits the classmate to make him release the toy so that he can have it.
I am not a parent but I was a child and my take on this is that, due to very inadequate parenting which promoted or allowed my brother and I to HIT each other as much as possible way before age 3, by the time we were 3, hitting was the best and ONLY solution we knew and we used it everywhere and all the time! So, if I had been the kid who wanted another kid's toy, hitting would have been my first and best move thanks to the type of parenting I got.

So is that a mistake?
It would NOT be a mistake but just bad conditioning and programming FROM MY PARENTS which I suppose one could call a mistake.


What is the remedy?
One remedy would be to go to my home and PUNISH my very foolish parents for the bad way they programmed us kids and then try to RE-TRAIN me (the 3 y.o.) to use something other than HITTING & violence to get what I want. It must be obvious that no society is ever going to make the parents accountable for how they program their kids so that just leaves HELPING (not punishing) the violent kid to solve problems WITHOUT hitting and I don't see that happening any time soon!

Say I try to explain to the 3 year old that hitting hurts, but the 3 year old does not yet have the vocabulary to understand what that means. Then what do you do?
Then you turn to non-verbal/intellectual means which I cannot offer right now but maybe some other, more experienced parent can. As a kid, I understood pain and being hurt, when others hurt me but, due to the way we were raised, I never connected my pain with the pain I was causing others so telling me NOT to hurt others meant nothing to me since they were constantly hurting me! I do know that being hurt (punished) never taught me NOT to hurt others! I just secretly hurt them!

Say the child is 5, and does understand the explanation, but does not care that it hurts somebody.
I have no idea how to teach someone to "care" once they have been programmed NOT TO care as I was when little. If we had been allowed to hold on to our original sense of caring and respect we might NOT have become so angry and violent.

Then what do you do?
I'd get into Parenting Classes or see a therapist/counselor to figure out where I WENT WRONG and then go from there to somehow undo the mental damages that I or someone has done to this 5 y.o. I'd do whatever it takes to HELP a mentally damaged kid come back around to caring, respect and love starting with finding out WHY the kid doesn't care.

[phonelady61]

I think the harshest thing I did to my kids was because they had hit their sibling and it was assault I turned their room into a jail cell . No sheet , a pillow and a mattress and no tv , no phone no electronics except a clock radio which was set to 4"30 am the time I would get up for work .I told them you hit someone it is assault and you go to jail for it so they stayed in jail for a week .

[GiGi603]

Had them sit on the steps. It was torture to them!

If they were having problems with their brothers, I made them sit in the hallway upstairs until they settled their differences.

[jimrich]

[quote=strawflower;46632762]see, I disagree with this in a lot of cases. Take your speeding example. If I'm in a residential area or on a busy highway, I'm not going to speed because it puts others at risk.
And is therefore WRONG. But that was never a part of my thinking. I somehow knew it was WRONG to endanger others but I just didn't care and was willing to take the chance that I would NOT get a ticket.

If I'm driving on a deserted interstate at 2AM, there's little to no risk to others if I speed, but I'm not going to because I don't want a huge ticket (aka a consequence).
So Right or Wrong would have nothing to do with your speeding? The moral or legal issues of Right (stay within the limit) or Wrong (go at any speed you like) do not apply here or you just don't care abut Right and Wrong. I would have driven as fast as possible because I did not care about so-called Right and Wrong - just getting away with stuff!

There is literally nothing stopping me from speeding except the fact that I might get a ticket,
Nothing, especially my conscience or moral obligations to the law, would stop me from speeding because I was not taught to have any regard for Right and Wrong. I was taught to do whatever I want and hope I am not caught. I know better now and would do what's RIGHT rather than just get away with doing what's Wrong.

and I'd rather spend the $200 on a nice dinner out with friends, or put into savings, or any number of things besides paying for said ticket.
And Right or Wrong will never enter the picture!