Maryland Boy Learns Lesson With "Homeless" Sign Punishment

[Munchkin03]

Originally Posted by AGDee

Meh, my kids have that stuff too and most kids that age have that stuff now. My coworker was smart with this stuff. She just took all the power cords to things when she was grounding her kids. You don't have to move everything out, you just have to make them not function. When her kids were doing things on the Internet when grounded, she took the power cord to the cable modem to work with her. Problem solved.

Whether kids today have that stuff isn't the issue. My issue is that he thought actually taking it away, or even disconnecting the stuff, was too much of an inconvenience. Publicly humiliating his son, however, was more convenient.

How long would it take to disconnect the games/computers and put them away? An hour?

[33girl]

Originally Posted by Munchkin03

Whether kids today have that stuff isn't the issue. My issue is that he thought actually taking it away, or even disconnecting the stuff, was too much of an inconvenience. Publicly humiliating his son, however, was more convenient.

How long would it take to disconnect the games/computers and put them away? An hour?

It takes longer if you are stupid.

[AGDee]

Originally Posted by Munchkin03

Whether kids today have that stuff isn't the issue. My issue is that he thought actually taking it away, or even disconnecting the stuff, was too much of an inconvenience. Publicly humiliating his son, however, was more convenient.

How long would it take to disconnect the games/computers and put them away? An hour?

I was in agreement with you on that part and was pointing out that all you really have to take away are the power cords. You don't have to physically remove anything else. You just have to make it useless.

[christiangirl]

Originally Posted by Munchkin03

How long would it take to disconnect the games/computers and put them away? An hour?

When the kid I was sitting for threw a fit over the Xbox, it took me approx. 20 seconds to unplug it and put it away. Doing what Dee said and taking the power cord would have been about 5.

Originally Posted by DrPhil

A better lesson is to have your child volunteer at a homeless shelter and meet homeless children.

I've heard of this being done in a few different instances and, in each one, the teens learned nothing. I find that kids can be pretty short-sighted. Honestly, sacrifice has to be freely given for it to mean anything. If it's done by force, the message is totally lost in a lot of cases.

[DrPhil]

Originally Posted by christiangirl

I've heard of this being done in a few different instances and, in each one, the teens learned nothing.

Those teens are probably dumb in general. As with anything else in life, some children will get it and some will not.

A smart parent will make volunteering a positive teaching moment rather than yelling at the child and telling the child that volunteering is only being done to make the child's life a living hell. It has been done.