The Glade 4.0

I caught my son lying to us.

He had been grounded from playing any video or computer games other reasons, and when I checked the parental controls of his favorite on-line webgame, he's been getting up at 4AM before everyone else and playing anyway.

I'm not against corporal punishment, but he's 10 years old, and it's not going to sink in I think...too temporary -- it's quick and over, so no spankings. I've told him we're thinking about what we're going to do. I've already locked his account in the game, but there needs to be more done.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Delete all of his progress in whatever game it is he's playing when he disobeys. Repeat this action every time he commits an offense. It will either make him stop playing games, or he'll stop disobeying.

Take everything he loves away. Set an end and stick to it.

Meaning, if you tell him a week, don't cave. Not that I think you would but there could be others in the house who are softer than you.

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Raell Kromwell

Sounds like 2 separate issues.

For playing on the computer when he wasn't supposed to, extend the moratorium an extra week.

For the lying, have him write a paper on the value of trust and what is lost when trust is broken, just to make him think about it for an hour or so. Of course, he can't get up and play 'till the paper is done.

Don't judge the paper or even talk to him about it. If its BS and he just went through the motions, have him do it over, don't tell him why.

You gotta get them to THINK.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Make him cut his own switch. /nod

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Holy shitsnacks!

Whenever I was grounded from playing video games, my parents took the power cords to all my electronics - that way Id be able to sit there and LOOK at the devices, but not be able to use them

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In all likelihood there isn't anything you can do to force him to learn his lesson and make him decide that lying is wrong. Was there anything that your parents did that made you never want to lie to them again when you were a kid/teen? How about anyone else here? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

The most you can do is as others said, create a punishment and stick with it to the letter. No empty threats. No caving in. No softening the blow. No shortening of time frames/severity for good behaviour. But on the reverse side of things, you need to balance that out with love and affection, and showing honest disappointment (hurt disappointment, not angry disappointment) when they do wrong.

In the short term, it won't deter them. But when they become more adult-ish and they reflect back on the things they did, what you did, and how it affected you, there will be a stronger chance they will become better persons and regret their past actions.

I was a master liar to my parents. I was so damn good at it. Lying, as Garrak says, is an art form. And the best liars are the ones who do it so well and so often, they practically believe their lies themselves. And the way I told my lies had to adapt and change dynamically.

The best/worst lies I ever pulled off were so evil they were forged by purest Satanite in the blackest pits of Mordor. When a parent, especially my mother, would try to bluff a confession out of me for a pretty severe thing I did I would not only lie, but I would act extremely hurt. Without saying it in these words, my demeanour and tone would be "I am so hurt that you could even think that I could ever do something so bad." Using her motherly guilt and need to nurture against her.

Like I said, pure Mordor-forged Satanite.

But then I hit adulthood and reflected back. I didn't remember the punishments. My long-term memory is a steel trap. I can remember 80% of my youth all the way back to 2.5 years old. I not only remember events, but how I felt and what my thought processes were. But I can't remember punishments for things I did when caught when I lied.

But I can remember how I made them feel when I disappointed them. And I can remember the bad things I did and can reflect on them with different perspective.

I've since apologized and made-up for all the crap I pulled as a kid (even toward my brothers) as I took each family member in my early 20s aside for a day and spent time with them and asking forgiveness and whatnot.

That's what you hope for.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

My parents were fairly consistent on punishment, including spanking. I feel the pushment I got went a long way in deterring overt incidents. I knew I didn't want my Dad to get to five.

Now covert stuff I really can't say.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

You rack a diciprine!

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I'm in favor of corporal punishment, although not by itself. However, I think lying is one of the best reasons to administer it. I don't think there's such a thing as too old for a spanking either; on the contrary, spanking is more appropriate the older the child gets.

One of the main reasons for this is that I'm very much against grounding. I'm not against briefly taking things away - I had to take my oldest daughter's flat iron for her hair away a couple times so she would remember not to leave the damn thing on and either burn the house down or burn the **** out of someone.

I find that grounding just takes too long. Kids, even older ones, have limited attention spans and even if they understand at the time the grounding is imposed why its being done, they quickly lose focus on that, and evading the punishment becomes the goal. This forces the parent into the role of jailer and the house into a jail, and if you have more than one kid the other kids tend to have to live with the atmosphere that someone is in "punishment status".

Corporal punishment does not have to be terribly severe or painful, but it does have to be accompanied by a very clear understanding of why it's being done, and that has to be delivered calmly. That's the really important part. The punishment needs to be very closely tied to the action.

It's also pretty much not going to happen that the action will never be repeated. Kids need repetition to learn to overcome their "Wants" in order to do what they should do. For kids, what they want right when they want it is incredibly powerful.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Well, Lachlan's not at the age yet, but there is an age where they are "too old for a spanking" here. At 12 years old, it becomes illegal here.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I can't think of anything my mother could have done to steer me away from the path of lies before I'd already put in some serious mileage, but I can definitely point to what made me regret it after the fact.

There were times when I'd get in trouble with some external authority and I wasn't actually guilty of anything, or there existed some extenuating circumstances, and I wanted my mother to stand up for me - to say "my son says he didn't do it and I believe him"; instead, she'd say to me "if I could trust you, believe you, I'd stand up for you - but I can't, so you're on your own". At the time, of course, I only cared that she wasn't on my side. Later, I felt genuinely bad for having destroyed her trust in me. Basically, I lived a variation on the story of the boy who cried 'wolf'. As I say, the lesson hit home a little bit too late to do me any good in my childhood but it did turn me into a more honest adult.

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

In my experience, corporal punishment only results in fear and underlying hate. Severe grounding always influenced me much more than the beatings I took. Started with switches until 8ish, then leather belts until 13, then fists to the face after that until I was big enough to stop the beatings.

And that fear subsided, but the hate lasted for a long, long time. My father and I have never had a really close relationship as a result. We aren't enemies, but we've never been best friends either, as much as he would have liked after the fact. Just food for thought, Taly.

Punching you in the face isn't corporal punishment, it's beating you up.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

See above.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

I used to get up at 2:30 AM for Everquest so I could camp the stupid birds at that lake before anyone else. What's it called. I got from level 16 to 20 pretty quickly. I never got to the max level in EQ though.

Yeeeeah, I don't think she's going to round-house her kid. Unless she's teaching him Kung Fu, then it's an important part of training.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Kids outgrow corporal punishment by 9 or 10. At some point, they can tolerate more pain than you are willing to dish out, and at that point it's over. It's also easier to do this and have it over than have a real punishment.

The point of corporal punishment isn't the pain. The point of it is that the kid has to submit to it. Teenagers like to think of themselves as adults that just aren't being recognized as such by the real adults. Spankings are a powerful reminder that they aren't; they are the one that has to bend over and accept discipline from the parent. Spanking is participatory on the part of the kid; it's a punishment they accept as opposed to grounding where they just passively sit there and resent being grounded and make the parent play jailer.

Exceeding the kid's pain tolerance is never the point of a spanking; it just has to be hard enough to be disagreeable. While a hard spanking doesn't usually cross the line into abuse, its also not generally necessary. This is why parents should never spank when they themselves are upset.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

In some countries, teenagers are adults...

Well, this isn't one of those countries. Those countries also tend to be places where teenagers run around with AK-47s and blast away at whatever they please.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Is eighteen not considered adult now?

Depends.

An eighteen year old can die for this country and help elect the leaders, but they can't drink beer.

It's for their own good, don'tcha know. I think they can still order a big gulp in NY city, but I could be wrong.

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In time, this too shall pass.

They cannot.

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