How Should I Punish My 15 Year Old Son

How should I punish my 17 year old son for drinking beer?

There are a lot of people on here making arguments about going to war, but those are really just red herrings. Here is what you do: Find out why.Kids try new things, especially things with the veil of mystique. They want to know about these things that they see all over TV, and that all of the adults and “cool kids” are doing. It’s important to talk to them about the possible issues associated with it. What if an officer had caught them. What if they had been pulled over while driving? What if an accident had happened and someone required medical attention (a lot of fatalities occur when kids are drinking because they are too scared to call it in). What about the long term effects of alcohol consumption, especially on still developing brains.So, was it just one beer, or a case. Was he just trying it out, or is this ongoing. Did he want to try it just to know, or is it indicative of a larger problem with alcohol abuse. If your son is a closet alcoholic, you have other problems you need to worry about. If he was doing it to celebrate, you can talk to him about other, legal ways to celebrate. If he was doing it to alleviate stress, you need to find out how much stress he is under and talk about better ways to handle it. Was he, like many of my students, drinking just out of sheer boredom? Boredom plus alcohol is a fantastic recipe for disaster.Punishment tells him he needs to do a better job of hiding it next time. Talking and educating create much more lasting effects, and, as another writer pointed out, prevent it from being a problem next year, when he can legally do what he wants.If nothing else, remind him that he may need to be the responsible one who can take someone to the hospital when all of his friends are too drunk. It sucks, but that’s part of being an adult, making the less fun choice so that others can be safe. Also, that jails are full of drivers who thought that they were ok to drive (no one ever drinks and drives hoping to get pulled over or in an accident).

What punishment should I give to my 13-year old son for vaping?

As Craig Good said, use logic. At 13, kids can understand logic. It’s also the age where kids try new things. That doesn’t mean that everything that they try is a good idea, and that’s what you need to talk to him about. Find out why he tried it. What did he hope to learn or gain. What are some better alternatives? Make sure he understands all of the possible consequences, like lung disease. One of the biggest problems with kids in adolescence is that they don’t understand all of the issues involved, they just think that they do. Punishment, especially with teenagers, generally only results in the kids hiding things, and the parents don’t see the warning signs. They only realize that something is wrong when something really wrong happens. Some of the worst behaviors I’ve ever seen in students comes as the result of overprotective parents, because it breeds the mindset of “if I get in trouble no matter what I do, I might as well go for broke.” These are the kids that usually crash and burn hard as soon as they turn 18, because they never learned any consequences beyond “don’t let mom and dad find out”, which doesn’t work so well it’s not mom or dad, but Officer Friendly that catches them.Someone asked me a while back if I, as a teacher, would tell a student’s parents if I saw the student smoking outside of school. I said it depends on the parents. If the parents are the kind that would beat the crap out of the kid when they found out, no, I would keep it to myself. A better solution is to find out why the kid is smoking, because in this day and age, they clearly know the health consequences. Maybe it was their first time, and just teen rebellion. Maybe it was because, like most adults that smoke, they use it as an outlet for stress. If that is the case, you need to address the stress and find a healthy alternative, not give them more stress.Remember, your job is to raise a functional adult who is capable of making decisions that are in their own best interest, not people that are so afraid of consequences that they either go wild or are socially and emotionally crippled.When I was a teenager, my Dad took away my car and grounded me for a month because he saw me speeding on the highway (not a lot, about 5 mph over). Did I stop speeding? Hell no. I just did it when I knew Dad wasn’t watching. In fact, I probably did it more, because I was 16 and “screw you Dad!”

Can I give my 15-year-old son hot sauce as a punishment for his bad behavior?

Oh my goodness, NO!First it may be criminal. Assaulting a human being with a noxious substance that may cause choking, suffocation, inhaling vomit and swelling of the soft tissues in the mouth and throat could get you arrested. Forcing substances such as hot sauce into a human being has been known to cause medical emergencies.Second, I can’t imagine a 15-year-old boy complying with such a tactic. I hope that this isn’t a kid who has been assaulted so frequently by such actions that he submits. If that is true, there is a big, big problem all ready and I hope he gets out of your home fast.Third, “punishment” doesn’t work anyway. The word “punishment’ implies causing emotional or physical pain to a human being in the hopes their behavior will be forcefully changed. Punishment may cause immediate behavioral change, because a person has been forced, but does not teach anything or help the person make inner changes. If you have been punishing this kid for 15 years, this message is way too late I am afraid.There are options to guide adolescents, but they aren’t likely to work if the teen has spent their whole life being assaulted into submission.The options that work involve such approaches as logical and natural consequences, putting the responsibility back on the teen’s shoulders and allowing them to work through the consequences of the choices they have made, and spending time reasoning with them and helping them find rational solutions. If the parents cannot sit down and work out alternative solutions with a teenager because they have ruined the relationship by injuring the child physically and emotionally for years, and all they can think of is more injurious assaults, then this situation is pretty much at the end of the road.If you think you can salvage the situation — get some therapy for you, not necessarily for the teen. If there is a non-abusive relative he can live with, you might want to explore that, while you find out if there is anyway to restore the family relationships.