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Will you help me figure out an appropriate punishment for my son's wrongdoing?

Asked by Simone_De_Beauvoir (39052points) August 1st, 2011

Background info: My son is 5, he’s a good & kind kid, generally speaking. When he is with my aunt, however, he behaves like a different (much more spoiled, belligerent) child. When I hear about his behavior while in her care, I literally can not believe my ears (neither can my partner + mom, his other two primary caretakers) because that just doesn’t sound like anything we’d ever tolerate or even have to deal with (like he’d lie down on the street in a tantrum or throw a bottle at a passing car). She is not very good at disciplining him and has no issue with him manipulating the hell out of every situation with his tears. That’s fine because that is her choice and she needs to bear the fruits of her mistakes. However, this morning, his actions went too far and he scratched (either with his nails or a pencil) all over her LCD flat screen TV. My mom told me about it in the morning, I haven’t yet seen the damage, but my aunt said she expects me to pay for her new TV (which is highly unlikely, but whatever).

I spoke to Alexey and he did admit to his doing (as he always does) and he did apologize and said I can sell his toys (so that I can get money to pay my aunt) and all that. I will talk to Alex later on and in the meantime I wanted advice on appropriate punishment. We’re big fans of consequence parenting – read: NOT any kind of physical punishment, whatsoever.

I was thinking the following:
1. No ice cream or staying at my aunt’s for 2 weeks
2. No new toys until New Year’s.

Too harsh? Not enough? What would you do? What else can I ask of him? He knows what he did was wrong, for sure and I don’t think he will do anything like that again, but then again who knows?

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