So I was sitting In the casino on a cruise ship. It was a Father / Son trip and I had my then 11 year old son with me. My son walked up. He, and his buddy, were wandering the ship as they had for the majority of the week. He asked if he could hit the button on the slot machine. I let him. That was the last spin. It was dinner time so he said let’s all go up to dinner. As I’m walking outside the casino I get a tap on the shoulder by a security guard. The man says, Mr. Peluso, the head of security would like to see you and your son. I immediately looked at him and asked “what did you do?!?!” For a moment I thought it was because I let him hit the ‘spin’ button. It turns out it was my son’s shenanigans when I wasn’t watching him and it was the start of bigger issues I had to deal with in my life.
They ushered us into a small office behind the purser’s desk. It was a plain undecorated affair, with a singular desk in the middle. Perfect for interrogations or for someone in a suit and dark glasses refer to me as “Mr. Anderson.” We sat in the two chairs in front of the desk, and we were informed that my son was caught stealing two pieces of costume jewelry from one of the shops on the ship. My child, who as you will recall was 11, responded “You only saw two?” I gave him the look of death and he shut up. I was torn. My first thought was to lecture him for being an idiot with his comment that shared too much. My second emotion was the classic dad response of wanting to kill him for stealing on what was up to this point, a great bonding trip for the two of us. We went to the cabin, and he went into a suitcase and gave me three pieces. In my shock at the whole thing, I didn’t think that he would continue to lie to me. I grabbed a beer I had chilling in my room to calm my nerves, and walked to the security office and returned the stolen jewelry. Honestly, it didn’t occur to me until later about how it must have looked that the dad of the thieving child had a beer in his hand when he returned the jewelry. At the time, I told my son he could not leave the cabin for the rest of the trip. I was very upset about that because I was enjoying our time together. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the end of this story. When we got back home, while cleaning out his luggage to do laundry I found several more pieces he stole and not just from the ship, but from some shops on one of the Caribbean Islands we visited. Now it’s an international crime. He stole from several people, lied, and then lied again when he was supposedly coming clean. Clearly this was a massive offense that required a tremendous consequence. And that was the problem.
A huge challenge in parenting, which is a challenge that is a microcosm of society, is answering the question of how to deal with abhorrent behavior in a way that will minimize or eliminate that behavior in the future. I think parenting is a bit more challenging in that society has several complex and intertwined systems to meet this need. Parents do not, they are judge, jury and executioner all rolled into one. That summary may make a great line for a comic book or an Anthrax song, but realistically, it’s more than that. Parents are Judge, prosecution, defense lawyer, jailer, parole board, and counselor among many other roles. This only makes the question of how to properly discipline that much more complex.
So for a clue of how to do it right, it’s probably a good idea to ask: How does society do it? The first thing most people think about is incarceration, i.e. putting someone in jail. You are thus removing them from everyone else and hopefully from the ability to commit the crime again. That’s exactly what I did. Thankfully there was only one day left in the cruise, so he wasn’t locked in there too long. I always wonder if I should’ve kept him by my side, but I don’t think that would have done any good. I was sitting up on the top deck at a bar. He would have been able to look over the ocean, but would have gotten bored very quickly. At least in the room he had television. Speaking of technology, in today’s world a variant of removing one’s liberties is to remove privileges, especially those related to technology. This was another consequence as he went without his phone and access to the internet for a good long while. I forget exactly how long but it was several weeks.
Another option for kids, at least the smaller kids, is corporal punishment. The time tested and universal spanking. When I thought about it, although society has done so in the past, for the most part the western world doesn’t use this as a solution for adults. We do put Adults to death via capital punishment but that’s an entirely different thing. Even at 11 years old my son was too big for this, plus, even though my parents liked to pull out the belt, it never really worked for me as a punishment. It’s instant, and if you can handle the pain, then it’s not much of a deterrent. Obviously this can be taken to the extreme in some cultures, for example, cutting off a hand for an infraction such as theft. Again, dismemberment was not going to be an option here.
Another time tested option is hard labor. This could be fines and restitution,I.e. working to fix what you broke or just actual labor. It can be punitive or some form of community service. We actually used this option later that summer as one of the consequences. We were staying at a farm and I worked out a deal with the owner. My son spent 8 hours shoveling horse stalls. One of the best photos I have is his new work boots covered in horse crap!
Shaming is another one of those societal punishments that’s, for the most part, been relegated to the past in developed countries. Parents, who are less discerning than our culture’s influencers, will use this tactic all the time. For parents the scarlet letter equivalent is “you have to go and apologize”. I’ve seen it taken as far as public youtube videos from the parents destroying the possessions of a child for misbehaving. This was another one we used, as we made our son write an apology note to send back the things he stole.
The final type of consequence is what is known as diversion. This is where society will send someone to counseling or training to avoid the behavior in the future. Think of the moderately neglectful parent or wayward teen who commits vandalism. Teaching them proper parenting techniques or the consequences to others of their actions can have a moderating effect on future decisions. If there was a way to keep my child on the island or ship for a week and have him work at the retail establishments, I would have seriously considered doing it.
I’m sure there are other ways to punish members of our culture who misbehave. There have been great debates over time as to what form of punishment has the desired outcomes. Does incarcerating a mild offender with life long criminals make them a hardened criminal? Is it right to put teen murderers to death even if the decision making part of the human male’s brain isn’t fully mature until 18-22 years old? These are philosophical questions that can and will be debated in many other venues. For the most part the pendulum will swing back and forth as each generation makes their own determination as to what is the best way to make these decisions.
Although this story is about my son, it’s really about the decisions I have to make about his ongoing misbehaviors. I have to admit I don’t want to deal with any of it. That’s not completely true. I’m ok with being the jury. After all, it’s guilty until proven innocent with kids. So that part’s pretty easy. What I don’t want to be is the sentencing judge, jailer and probation officer. I would love to outsource all of that.
In a way I do. I’m married after all and so I lean heavily on my wife, who seems happy to take on the role of warden. The problem is that she gets annoyed with me if I don’t take an active role in the disciplining of the children. Of course, active is a relative term. I’ll do my part but I really don’t like it at all and consequently am not engaged to the level she would like. For me it’s all about the stress and draining nature of it. I think my wife, in an abstract way, almost enjoys it. She doesn’t feel glee in any sense and would rather not have to deal with it either, but she does enjoy the satisfaction of engaging in activities that would be considered good parenting. And for some, proper discipline is all part of good parenting. Not me.
I keep having the thought: Wouldn’t it be great if there was a sentencing institution for families? I’m not talking about the real juvenile court. I’d like one just for family infractions that don’t rise to the level of our legal system. We could drop the kids off in front of the Judge, and say “yeah, he stole his buddies’ nice headphones” or “He spray painted grotesquely oversized, yet surprisingly detailed and anatomically correct genitals on the side of someone’s house. So judge, could you make the decision on the punishment and enforce that?” That would be great because it would avoid all the negativity in the household that comes from a parent having to punish a child. And let’s face it, when you have to be a parent to a wayward child it’s not all peaches and cream in the household. This is especially true if the timing is off, say right before a family vacation or if the consequence has a longer term element to it. Restriction from devices or social interactions for a longer period of time is as annoying for the parents as it is for the kid.
Discipline is another one of those day to day elements that you don’t really think about when you are considering a family. I have an older cousin who’s pregnant and will give birth at fifty years of age. Putting health considerations aside, I can’t imagine that she was thinking about being sixty five and having to deal with insane teenage misbehaviors when she was making the decision to have another child. I just would never want to be full social-security age and getting a call about having to pay for the cleanup of wall sized penises. Assuming she has a perfect child, even the best kids make big errors in judgment as part of growing up.
Unfortunately, the motivation for this article came from the fact that I just got one of those calls. After a couple of years of very good behavior, during a holiday gathering, my son once again went out with his buddies and made some very poor decisions which, unfortunately for him, were caught on camera again. So once again my wife and I had several conversations about what the right series of consequences are for the crimes in question. His internet is gone, that was the first and most immediate consequence. We are waiting on hearing from the affected parties as to the damages. My son is not quite old enough to work the damages off but he’s getting close. In some ways this infraction was almost minor. The kind of thing that would get him grounded for a week and/or we would make him clean it up if he did it on our property, but it wasn’t our property. So there will be more consequences. I’m thankful that as a trendline his mistakes are still not rising to the level of international crimes. But a crime is a crime, and until he’s eighteen and the state takes over, it’s still my responsibility to deal with.
Enacting discipline is one of the things I’m really looking forward to giving up as the kids move out. Nobody ever wins in these situations. Judge Dread is a great comic book, but in real life, and when it comes to raising children, I will always and forever dread being the judge.
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