It depends on the seriousness of the mistake and if they really already know that it’s a mistake.
There are things I did wrong as a teen and young adult that the worst consequence was being sent home with a warning by the police. Now some things that were thought to be pretty mild pranks can land a person in jail.
Funny story about letting kids learn their own lesson:
Once, when my kid was still just a toddler, he started f’n with the cat. He was pulling his tail. I was going to stop him but then I thought: “I’m gonna go a head and let him do this. That way he’ll learn first hand, why he shouldn’t fuck with the cat.” I felt relatively safe doing this as I was sitting close enough by to intervene should the cat try to hurt him too badly.
The cat tolerated this for about three seconds then he took one look at me and scratched the hell out of me instead of my son.
I swear, my cat had this look on his face like: “Control your fuck’n son!!”
:D:D:cool:
Honest, accurate and unbiased (as possible) information. Be like Spock giving them the details of why surfing on the top of a car is hazardous to your health. Maybe show them a pile of medical co-pays/RX bills and payment plans that you are using to pay off whatever malady hit the family in the last year. My kids know that my husbands hockey injury cost us a couple grand this year with all the medical stuff wrapped in and then his soccer injury lumped more on top of that. You can tell them that if something medical comes out of whatever bad thing that is the discussion, they have to pay 25% of the bill. Nothing wakes up someone faster than either money being lost or a cell phone taken away.
Then, let them go.
If it’s any consolation, it was much harder on the hooker.
We’re past that stage, and our kids made different mistakes from the ones we made, so this exact situation never came up. We told them that they could always come to us, no matter what, and though in one case it took a while for one of them to believe it, in others they did tell us about stuff right away. It’s all you can do. Too much protection, and they’ll never leave home.