A single mother here at work has tried everything to get her son to straighten up and fly right. She has pretty much taken away all his priviliges and warned him the next note from the teacher would not be taken lightly.
She got a note from the teacher. No homework assignments being done. None for over a week.
So, she shaved his head. (I believe he is 10 or 11 years old).
He cried for four hours afterwards.
Your verdict on the punishment for the crime?
WTF?
As the parent of a 6-year-old who knows the principal’s office like the back of his hand, I can safely say this is going to accomplish nothing. The kid is a person and she needs to treat him as such by working with him to find out why he’s not doing his homework. Relentless punishment just leads to resentment eventually, especially if it is humiliating and pointless.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. The punishment should have something to do with the crime. I assume the only purpose of this was to shame him. Yeah, that will be effective :rolleyes:
He’s a little young for military service but perhaps just right for military school. He may as well get used to the look.
Agree with Cryos.
Angry parents are also human, can act in the heat of the moment and may not always make the best decisions (although, unless she was carrying clippers, the execution of the punishment has an strong element of premeditation). Any parent who says they always make the right decision concerning the upbringing and the discipline of their child is lying, either to you or to themselves. I’m waiting until we evolve so that every child comes with a personalized instruction manual (actually, I’m hoping my children wait, it being too late for me).
Jeez, all little boys had their heads shaved when I was a kid, whether they were being punished or not—that’s just how little boys wore their hair back then!
:eek:
And their dads had those handlebar moustaches and slicked their hair back with congealed squirrel drippings. Ah, I miss those days.
Sounds dumb to me. When I read the title of the thread, I assumed that the kid’s misbehavior was along the lines of dyeng his hair bright green, or shaving obscene words into it, or something. Then it would make sense that the punishment would be to shave his head. Shaving his head because he didn’t do his homework? Bu-wha?
If I had a 10-year-old refusing to do homework, I would first try taking away privileges, as it sounds like this mother did. If homework is not finished, there will be no watching TV, playing games, going outside with friends, etc. The kid can sit in his room staring at the walls all night. I would also try sitting down with him and helping him with his homework. Maybe the problem is that he’s frustrated or doesn’t understand the assignments? Maybe not either, but sitting down to do the homework with him would reveal whether that’s one of the problems.
Failing that… uh… I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to cross that bridge when I come to it. Am pretty sure I would not shave my kid’s head as a solution to this particular problem, though.
But the consequence did follow the transgression. He was warned if he got another note from the teacher, he’d be punished and not lightly. He got a note: then he got a shaved head.
I think I’m on Mom’s side. Ultimately it’s just hair.
I agree this might tiptoe right around the embarrassment/humilation mark but I’m betting this boy won’t forget this anytime soon.
I think that’s a seriously fucked up way to handle the situation. If the kid has a problem getting homework done, why doesn’t she start paying attention to what assignments he has and double checking that they’re completed? Or is it just easier to randomly dish out punishment then to actually parent?
The note said that he never even turned it in, not that he’s having difficulty with it. Suppose he can do the work and never even bothered?
Because, and I speak as a kid who was really bad about not doing assignments, he’ll do everything in his power to make sure Mom never finds out about the assignments. The kid needs to learn to do it for himself, like I did. Maybe shaming isn’t a bad idea.
Follow up to OP.
I don’t sit near this woman at work so I don’t know the whole story, but from what I have picked up on, her son has been a bit of a problem for a while. She was recently called to go to his school and told take him home immediately. She had to leave work and when she got there, found out he had jabbed another kid’s arm with a fork (ok, a plastic fork, but still). And the homework story is an ongoing problem. He lied and told her he did it and she believed him.
The mother is an intelligent woman, is a reservist in the National Guard, and is not one to easily fly off the handle. I just happened to hear her telling the hair story today in the hallway. She hopes this hair event will show him she means it when she tells him to do his homework and not get in any more trouble at school.
That’s all the additional info I know, other than the story in the OP.
Well, OK, I amend my previous comments. Lying is a serious offense, and the punishment should be equally serious. Like I said, I probably wouldn’t shave my kid’s head, but if she was at the end of her rope, and she warned him that there would be severe consequences, I can see it. Crying for four hours sounds harsh, but maybe he realized she meant business. I don’t know.
LOL. Yeah, as soon as summer got here, Dad got out the clippers and the cue-ball look was applied.
I’ve seen this happen (mother shaving child’s head), but not for the same reasons. I don’t quite know what to think about it. It seems like it would be a totally useless gesture. Do your homework or I’ll shave your head! I laugh out loud just saying it. If I were a kid and got my head shaved for not doing my homework, I’d be very bewildered, angry, and not likely at all to connect my lack of hair with my lack of responsibility. In fact, to me having mom shave my head would connect more to the “Gee, my mom is batshit crazy” thought than to the “Gee, I ought to do my homework”.
We’ve been through the lying-about-homework thing with WhyKid, and I swear there were days I would have been thisclose to getting out the clippers if I thought it would do any good. But it wouldn’t. What finally worked was a combination of having him keep an assignment book, having the teachers initial it each day that he had written all the assignments down, and then doing them all, one after the other, with me sitting next to his little ass while he worked. After two months of that we were able to shift to him working at the kitchen table with me cooking dinner and checking over his shoulder. Two months after that, he was allowed back into his room to do his homework, but still had to present me with the finished assignments and the assignment notebook to look over.
Yes, it was a pain in the ass. It took way more of my evening than I wanted to devote to sixth grade homework. But it taught him how to do it himself. Now I make spot checks, his grades have gone from D’s to A’s and B’s in one year, and he’s SO much happier in school. He simply didn’t know how to do it before, so I had to show him.
Shaving his head is the thread held in reserve for getting him to brush his (shoulder-length) hair.
I, for one, applaud this mother’s firm yet loving actions. Sometimes, effective discipline must necessarily be brutal. It sounds as if her son is turning into quite the sociopath. Roughousing at lunch? Trying to get out of homework? Dahmer, Gacy, Mengele–they all exhibited those same behaviours.
However, she must be vigiliant and willing to continue applying corrective actions if she’s to turn her son into a proper citizen. At any sign of continued disobediance, she must be ready. Not eating all of his vegetables? Time to make him appreciate vegetables: only bread, thin soup, and water from now on. Still acting up? Not folding his underwear correctly before putting them in his dresser? Teach him to respect his clothing by taking it all away and issuing him a single pair of black and white striped shirt and trousers. The humiliation when his peer group sees him dressed like that will reinforce the mothers position of authority. Late coming home from school? Time to take away his house privileges. She should have her husband build a crude wood shack behind the house, secured with barbed wire. Letting him spend his idle moments there will teach him to appreciate the roof his parents work so hard to put over his head.
It can be heart-wrenching to administer such tough love, but the rewards are great, and it may be the only way for her to save that spoiled little devil-child. The shaved head is a necessary first step.
I’ll have to side with the mother until I know more about what was going on.
We’ve had similar issues with our daughter. It’s not really anything as bad as homework. Just other issues that keep popping up no matter what priviliges we take away. Sometimes you have to do something fairly innovative to make the lesson stick.
Also, we don’t know the full story on his hair. If he cried for four hours, it must have been fairly important to him.
Hopefully the lesson will be learned before this kids gets expelled from school.