He’ll learn to lie better and make sure the next kid he sticks, keeps his mouth shut. When I was a kid, I sat at the kitchen table and did my home work while my mother made dinner or washed the dinner dishes. There wasn’t a chance for me to go to school without doing my homework.
Once I was old enough to be trusted, I was left on my own. Clearly this kid can’t be trusted yet, so instead of making sure he does his homework, she shaves his head. That’ll do the trick…
Humans don’t do well with humilation, it something we like to share. I feel sorry for the next kid he sticks.
When I was a kid, and a terrible student, my step-father got so disgusted with me that he used a nail polish pen (a pen type tool loaded with nail polish for easy application) and marked an “F” on my forehead. In bright lavender nail polish. And had me pace up and down the street.
Yeah. I remember the humiliation to this day, and the self-loathing. I also remember that it had absolutely zero effect on my performance in school. I think it may actually have worsened (not as an effect of the punishment).
Because of the way I grew up, I might pay an overzealous amount of attention to this stuff. But it seems to me that if repeated, consistent punishment, such as the removal of privileges, possessions, etc., fail to work, it might be a sign that there is something greater at work than just willful misbehavior.
Single mother with time away in the Army Reserves? No wonder the kids screwed up.
Since he cried for 4 hours, maybe he got taught his lesson.
Sticking with the kid everyday and making sure that he does his homework while personally verifying with the teacher what homework was given every afternoon would be a good idea.
In general I would advocate punishment for failing to do your household duties (that is, duties determined by the heads of the household–so include homework and going to school.) But this would be because too many people have foresworn such as possibly having any good effects on anyone! But of course, every case is individual. If you’ve been removed everything the kid could want–including his hair–sounds to me like you’ve run yourself into a dead end with the punishment front and there is more than silly rebellion happening. So yeah, sit down and sit there talking with your kid (if it takes all night!) to figure out what really is the issue and what needs to happen on both sides.
…Looking to become a father figure for the boy, eh? nudge nudge, wink wink
Oh, come now. You’d have to be a total klutz AFTER purposely taking off the safety guard to harm anyone with electric clippers, really. We may not think this is the most logical punishment, we may think it’s ineffective, a few of us even think it’s psychologically questionable (not me, due to the “kids are resilient” counterargument) - but physical abuse? That seems a little ridiculous. Is there a need to burden a caseworker with a frivolous phone call when you could simply call the Fab 5 for some styling product?
Unless I’m being whooshed and you were in sarcasm mode. In which case, never mind.
I don’t know if I’d call it physical abuse, but radically altering your childs appearance without his consent for the purpose of humuliating him in front of his peers and the public at large seems pretty abusive to me. If the mom thinks that’s an appropriate way to punish her kid, I’d say she needs professional help, and maybe child protective services are the ones to give it to her.
I’m with MsWhatsIt, I assumed he must have dyed his hair some freaky color or gotten an outlandish haircut. Shaving his head would be only marginally appropriate for those, but it’s an inappropriate punishment for failing to turn in homework or jabbing another kid with a fork. I can understand that the mom’s probably at the end of her rope dealing with him, but it’s not going to change anything, especially if the driving force behind his behavior is a learning disability, conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder or something like that.
The parent would miss Survivor. That would be bad. Doesn’t the school board know that too much homework cuts into mom and dad’s Prime TV time? I blame the NEA!
Not knowing the entire story, I am going to have to side on the err of the parent going over board with punishment ( and who hasn’t as a parent) and not sitting down with the boy at night every night for 15-30 minutes to sort out the work and papers.
It may be, if you assume that the end goal of the mother was, in fact, to humiliate the kid. There is no indication that was the intent of the punishment.
Umm, well, what other immediate purpose would shaving a childs head have? It was done as a punishment, which means that it’s supposed to cause some negative feelings in the kid. What negative feelings will forcibly shaving a kids head cause, other then humiliation?
It seems self-evident to me that the purpose of shaving his head was to humiliate him, but maybe I’m missing something.
Maybe I’m dense, but I don’t see what’s so godawfully abusive about shaving the kid’s head. It’s not like any of us knows whether she’s also watching him do the homework, talking to teachers, etc - I’m really pretty surprised to hear such a preponderance of “how dare she, the bad mother who can’t be bothered to do anything but abuse the child in such an awful way!” She told him if he pulled this crap she was going to punish him, and she did. I don’t see how it’s so awfully different from grounding him, or taking the car keys, or extra chores, or anything - it’s a punishment. Most punishments don’t have a whole lot to do with constructive behavior reinforcement - mowing the lawn does not increase class attendance. It’s a punishment. It probably goes with some other sort of work, like “show me your homework assignments with the teacher’s initials” or whatever. It’s not like she branded him - hair grows back and evidently it was something he cared about, like a privelige that you take away.
Punishment is inherently inefficient because people habituate to it and it becomes less effective. It sounds like she hit on something new and novel.
I guess punishing a non-behavior seems strange conceptually; however, if it gets him to do some homework, it gives her the chance to engage in reinforcement.
As for the head shaving? Was it with a straight razor? If not, I say, “Meh.”
I really don’t think you get any points for creativity in punishment unless you’re, say, the Marquis de Sade.
I just don’t see the purpose of this. Taking away priviliges is a reminder that you should be choosing to do better things with your time. Shaving his head is a reminder that he is a piece of property at the mercy of an adult who can’t separate her own anger and frustration from actual task at hand.
Really, he is clearly finding school difficult and humiliating enough. Why go to great lengths to make sure it’s even harder to get along?
Using punishment withot any other attempts at helping him get along at school is like treating pneumonia with cough syrup. And, yes, it takes a whole lot of time and patience.
