What do you do when you ground your teen from a trip and the trip is cancelled?

Now, this is just my opinion. I don't know you, your wife or your son, or what he did. I feel that to be effective and fair the punishment should follow fairly soon after the crime. (I work in my country's justice system). Your opportunity vanished when the trip was rained off. That's my take. If you have to issue punishments, try to think of another one. Anyhow, he isn't a criminal, he's your son. I suppose the extent to which you think consistency matters is an issue, but do you want to live in a loving family home or a courthouse? My kids are 40 and 38 now, but when they were growing up they committed their fair share of infractions. We never punished them in this way. A serious talk was all they got. My daughter (a big strong girl) got tipsy on apple cider on her 15th birthday and insisted on waltzing with her mother (a little woman) and made her a bit dizzy. We still laugh about it now. I was laughing at the time. My daughter is a wise and experienced senior geriatric nurse.

It sounds like your humane side is arguing with your legalistic side. Let the humane side win.

I agree with centrox completely, but then I only remember being punished once. I was eight. I got home before my mother for some reason, maybe school got out early, and I asked the apartment doorman to let me in. My mother was furious and very formally spanked me, for the first and last time.

Of course as an adult, I recognize what her fear was, fear for me, but I then had no clue about why my mother was so angry. She never did tell me about the birds and the bees - that was left to the nuns showing us 6th grader, a few years after that, some short films. However weird this sounds, it probably was normal for a boston irish catholic woman born in 1901. She didn't know how to tell me.

The way I was brought up, (in all three places), the original punishment would still stand. Your son of course wants to use the date of the original punishment and say it's not his fault that it rained and he wouldn't have been able to go. The thing is, you created a punishment, that being that, he would not go with his friends to a particular event (the water park). He needs to be taught his lesson, even if it is weeks later. The justice system often metes out punishment months or even a year or two after the misdeed, your son can learn from this.

My ass. My dad was like this guy. I deliberately didn't see him for 30 years. Didn't mind either. He died 3 years ago. As he sowed, so did he reap.

We see things differently. I wasn't so pleased with the punishments while growing up, but, looking back, they taught me and taught me well. No ill feelings towards those who raised me in regard to punishments.

I don't have a clear cut answer on this. It would depend on the severity of the crime, and whether I believed that my son had learned his lesson (i.e. taken responsibility and shown remorse).

Of course, the fact that your wife wants to let him go may be the most important fact. Is this really a battle worth having?

Parenting is not criminal justice... how you communicate your displeasure is more important than exacting punishment, and sometimes a slap on the wrist is as effective for helping a teen learn responsible behavior as a harsh punishment. This might be the best of both worlds... you can communicate very clearly that you don't approve of his behavior and then not have to go through with the punishment. It has the same effect, but is easier for you.

I suppose given all of this, I would communicate very clearly how I felt and why I felt what my teen did was wrong. It sounds like all three of you are on board about this.

Then I would let him go.

Meantime, I highly doubt the old (to me then, now I think he was in his seventies) nice man was some kind of slug. And no, he didn't molest me.

I think fear I didn't understand molested me, later.

this



the punishment didn't have a timeline - it was about a specific 'treat'

I'd hold to it.

The punishment has already been meted out; the disappointment experienced.

Your desire to extend it smacks of a double jeopardy.

What was the house rule transgression?

I don't think the punishment is unreasonable in itself, nor do I think extending it is, especially if the infraction was serious, as you said.
He broke a house rule, and if you've even made house rules, I assume the expectation is for your household's members to follow them. If that's the expectation, there must be consequences of some kind. Otherwise, the expectation is ineffectual.

If I liken this situation to any other situation where someone must pay a price for something they did, it doesn't make sense to me to not extend the punishment. People must compensate whomever for whatever they have taken/done. You have decided this punishment is the way your son will compensate for his infraction. If you allow him to go on the trip, then you will not be compensated. Simple as that.

From what you've told us about your son's response, I don't think even he thinks the punishment is unreasonable or he would be objecting more on the grounds of the punishment being unfair. Instead, he's decided to loophole his way out of the punishment. Has he profusely apologized? Been great since the incident? Made any effort to show he's sorry? Objected to his offense being bad and made sense in his objection? If he has, maybe you should reconsider. If not, I don't see why you should.

Also, who's paying for this trip? If you're paying for his ticket, then...

I am punished by my father quite often, and though I don't like it, our relationship is good.

He avoided the punishment through no fault of his or yours, but if you believe his transgression requires punishment, I see no reason why he should escape your justice because of weather.

If the power goes out at the moment the executioner throws the switch on a murder, does the State say "Well, lucky him. I guess we can't execute him now?"

If your waffling about whether or not his transgression deserved the punishment that's another thing but I would advise you to not go back on your edict. One slightly excessive punishment will have far less of an impact on your son than his believing that he can, at times, cleverly outwit his parents.

He is going to learn how to do that, and this is the way to make sure he does.

Illiteracy mars your post and distracts from your point.

His point was quite clear.

Maybe it's just me, but I find errors like they're/their, you're/your, who's/whose, it's/its, etc, rob the material in which they appear of a certain amount of credibility.

It's just you and similarly pedantic twits.

If I had agreed with your advise you would have found no silly fault.

I admit this is true.

When I did something wrong, I got punished right away and the thing was kind
of forgotten.
I cannot remember being punished unfairly any time.
I would say: the son got his punishment, but it rained. That´s it.
He should by now have learned, what can happened, when he does not do what is expected.
That´s it.
Let him go next time - if he behaves. Otherwise not. Then it is a new punishment.

Oh, I find the errors annoying, however, I try to overlook them as long as they are not factually incorrect. Some of this may come from my years of teaching and needing to sift through to discoverer the student did indeed have the right answer, I just had to decipher their code.


Much more irksome to me, these days, is, the online newspapers which are littered with errors. Big name tabloids such as The New York Times and USA Today are among the scoundrel rags!

Online I figure people come from different countries, have different levels of education and of course at times make mistakes, I've done it myself several tikes even after triple-proofing my words.