When the principal calls home: Figuring out what is the “right” type of punishment

While there are definitely worse things in life, having the principal call you to tell you your child had an incident, and when I say incident, I mean was a little shit, is a terrible feeling. Not only are you pissed and embarrassed, but you almost feel like you are in trouble too. Guilty by association. Then what is supposed to happen next. Go home and yell at your child. Nah, they will be expecting that and it doesn’t work anyway. Take TV privileges away. Sure sounds easy expect when you have two other kids who are watching TV. Stand in the corner, wash dishes? What? What is the right punishment and how do you come up with one that is going to work?

I have two boys. They are 16 months apart, Irish twins as many call it. They are the loves of my life. They are my everything, but as they always say, child #1 and child #2 are always super different. My boys are a perfect example of that.

Son #1, Jake, was probably the most perfect baby. He was such an amazingly good baby. The worst thing about him was that he hated the car seat because he had to face the back. Other than that, he was literally an angel. He made me want five more of him.

Son #2, Luke, was not the same. I don’t want to say he was terrible because that would make me sound like a bad mom, but oh my god, he was horrible (same as terrible, but it is the truth). The most difficult baby ever. He was colic for a year and I believed that I was being punished by the gods for some unknown reason. The only time he was quiet was when he was in his car seat being moved. I would come home from work and find my husband literally walking around the house carrying the car seat with Luke in it for 45 minutes. I would put my bags down and take over.

Things did not change much as they got older. Jake would listen, Luke would not. Jake was good, Luke was bad. Everything about the boys was 100% different. There was nothing the same. And I knew that school would be no different, though I did hope that even I was wrong (I am rarely wrong just ask my husband).

This year, both the boys are now in school together. Jake in first grade and Luke entering Kindergarten and I was never so nervous. Luke is young. While he made the cut-off for school, he literally turned 5 days before school started so I knew that socially, he was a little less mature then the other kids. Funny fact, he has the same Kindergarten teacher as Jake.  Both my husband and I explained to his teacher that they could not be more different and that we looked forward to parent/teacher conferences to see what she thought.

Well, as it turns out, we have to go in for a conference sooner than later.

This was my biggest fear. I thought for sure Luke would make it a little longer before we got the first call from the school, but I guess depending on how you look at it,  6 weeks in is pretty long.

The first month of school was amazing for Luke, and by amazing, I mean that he stayed on GREEN for a whole month. Staying on GREEN is a great thing. It means he was being good, listening and doing as the teacher asked. I almost felt guilty for being so nervous. How could I doubt my child? He is a wonderful little boy and I was just being an overbearing mother because he is my baby. I had just started to release my anxieties when my husband called me to inform me that the principal contacted him. Luke had bitten another student at school and not only did he bite the boy, but he did it right in front of the principal.

My first reaction when my husband told me this was that we need to get him into therapy right away. While we were still on the phone I was Googling therapist on our insurance plan and trying to figure out why he was like this. I did not get to breast feed him as long as I did Jake. That must be what it is. I malnourished our baby. Why was he biting? He didn’t even bite at home. Something must be wrong. He must be frustrated at school because he is not good at the work. He probably feels less smart then the other kids. I knew I should have kept him in pre-school one more year. He must be harboring some feelings of rejection being the younger brother. Something must be wrong. I was failing as a mother. My son was at school being a human vampire soon on his way to juvenile delinquency.  How could I let this happen?

While I thought I was thinking this silently in my head, I apparently was saying it out loud to my husband. As always, he told me I was overreacting and that we would handle it with Luke when I got home from work. I asked him how “we”, I always say “we” when I don’t have a plan to handle it my way, wanted to handle it. He said he had no clue and I knew this was a mommy moment. Not one that I wanted but that I always knew would come. I was going to have to have punish him. But not only punish him, but the punishment would have to be effective.

Both my boys have had numerous time outs, have been screamed at to stop being little brats, and have lost TV time, lost iPad time. You name it; they have had it taken away. It works for the short term, but this was a different situation. First, typically what happens is that both boys are usually bad together, so they both get a punishment. This was the first time that I would have to punish one and not the other. But how does one do that while also being effective?

I was so distraught that I was talking to co-workers, asking their advice. I Googled it. I Google everything and usually get an answer. This time, nothing. Ugh, I had to figure this out on my own.

I left work with a pit in my stomach. What was I going to do to get this child to understand that what he did was unacceptable and how was I going to ensure he would think twice before he tried to gnaw off another student’s finger in the future. I also started to think “Where did this behavior come from.  Why was he being so bad in school? Must be from his father. His father is the wild child. Damn him.” Then I started to think about my school days, especially my early years in Catholic school. I could vividly recall my principal’s name from over 30 years ago, Sister Margo. I remembered exactly what she looked like and how she sounded. Then it started to come back to me. I was a bad kid at school. I was always pushing the boundaries and I spent a lot of time in the principal’s office and the principal spent a lot of time calling my parents. I was not a bad kid; I just had a little bit of listening problem and in Catholic school back in the day that was never a good thing.

So I started to think about how my mother handled it with me. Usually I was punished from something that I loved so dearly, like my Punky Brewster doll and watching TGIF Fridays. How I survived it, I still do not know to this day. Missing Full House, at the time, hurt my heart and I never thought I would recover.

I remember when my mother took a completely different approach. I got in trouble, one time, for lying at school. When I got off the bus, I knew the principal had already called home and I knew I was in for it. I was prepared for the typical punishment. But she didn’t yell at me. She didn’t even speak to me about it or scold me. I figured I was in the clear until we got home. She took out a piece of paper with a lot of lines on it and made me sit down at my desk. She told me that I had to write on every line “I will not lie” and that I could not get up until both sides were complete. It was torturous and I can recall every detail of that day. I was five years old. I cannot remember many things from that time as it is over 30 years ago, but I remember everything about that moment and that punishment.

So on my way home from work, I stopped at Rite Aid, bought a composition book and headed home.

My husband and I spoke with Luke about his actions. We did not scream and yell. We asked the other two children to step out of the room and let us speak to him in private as we did not want to embarrass him. We asked Luke what he could have done differently in the situation. Apparently the boy he bit decided to cut Luke in line and when Luke asked him to get back in the correct order, the boy refused. We explained to Luke why his actions were wrong and that his actions had consequences. Luke was handling the conversation very well and thought he got off easy.

The next morning, I sat him down, showed him his composition book, wrote on one line “I will not bite” and told him he had to write it on every line after for one page. That first session went very well. He understood why he had to do it and he felt very confident that once he was done he was done.  Well when he returned home from school that day, which was a Friday, my husband sat him down and put the book back in front of him and explained he had to do another page. For 35 minutes he cried and screamed and made up every excuse possible to not do it. He was purposely breaking the point on the pencil to say his pencil was broken. With the patience of a saint, my husband got him to do it and it was painful for Luke to do. Finally, finally we had found something that was truly a punishment to this child. Finally, we had a way to provide consequences that mattered to Luke. He hated every moment of it and as he completed a line he would count to see how many more he had. He would start cheering when he was down to 10.

We made Luke write a page in the book throughout the weekend. It was a struggle and a test of wills, but we did it. I will give him credit; he tried everything and anything possible to get out of it. I cannot tell you how many pencils he broke or how many times the pencil fell on the floor and “he could not reach it.” But he did it and never wants to do it again. I have complete confidence that I will not receive another call from the principal informing me that Luke bit a student. I would imagine the next call will be about him screaming at the teacher or stealing another child’s pretzel at lunch, but for now I am confident that we have at least addressed the biting issue.

As a parent, figuring out an appropriate, but more so effective, punishment is hard. These kids today are smarter than we ever were and they are fully prepared to be yelled at and lose TV privileges. I learned that you have to hit them with the unexpected. Something they never saw coming. It felt good to outsmart my kid and just when he thought he had mommy’s number down, I switched it up on him, reminding him who really is the boss. I will hold onto the composition book until Luke has his own children. And the day he calls me to tell me that he got his first call from the principal, I will give him the book and share the lessons that I learned while raising him.