journal - 5

what is a fair 21st century punishment or what should it be?

First off, I would like to point out that this is not a good question and could be phrased in a better way. Because firstly, what is fair anyway? Fair is not something that can be judged or compated. There is no definite answer when it comes to asking if something is fair or not, and I would just like to point that out to start with.

Secondly, I do not believe that there is a certain format of how to punish your kids. There is no template of punishments for your kids that all parents should follow. I believe punishments should be child specific. This makes no difference if it is in the twenty-first century or not. All punishments should be child specific. What I mean in sayin 'child specific', is that the punishment for all of your kids does not have to look the same. They may look the same, but they certainly do not have to. It depends on each child as an individual. What may be a punishment for one child, may be nothing to the next child. For example, if both of your children were misbehaving and you give them both a time-out, it may not be the right choice. For one of your children the time-out may be extremely boring and the child would learn their lesson from the punishment, whereas the other child may spend his time being useful and use it as a time of reflection or a time to be productive. In this case, the punishment was most likely not actually a punishment for the child, and he probably was not taught a very adequate lesson from this.

Now in the twenty-first century, there are so many new ways to punish your kids that never existed before. For example, parents now have the opportunity to take away from their children the priveledge of modern technologies. For example, if a teenager or pre-teenager has disobeyed, a parent can now take away their cell phone, their laptop, their facebook priveledges, their car, or many other modern technologies. This form of punishment has never existed in the past as it does now, and that can be used as an advantage or a disadvantage.