Crime and Punishment?

So I'm enjoying my childless breakfast after having a physical and I read that a fellow mama is upping the severity of her daughter's punishments because the child says the old punishments are no longer working.

Um, excuse me?  Your child says that your punishments are no longer working so you change them?!

I admit I am no child psychologist, but something about this makes my mommy brain hurt.  I understand changing a punishment if you see it's not having the desired impact on your child's behavior, but this makes no sense.

Maybe it's because I see children as humans that are capable of saying something doesn't work in an effort to get it to go away is why I think this behavior is a tad insane.

I see it at work all the time...

"We have this new program we are going to use for this process" ~ Boss

"I don't want to use a new program" ~ Employee

"Just try it and we will see how it goes, it's supposed to work great and really make things better" ~ Boss

A few days later....

"This doesn't work, I think it's broken, maybe we should go back to the old way" ~ Employee


Hmmm.... anyone else seeing my point here?  The employee has no intention of using the new thing so they claim it doesn't work.  Most bosses will honestly tell you to keep trying and will even help you learn to use the new thing.  If a boss just said "okay we will change this because you say it doesn't work", that would be a crappy boss.

Not that I'm saying this is a crappy mom, in fact, I think she's a great mom.  I just think she's a bit misguided and isn't aware of the impact of changing things because her child says so.  Granted, I will bet this child had no idea things would happen this way, but still, she now knows that if she says something isn't working, it will change (though maybe not always in the way she wants it to).

I could be way off base and I certainly haven't read all the books on child raising that are out there.  Hell, I live by the best rule of child raising in the world: If you can get the kids out there in the world without them getting returned defective, then you've done your job (thank you Roseanne).

Oh well, live and learn and hopefully raise a genius humanitarian billionaire :)  

Until next time