Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with punishment

How far is enough?

wandering steve — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 07:34:55 -0800

My little brother just got busted for smoking pot. Help me deal with a text message that just came in on his phone. So, my little brother (a high school senior) was busted by my parents for smoking pot and, what I consider worse, buying alchohol for parties on a fake id. The parents have pretty much put him on lock-down: he can't drive, go out, use the computer w/o their knowledge, or use his cell phone. Since I've just gotten back from the Peace Corps and am penniless and living at home for a moment, I "inherited" his cell phone.

This morning, after I dropped him off at school (both parents happen to be out for most of the day), he got a text from a couple of girls at school asking him to buy alchohol for them.

So, hivemind, what do I do with this? I don't want to undermine the punishment -- it's my parents' job to raise him, and I do think he needs some degree of punishment, anyway -- but if this disappears, maybe it spares everyone some grief.

GRAND JURY YO!

madmamasmith — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:37:53 -0800

Do all misdemeanor cases get to bypass the grand jury? Is there such a thing as a federal misdemeanor? I know FEDERAL capital offenses must go before a grand jury and each STATE handles this differently, ie NY both sides and a judge, no grand jury. But I am confused on this process...help, test tommorrow!!

How can I get my cat to stop knocking stuff over?

RobertFrost — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:10:51 -0800

My 7 month old cat won't stop knocking over flower vases when we're out of the house. How can I get him to understand that knocking stuff over is bad? He never does it when we're home but when ever we return from being gone for a couple hours, a vase has been knocked over. He only knocks over flowers. I understand that he most likely just wants to play with the flowers but he needs to understand that it's bad. Up until yesterday we were mostly ok with it but yesterday afternoon while I was upstairs and the lady was at work, cat knocked over a completely full vase of water onto 65% of our important documents (lesson learned - flowers stay away from important stuff).

We are first-time cat owners. How can we keep a cat and flowers? Will he grow out of it? Is he acting out some sort of aggression that we should be more receptive to? How can we effectively reprimand him if we often return to a mess that he created possibly hours before? Is there a way to get him to connect our disapproval with his punishment? Do cats even respond to punishment?

Solutions to survive the pain of laser hair removal treatments please!

iamkimiam — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 22:28:12 -0800

What can I do to make laser hair removal treatments more tolerable? I recently started laser hair removal treatments on my legs and bikini line. I prepaid for the treatments and am very interested in completing them...however, my first session was UNBEARABLE. I thought that I had a high pain threshold, but this was a whole different animal. Something about the way the lasers work...it was excruciating. I want to go through with the remaining treatments because I think the results will be worth it, but I'd like to hear about some pain management techniques or topical anesthetics that would be safe to try. My internet searching has been fruitless. Anybody been through this? How did you survive?

Group Procrastination.

user92371 — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 10:23:48 -0800

I am looking for punishment suggestions for a group of procrastinators. Four of us are writing books. We made a pact: first cut by December 31st of this year. Now, the thing is, our (all non-fiction) subjects are disparate, so we don't talk a lot about what we're doing with each other, and we don't really do the pep cheer/support group thing due to the distance between our homes etc. So let's flip that around, and come up with some really painful punishments if any one of us doesn't have a first draft in hand by the end of the year. Two things that were immediately discounted: a public shaming party, because any one of us would end up enjoying it; and monetary shifting, because three of us are slackers and the fourth is a working stiff. No way to balance that out. It has to be the same thing for each of us, and it has to be horrible enough to want to avoid. Tattoos? Etc. I'd like a wide variety of responses so we can go through a list and pick out one or more items we all agree on.

How am I going to make the boy pay?

msali — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 07:29:43 -0800

I need help coming up with a creative punishment for my teenage son. Owing to a glitch in the AT&T/Cingular system, on January 1st, the block against text messaging on my son's phone was disabled. My husband flipped his shit this morning when he discovered that the kid had racked up over US$ 150 in text charges. We have already called Cingular and replaced the block, and we should be getting an abatement on the charge, since the company readily admitted that they were at fault for removing the block in the first place.
Kid's gotta be punished, though. He knows he isn't supposed to be texting, and most of the texts were while he was at school - huge no no. Furthermore, the number of texts was egregious - over 1000!
Now we have to come up with some creative way to punish him, something that goes beyond the "we are taking away your phone until you give us US$ 150". He has a phone so we can keep track of him (which was the point of giving him one in the first place), and he doesn't have a job because school has to be his exclusive priority at this point in his life. He already lost his computer last month for crappy grades, so how can we punish him for this most grievous transgression?
I should also add that corporal punishment has never ever been used, so please don't suggest that I beat him with his phone (although the thought did cross my mind).
Help me punish my kid, mefi!

How do punishments meted out in schools work?

Izzmeister — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 12:23:38 -0800

Help me compile a list of punishments for 1st-4th Grade. I am interested in figuring out what constitutes a "heavy punishment" and what constitutes "lesser punishment" for young school students, say First to fourth grades.

For example:

Harsh Punishment:
Calling parents
Principals office

Less harsh:
Standing outside the classroom door

least harsh:
change seat

but where would a punishment like threatning to send to the principal come in? is that a "light" threat, or is that worse to a child then having to switch seats or stand in the corner?

what other punishments (ecch, i hate that word) are there? where do they fit in? is there any sort of "escalation chart" ut there was to what punishment is warranted for children for a specific misbehaivior?

IRS yippiyuck wants my meager bucks.

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 13:37:51 -0800

IRS-filter: I need a good tax lawyer in San Francisco. When I was 18, I received some awful help with my taxes (not from a professional) that ended up causing a miscalculation in the range of $1k. I've moved around a lot since that time, and was surprised when the IRS recently mailed me with threats. Since then, they've also layered on a good $2000 in penalties and interest. Having no confidence in being able to work this out for myself, I'd like to hire a competent tax attorney to make sure this gets handled properly.

I'm happy to pay what I owe and take my lumps for being a stupid kid who didn't know how to handle money. However, the fees and threats are giving me pause.

Do you know a good tax lawyer in San Francisco? Can you refer them based upon a positive personal experience?

I won't shoot spitwads at Charece.

c:\awesome — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 11:56:33 -0800

Do schools still make children write the same sentence over and over again as a form of punishment (ala Bart Simpson in the opening credits)? I remember having to do this several times as a youngster, but it was always on a piece of paper that I had to turn in - never on a chalkboard. It was a great form of punishment, and a perfect opportunity to improve my penmanship. However, that was 20 years ago...

So, does anyone know if this is still done today?

In the future, will we all be incarcerated?

cosmonaught — Sat, 05 Mar 2005 22:23:10 -0800

Sometime, say within the last 4 years, I read an editorial which answered the question of what accepted practice of our society would be viewed by future generations as morally reprehensible. The editorializer (who I believe was a person of some note) proposed incarceration as punishment for crime as an answer. Does anybody know who this was or where it appeared? I was thinking of it will reading this FPP, but can't remember where I read it. It was probably on the interweb, which means it was likely I caught it through a mefi post. Though it could also have been in something like the Atlantic or Harper's.

speeding ticket questions and concerns

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 15:21:17 -0800

My husband is going to court in Atlanta/Fulton County next week for a speeding ticket. He has an unpaid speeding ticket in another state from two years back, but was able to renew his license here without any problems at all. The primary reason he's going to the court date is because we can't afford to pay the fine before then and they don't accept payments the day of the court date without you appearing in court. I'm scared the judge will somehow see the unpaid speeding ticket and my husband will immediately be thrown in jail. What is the likelihood of this happening? Am I being irrational?

traditional weekly spankings for children

grumblebee — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 14:01:02 -0800

When I was little, my parents used to tell me that "in the olden days," many parents would spank their kids once a week, even though their kids hadn't been naughty. The spanking was supposedly preventative ("you'll get worse than THIS if you misbehave") or predictive ("I don't know WHAT you've done, but I'm sure you've done SOMETHING -- or you WILL do something...")

My question is: is this true? I mean, I know there are (and have been) all sorts of whack-o parents, but was there ever a general philosophy of parenting that advocated weekly spankings? My parents usually brought this up in the context of "you think YOU have it bad, well..." Were they yanking my chain? Is this an urban legend?