Punishment and… crime?

Punishment and… crime?

Posted on June 7th, 2019 by Scott Warnock

We are not strict parents. My boys are the only ones home now, and while I don’t think I should be their best bud, we have an easy, pleasant rapport. However, I sometimes think my reluctance to disrupt that rapport has prevented me from laying down the hammer.

In the big picture, the boys do fine in school. My wife and I don’t, as I reported a few years ago, check the grades “portal” much. We don’t check homework every night. I feel a kinship with their teachers and probably get at my most angry when I think my kids aren’t working in their classes, mainly because I think it’s disrespectful to their teachers. And, sure, I try to push and motivate my children, but I also believe they have to demonstrate their own volition or they’ll never get anywhere in the world.

Besides, what’s all this about punishment? Being a parent has made me question punishment routines and purposes. Darn, it’s made me question the whole judicial system.

Let’s take the belt. You know people who talk about “getting the belt” when they were kids? (Maybe you were one of them.) Almost all of them describe the belt in an ongoing way. So, as a punishment to shape behavior change, it appears the belt didn’t work.

Now, onto my youngest and his school performance. In the scale of life, again, he does fine. But at times, we get an email warning. It’s especially maddeningly when I get a notice from a teacher that he has, say, not done his homework when just the night before he said he didn’t have homework.

My guy always has an explanation/rationalization for these slip-ups. It normally involves work that he has done not being reported in the portal or some other nonsense. To make it worse, this tends to occur in a class that might rhyme with ping-fish and that might be connected to what his father does for a living. His ability to weave a tale of himself as besieged by the vagaries of digital grades or perhaps a conspiracy of the whole educational establishment is often quite impressive.

So I contemplate punishment. “That,” I think, “will make him improve his grades!” But really, in my frustration, because that’s what I always feel at those times, is that I’m doing? Or am I asserting that I’m the big boss?: I can make the big statement of taking away his phone, and that will be our relationship.

Recently, when I got yet another email warning that he then tried to flim-flam his way out of, I decided I was going to do it. He was going to be banned from the phone.

As I marched upstairs, I thought about the fact that this child has given me almost no problems. He has high aspirations for his life. He has one blah grade. Personal weakness of mine or not, as I talked with him, I realized I’m not going to do this.

I decided/rationalized that he was responsible for his own schoolwork, and that was that. Maybe I’m weak, but I didn’t want to turn this into an exhibition of power.

So I left the whole thing and went to watch an NBA game. Then a week later, I realized I hadn’t received an email warning. I asked him, and he said nonchalantly that he had raised the grade. I don’t know whether he had pride in the accomplishment or not, but it was his grade, not mine. Without external threat, he raised it.

As we played a game of cards later, I wondered. Could I be enjoying my time with a teenager–I mean, he is a teenager!–who saw me as the Punisher? If our relationship was prisoner and guard, would a B+ in English be worth it?

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Scott Warnock

Scott Warnock is a writer and teacher who lives in South Jersey. He is a professor of English at Drexel University, where he is also the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education in the College of Arts and Sciences. Father of three and husband of one, Scott is president of a local high school education foundation and spent many years coaching youth sports.