Hypothetical: Eleven year old boy damages things when punished. What to do?

Get him into counseling ASAP. That goes way beyond appropriate acting out of anger. Proof isn’t the issue. Anger management and/or diagnosis is.

This is extreme “change back” behavior. It’s part and parcel of patterns of thinking and behavior that are personality disordered. He needs a therapeutic program that is going to teach him new skills for handling strong emotion…and not just anger. Persons that develop these patterns have great difficulty managing ALL kinds of intense emotion appropriately…so even feelings of love towards an object of affection could become problematic if and when he doesn’t get his way. I would recommend a cognitive/behavioral program that includes Dialectical Behavioral treatment groups along with a DBT trained therapist. This modality not only teaches Emotion regulation but also Distress tolerance and Interpersonal skills within a framework of Mindfulness. The skills are proven as highly effective in altering dysfunctional thinking and behaviors.
It should also be noted that punishment models are the least effective models for shaping behavior although in some cases adversives to need to be added to move people in the desired direction of change.

Not enough info to offer any real comments as so much could be and probably is going on in his life that he is acting out against. I have real good success with positive reinforcement giving a child the confidence they need to navigate their overwhelming little lives. Reinforce the good and minimize or ignore the bad and they will most certainly appreciate good positive attention over yelling and punishments.

Great answers! I wonder how many “old folks” would say they could stop this behavior quickly with a tree branch? Is that solution politically incorrect?

I would be absolutely shocked if my 11 year-old did this and there is is no doubt I would get him in to see a counselor post haste!

I’d damage things. the tv, the playstation, the mobile phones, maybe drag all the beds outside and burn them. and i would not replace them. until he gets the message that if you brake your own things then you are an idiot and need to stop.

Leave him tied to a tree naked all night.

Okay…counseling would be the best option to get to the root of his troublemaking.

Shut him in the oven gas mark 6…...Only kidding! Counselling is the only course of action as has been said.

That child needs some serious counseling. This is why I support spanking. Sometimes spanking is a just punishment for certain types of disbehavior. If parents don’t have control over their kids then they are unfit parents. Sometimes a spanking ,NOT A BEATING, is appropriate.

**** I’m sorry; I meant the parents cannot prove the damage. What if they never saw him doing it? You can’t spank a child with no prove at all, right?? But the parent starts noticing various things are damaged.

@Aster yeah you gotta have proof. You can’t even ground a child without proof.

Make an appointment with a family /adolescent counselor to find out
the cause of his behavior.

I would issue some VERY uncomfortable discipline.

Such behavior from a child is a sure sign of terrible problems that will only get worse unless effectively remedied.

I would also look very closely into his home life, if I had the opportunity to. That kind of behavior is learned.

@Dutchess_III that is true kids in their formative years are like a sponge and they tend to act negatively in a negative household.

You know, another thing could be that they never stopped him from reacting violently when he was young and he could be controlled. Maybe he has “nice” parents who simply spoiled him rotten.

I’d send him away to one of those “bad kid” camps back East where the kids are re socialized from the toes up amongst their own. Having to outwit, tolerate and understand your own kind is a punishment and learning experience. Oh wait, that’s kind of like the prison system. Oops.

One thing I want to point out.

From a behavioral standpoint, “punishment” only applies to a stimulus which, when introduced after a behavior, reduces the frequency of the behavior. If you “punish” a kid for being destructive and he becomes more destructive, what you are doing is not punishment.

And no, beating or spanking or whatever you wish to call still more physically abusive behavior is neither appropriate nor effective in such situations. Plenty of research has shown this.

I agree with getting counseling- making sure it’s from a certified behavioral therapist.

@Dutchess_III you are correct. A child needs discipline. A spoiled child who isnt punished for violent tendencies will stay violent and will get worse. I would hate to see how this kid would behave as a teenager. Adulthood doesn’t look bright either.

@Mikewlf337

“A spoiled child who isnt punished for violent tendencies will stay violent and will get worse.”

So you “punish” a violent child with more physical violence? And how well can you document that that works? (I am not asking for your opinion or anecdotes, but actual researched documentation.)

Here, in reality, is what the biggest meta-study of spanking found
(CP in the quote=“corporal punishment”)
———-
* Immediate Compliance – She found that CP is associated with increased immediate compliance.
* Moral Internalization – She found that CP decreases internalization of moral rules. This is concerning in that parents are more likely to use corporal punishment when they believe the child is at fault for some misbehavior. Thus, using a method that decreases moral internalization to respond to a failure to adhere to internal rules the child should have known is likely to perpetuate the problem.
* Aggression – She found that CP is associated with increased aggression. This is especially troublesome, she notes, in that parents are more likely to use aggression to stop aggression. However, one study showed that use of corporal punishment to halt aggression increased risk for aggressive behaviors by 50%, regardless of whether the parent or the teacher rated the child’s behavior. Use of aggression after being physically punished for aggressive behavior is likely to be seen as an escalation of misbehavior, which was also associated with greater use of corporal punishment. Thus, corporal punishment is likely to perpetuate the problem.
* Antisocial Behaviors – She found that CP is associated with increased antisocial behaviors. This was found most strongly for boys, and for children between the ages of 10 and 12. This is also troublesome as boys were more likely to be spanked, and if spanking increases antisocial behaviors, spanking to stop them is likely to perpetuate the problem. Gershoff in fact did find that CP is associated with increased risk of adult criminal behavior.
* Quality of Parent-Child Relationship – She found that CP is associated with decreased quality of the parent-child relationship. This is more troublesome because most spankings happen between 5:00PM and bedtime, which comprises the majority of parent-child time together for most children. Spankings were also more likely to happen if the child’s misbehavior placed them at some risk for harm, and protecting the child is part of the parent-child relationship. This is also more troublesome, as spanking can lead children to think that aggression is common in relationships with loved ones. Gershoff in fact did find that CP is associated with increased risk of victimization from abusive relationships in adulthood.
* Mental Health – She found that CP is associated with decreased mental health outcomes. This is concerning, as children ages 5 to 8 are most at risk for severe corporal punishment, ages at which significant emotional, social, and cognitive development happens.
* Adult Abusive Behavior – She found that CP is associated with increased adult abusive behavior. She reports studies have shown that ⅔s of abusive parent-child incidents begin as an effort to discipline the child and “teach them a lesson.” If this means that adult antisocial behavior is more likely after being spanked as a child, given that other research shows antisocial parents are at greater risk to abuse children, then this could mean that spanking one’s child may increase the risk of abuse for one’s grandchildren.
———-

@Mikewlf337 Yeah…he’ll end up in jail for life eventually.

@crisw I think the big point is…it’s a bit too late now. They should have started taking action, whatever it would have been, 8 years ago.

@Dutchess_III

While they should have taken action then, violence now will not stop the problem. Appropriate behavioral intervention might. At our schools, I see the power of behavioral modification on a daily basis- kids who have been kicked out of their school districts becoming useful and productive citizens. Behavioral modification and effective teaching work. Violence doesn’t.

Counseling is the way I would go, immediately. If he is this destructive at 11, I hate to think about the behavior at 16 and upwards.

This is not the time for a swat on the bottom, this calls for serious professional help.

@crisw I was spanked when I was bad as was most of people I grew up with. Spanking is not violence. It’s spanking not a beating. A mother or father spanking the rear end of a misbehaving child is ok depending on the situation. An open palm spanking on the behind isn’t torture and doesn’t harm the child. It hurts enough just to be unpleasant. Some kids today are so disrespectful to their parents that they cuss at them and even punch them in the face and most cases came from lenient parents who were unwilling to discipline their children. I have seen kids laugh while in “time out”. That means that they aren’t being punished. It means they don’t care. Spanking was common in every home back in the day. Even schools had corporal punishment. It set them straight. You didn’t have the crap in schools back then that you do now. Funny thing that now that spanking is becoming less popular that kids are becoming more unruly. Parents have become weak and want to be the cool parent rather than be a true parent. I’m not saying beat the child. I’m saying spanking and there is a difference.

@Mikewlf337

I did ask for actual research on your position, not anecdotes or opinion. Do you have any?

@Mikewlf337 GA Here! Here! or is it hear, hear? Well done, at any rate.

@Aster

May I ask why you are supporting the unresearched, emotional position rather than the factual one?

“You didn’t have the crap in schools back then that you do now. Funny thing that now that spanking is becoming less popular that kids are becoming more unruly. Parents have become weak and want to be the cool parent rather than be a true parent.” Beau-ti-ful. Where are the strong fathers?
Or, where are the fathers, period? There is little leadership, sparse respect, parents are afraid of their children. “Let us get him an Ipad; then he’ll be good.” It is all so pathetic.

@crisw I am not a believer in “research” anymore. It’s all slanted, biased, paid for. But, carry on…

@Aster

“I am not a believer in “research” anymore. It’s all slanted, biased, paid for.”

So, when someone builds a car, you want them to use components that just look nice in a crash rather than those shown in crash testing to be safe? You use a 256K computer from the ‘80s with a modem because research couldn’t possibly make better computers? I don’t imagine you have a cell phone, because research couldn’t possibly have produced a better phone than a rotary dial- heck, I guess we should still be using the telegraph! And I imagine your house is still heated with a fireplace rather than efficient central heating? Really?

When it comes to dealing with troubled children, I think I’ll listen to the experts who work to help such children every single day of their lives by finding the most effective, humane means to do so.

@crisw yeah you do that ::rolls eyes::

@Mikewlf337

I most certainly will keep “doing that”. I have been working for the same school for 22 years. I have seen hundreds of kids who were discarded by their school districts for fighting, destructive behavior, antisocial behavior, etc. come through our doors and leave with high school diplomas, jobs, friends, and productive lives. We do not change their lives with emotion or violence., We change them through effective teaching based on researched practice.

Should the viewpoints of you and your kind prevail, giving these kids “what for” instead of what they need, these kids would be in jail or worse. They would be costing taxpayer dollars instead of being productive taxpayers themselves. Punishment may sometimes teach kids what not to do, but it can never teach them what they should do. Effective teaching can.

So yes, I will go on dong what I am doing. Because it works- and that can be proven.

@ that’s just great. You should note that most kids are not social rejects kicked out of school because they couldn’t behave properly. Most of the people I know were spanked if they did something that warrented it. They had parents who disciplined them but still loved them. You can’t say they didn’t have loving parents because you don’t know them like I do. People like you consider a tap on the hand the same as a punch in the face. The viewpoints of me and my kind have prevailed in the past. People turned out just fine and kids respected their parents and grew up just fine. I have seen what happens to kids with lenient parents. They turn into undisciplined garbage with no respect for anyone. Do things that are horrible because they weren’t taught right from wrong. When I was a kid if I said a dirty word I was tapped on the mouth NOT SLAPPED. If I did something bad enough to warrrent a spanking I was spanked NOT BEATEN. Those kids in the schools you work for more than likely had bad parents who either did not punish their kids for being unruly or beat the living hell out of them for farting in the wrong direction. I’m talking about normal kids from normal families. I have seen kids treat their lenient parents like crap because they didn’t respect them. The parents wanted to be cool and be their freinds. You can’t be a mother/father and friend at the same time.

@Mikewlf337

Again, anecdotes prove nothing. The question isn’t whether or not all children who are hit by their parents are harmed. Obviously, that isn’t the case. It’s whether hitting children is the most effective way of accomplishing a goal. And, as I pointed out above, the research shows that it is not. Unless you can provide your own cites to research that supports your point of view, all that you really have are stories.

Also, you ask me not to make assumptions, yet you make a great many about the kids at the school where I work as well as their parents. I suggest you spend some time on the website I provided and learn something about our students.

@crisw That’s alright. I’ll hold strong to my beliefs and you can keep on disagreeing with them. I have more important things to do than scour the internet for “research”. I really don’t care about your school or your students. I was talking about unruly kids and how sometimes spanking is justified. I am not going to change my views just because you think I should. You can keep arguing with me and keep trying to change my views which you disagree with and that is something you will fail at no matter how long and hard you try.

I saw something on TV yesterday which brought this question to mind. The son was about 9 years old and had the role of Romeo in the play , R & J. He comes home from practice one night super upset, screaming he’s not going to be in the play. He slams off into his room. Mom follows him in to find out what’s up. Eventually she learns that he’d just learned he had to kiss Juliet! But the whole time he’s screaming at her, telling her how it’s going to be. He was totally enraged…and Mom just kept trying to quietly reason with him. Me…I’d’ve nipped it in the bud at the first yell. I would have put steel in my voice and told him, in no uncertain terms, that he will NOT scream at me like that, period. That he will treat me with the same respect that I treat him with. I would have brought it under control, instantly
Well, that’s not how this script went down. He’s just screaming and screaming at his mother. Dad walks into the room and takes over. Instantly the kid calms down, stops screaming, becomes very respectful and dad saves the day. Dad didn’t even have to say anything. Didn’t chastise the kid at all, for anything. I guarantee you my dad would have gone through the roof and come down square on top of me if I’d yelled at my mother like that.
What the hell kind of a message is that sending? And that’s where it starts…by allowing certain behaviors to continue unchecked. And that is how good parents can crank out horrible kids.