I'll try to keep this short and as objective and unbiased as possible.Wife and I don't physically punish our daughter, but we do take away privileges. Currently there's only two things she really cares about: her iPhone/iPad and the television. So when she's punished for something we first take away her phone and tablet ("no devices"). If it becomes a repeat thing or if she earns punishment for something else, she loses TV time as well ("no screens"). This extends to friends' houses; if she goes to a friends' house we tell the parents that she's not allowed any devices or screens as appropriate.Recently Daughter has been missing the bus to school; she's been in school for about three weeks and has missed the bus four times. She misses the bus because she turns off her alarm clock and goes back to sleep. (She is getting between 9-10 hours of sleep every weeknight except Monday night because she has a 4H meeting. On that night she gets between 8-9 hours of sleep.) When she misses the bus, she loses device privileges.This week, she missed the bus on Wednesday morning and on Friday morning. As a consequence she earned "no screens" throughout the weekend.Wife and I are in agreement about all of the above. Here's where the disagreement comes in.Wife is going to be away from this evening until tomorrow night, leaving just Daughter and I together. Wife suggested I reach out to one of Daughter's friend's parents to see if we could all spend Sunday at Six Flags. I pushed back on this and asked why we're rewarding our daughter when she's in the middle of her punishment.Wife's argument is that we only took away devices and TV ("no screens") and not everything. Having "no screens" is different than having "no anything". She thinks I'm being unfair and giving her too much punishment for simple lateness infractions, and I should arrange a Six Flags trip with one of her friends so she's "not stuck at home and bored out of her mind" all weekend (her words).Mu argument is that the Six Flags suggestion only came about after our daughter lost her primary means of entertainment for the weekend. I'm not taking away Six Flags, I'm just not going out of my way to set it up for her now. If I did then we're basically saying, "For being late you're being punished with no screens, but hey, now we can go to Six Flags!" It's sending her the wrong message and effectively is rewarding her for repeatedly being late. And even if the Six Flags trip were planned in advance, if she earned a punishment that would have been the first thing to go. If she went to Six Flags it's not like she'd have any of her devices or TV anyway; instead of "sit home with no devices" it's "go to Six Flags with no devices" and that's really not effective punishment.What does the wisdom of the masses think?EDIT: Daughter is 11 years old. Also, we don't expect other parents to police our child for our punishments. We tell them about screens/devices simply so that if they happen to see our daughter interacting with a screen, they will tell us. Our daughter is usually pretty good about maintaining her punishments that way; she knows that if she's caught breaking punishment while at a friend's house she'll be completely grounded.EDIT 2: Wife and I have been reading and responding to the replies together. We've decided, to simplify and clarify things, we're going to change "no screens" and "no devices" to flat-out grounding so there's no ambiguity. I've also told her that if she wants to take Daughter to Six Flags tomorrow, she's welcome to do so.Thanks all for your opinions. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2OjG0d4
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