If I catch my kids doing what I did at their age, they will be under house arrest until age 18 or until the authorities come to release them, whichever is later.
Time outs were effective behavioral modifications until well into middle school. We do have "zip it for five minutes" still. We try to have our our kids determine appropriate punishments for their own aberrant behavior, have done so for years. Usually we get the benefit of hearing about someone else's situation before discussing/establishing appropriate consequences. Our kids are not stupid and we never call them stupid. They sometimes do stupid things and we refer to those things as stupid things to do. Later it becomes humor
One or the other of us big kids lose it sometimes and blows up. Usually the other is there to rescue the kids from the fallout and we are big enough to know how to apologize...really apologize...when our adult behaviors regress.
We do not carry around past transgressions in a garbage can that gets dumped out every "crisis". Divorces are often related to garbage cans that never get emptied, no need to unwittingly set our children up for that miserable event.
We've got a few 18 months before the first of three heads to college and 5.5 more before the youngest heads off. Lots of room to learn if what we are doing works, so far signs point to yes...we know, despite efforts we may have made, we have been pretty lucky.
edit: All of a sudden, I felt like David Byrne asking "How did I get here?" Isn't this the Audioholics forum???
