If your child gets a detention at school, do you punish at home too?

It depends. If its for defiance or rudeness towards the teacher, then absolutely yes. Not tolerated at all.

However, if its forgetting stuff, being a bit late etc, then the detention is punishment enough.

We've always been clear on the distinction.

My daughter has had a few (Y7) mostly for messing around in class, or being rude to teachers. I got called in a couple of times and fully supported the teacher and the next day, took her phone away for a week.

Last year, some older boys - one in particular targeted her with racist bullying. School didn't do anything, as nobody had seen anything. He used to corner her somewhere quiet and kicked her a few times.

A bruise wasn't enough, as no witnesses, so they treated it as he said / she said.

He got her one day and she punched him.in the mouth, he fell down half a dozen steps, banged his head, bloody lip etc. I had to go in and they wanted to put her on report (get a card filled every lesson for a week). They wanted her to apologise.

I told them that I didn't support the detention, but she would do it. I said that she wouldn't be apologising to a racist bully and that if they gave her a report card, I'd rip it up, rather than sign it.

I agreed that punching him was technically wrong and pointed out that he'd been kicking her and it was self defence.

I suppose that, because I'd supported the school previously, they accepted that I take her behaviour seriously, so they agreed to just a detention.

That makes no sense.
What happens at home has nothing to do with the school (unless safeguarding issues), but what happens at school absolutely does have something to do with home.

If the detentions are frequent, I would talk to the SENCO and child together to understand why they are acting out, can they control it, what can be done to help. Why it matters etc
Sitting still and absorbing information for 5+ hours is really challenging for some children and so they cannot easily control themselves or focus throughout the school day.

Because they are all addicted to their phones so that's a punishment they want to avoid at all costs.

My DS2 hates the ones "messing around" at break. To you your son might be "a nice kid, just likes to be a bit of a clown" but to other students him and his friends might be insufferable. My DS2 tells me about 3 boys in his class who constantly pushes people around in the corridors, squirts water at others at lunch and are just generally a pain to be around even if there is no straight forward bullying of anyone there is antisocial behaviour going on and it's disruptive. Surely you don't think the detentions are only for missed homework and shirt not tucked in?

I would talk to his teacher to find out more and definitely take away the phone for atleast 24 h each time because 1. It will teach him that behaviour has consequences and 2. It won't do him any harm to he without his phone, quite the contrary.

If it was that startling post the other day about a child leading a gang of older children to batter a younger child then… yes.

if it was being late or the odd things I see posted of schools in England around uniform then no. Handled by the people it’s affecting and that’s the end of that

Good on you. The old phone trick!

The reprimands for not doing homework is the area that you can influence. Make it a rule that there are no screens and no out door play until homework is done every night.
We made it a rule that there was no home work to be done on the weekends until age 15 too. That really made our kids sort their time out and organise themselves for the week.

Your child is not that fussed to abide rules.
If he improves with the homework due to your insistance he learns that it is correct to follow instructions from school - his parents agree on that front. He needs to respect his teachers' reasonable requests. He is not more special than all the other kids. Don't overlook him being lazy or he will grow up feeling entitled to break rules.

Well if punishment at school is not working why would more punishment make a difference?

In our school detentions are at lunch time and they're not reported. I think DD had 1 ( talking in class) and ds had 2, one for hitting the kid who spent all morning winding him up. Not even sure what the other one was for.

Spoke to both kids about respect, behaviour and how others see them. No punishment.

Bullying, initiating violence stealing would result in withdrawal of privileges at home.

Well it seems that the punishment of no phone has made him realise he better buck his ideas up so I'd do it again every time he gets a detention

No I wouldn’t punish at home for the things you describe.

Bullying, swearing at teachers I would.

Oh God that must have been horrible for you.

A one off detention for forgetting items or issues with uniform I wouldn’t say much other than “don’t forget again” and would expect detention to be enough.

Multiple detentions for behaviour is different - I would have to sit down with my child and get to the bottom of what’s going on.

What are the detentions for? If it's something stupid like writing in the wrong colour pen, I'd not even mention it at home and just leave it. I wouldn't undermine the school even if I disagreed with the rule, but it's not a problem for me.

If it was something really serious like disrupting a lesson or bullying, I'd punish at home because it's not just a school rule they've broken, they've broken the acceptable standards of how I expect them to behave.

No, I usually wouldn't, or I'd at least sit down and talk about what happened. However, detentions are incredibly rare where we are, same as they were when I was a child. I didn't know anyone who had a detention while I was growing up.

DC got suspended from his private school for "not participating" in a lesson. He was incredibly dysregulated at that point and had just tried to find a quiet spot to calm down. Completely out of proportion and unhelpful.
He's now moved schools and accidentally walked out and went home at the wrong time the other day. They just called me to take him back and there was no drama about it. It was fine. He's feeling much happier now that his teachers are more relaxed.

Depends what for. My kids got detention every now and then. We would talked about it, sometimes they were at fault sometimes they had a teacher throwing their weight around. Usually the latter.

It would depend on what they had got the detention for.

It’s ridiculous my ds was stopped on the way in one morning and screamed at because he was wearing his school shirt and tie and a waterproof jacket and the school insist that they wear a jumper if they wear a jacket - it was warm but raining ?? The teacher was screaming in his face I saw as I’d dropped him off it was appalling. Another time he simply asked a question about the maths work and was shouted at for ‘answering back’???

Ok, just seen your update on him being a clown. I would implement sanctions at home for this because he’s disrupting lessons and making a nuisance of himself.

If my DH said he didn’t want to implement anything at home then I would tell him that he will be in charge of communications with school and will go to parents evening and face the teachers.

We've had to start punishing at home as the detentions are no longer a punishment to my son. He gets them constantly - at least one a week. He goes to homework club three times a week anyway, so if a detention is on one of those days hes just sat in a different room to work!

We've introduced a 'no tech' rule on days he gets a correction. It's having mixed results.

This. I think I differentiated by whether DH and I would have a detention for it in the 80s. Any bad behaviour - yes, they would be in big trouble with us.
But these ridiculous 2020s detentions for forgetting your ruler and not having a new glue stick - no.

In the 80s you had to use a scabby old ruler from the teacher’s desk, or, far worse, wear the smelly old PE kit from the box in the sports hall. That was incentive enough for most of us.