What’s a sufficient punishment?

[Annoy]

For an 11yr old and a 7yr old who decided to put lego on the glass door of a wood burner and completely intoxicate the living spaces of the house? Not sure whether the glass is damaged yet as too hot to clean.

They’re currently in their rooms thinking about what they did 🙄

@RandomMess

No lecturing

Get them to do a project on fire hazards in the home

That’s a good idea!

We’ve had a good chat with them and they realise how stupid they were.

They will be cleaning the fire when it’s cooled... hopefully there’s no lasting damage.

Kids do do stupid things, it’s mad sometimes what’s going through their heads!

I’m amazed sometimes at what my kids get up to, the combination of curiosity and lack of awareness is a heady mix sometimes. Now they know not to do it, cleaning up their mess is a good natural consequence as is them using pocket money/birthday money paying for a new glass if it doesn’t clean properly. Hopefully they’ll think twice in future.

One of my friends, as a child, decided to strike some matches left on the mantlepiece. She knew she wasn’t meant to, but had seen others do it. Duly lit the match. But then didn’t know how to put it out, so just dropped it out of sight behind the sofa. Oops.

@Saz12 wow!

Ds3was a bit of a firebug. When he was about 5, dh found him sitting innocently on his bed, studiously ignoring the gentle pall of smoke on the ceiling of his room. Dh found some paper smouldering down the back of his computer, right by the curtain, and put it out before any damage was done.

Turns out ds3 had experimented to see what happens when you stuff crumpled paper into a lampshade, by the lit bulb. Turns out it catches fire (who’d have guessed), and, hearing dh coming upstairs he’d panicked and thrown the paper down the back of his desk, and had then denied any knowledge of smoke in his room.

He has grown up into a sensible and safe (and unsinged) young man.

Have a look at chemistry experiments on line. If they are curious direct their interest towards real experiments. And then the fire safety stuff and if you want to be really cruel, some chemistry tome about the melting point of plastic and how heat vaporizes chemicals

I'd talk to them about why it was stupid and dangerous, and I'd expect them to make an attempt to clean the mess, but I wouldn't do anything else.