children personal possessions being taken away

[McHappyPants2012]

why do parents, teacher and other adult take items away from children as punishment.

my oldest is 6 so i am asking what it achieves

I would never go down the "disappointed mother" route, it's too emotional.

I have taken items away from the DCs as a consequence of their actions. EG, like someone else, we caught DS playing on his DSi one night at 11pm, when he should have long been asleep. And this was AFTER we had already had the talk that DSis are not taken up to bed. So, as he had ignored our rule, we took the DSi from him, to remove temptation, and he wasn't allowed to have it back for 2 days.

We also pointed out to him that if we caught him doing this again, it would be removed for a week. He did it again, it was removed for a week, and he hasn't repeated this.

We needed to do this, as I had begun to notice that he was waking up groggy and very irritable, which is very unlike him. He had been hiding the DS under his pillow whenever he'd heard us coming upstairs. He sleeps much better now.

Seems to me like examples here of taking things away is mostly NOT punitive but to motivate (to stop unwanted behaviour) or for child's own good. It's even quite consistent with UP, e.g.:

• You're not allowed to hit your sibling with that.
• It causes problems if you stay up too late playing with that.
• You're not allowed to destroy that.
• Playing computer games makes your behaviour worse, so not allowed for a spell.
• That's bad for your teeth & you are getting too many cavities. etc.

Totally fine as a form of discipline. If a child misbehaves than it s perfectly reasonable to remove toys they lik to she them that tree are consequences to their behaviour.

I found punishments like time out to be totally ineffective with my dd who is now 6yo and also exhausting and a pita picking her up and putting her back a million times!!! Much more effective to give her a clear warning, try and be reasonable and if still not getting behavior that I would like to confiscate her lego or similar.

Usually I keep it until I see a bit improvement in behavior and tbh I normally only have to do this once or twice a year!! The threat is enough to make dd reconsider her options

My one is when two children are gighting over a toy i take the toy and none of them ave it the next toy they
play together

But it depends on the chikd my ds hates having things taken and will do nything to have his e reader ( loves books )

Some children has no effect

All very good points, perhaps I should start doing it

I suppose I work on the principle of the punishment fitting the crime, ie that the consequences need dealing with.

Another example. DS deliberately spilt something on the floor last year. I made him clean it up. Action > consequence.

Then, we had a talk about why he had spilt the item. He'd been grumpy about something to do with school. But by expecting him to clear his mess up, I was showing him the boundaries he needed to work to and making it clear I wouldn't accept that kind of behaviour. He didn't do it again.

I don't believe in smacking, except as an absolute last resort in extreme circumstances, and have never needed to smack yet. I prefer to make the DCs aware of consequences for their actions, and making the DCs deal with those consequences often gets the message home more meaningfully than me just talking to them ever could.