How would you react to this?

[bollocksontheinternet]

If your twelve year old was put on after school detention for forgetting his cooking ingredients? Detention one hour after school.

Forgetting things occasionally isn't the same as deliberately being naughty, it just happens and in the real world you deal with it by adapting the situation.

I agree very much with this. And think there's more benefit in learning to be flexible than in punishing. I get that it must be frustrating for teachers if a child has forgotten something, and I'm sure most of them apply the sanctions available reasonably. But not all. And it's equally frustrating not to be able to challenge that: a detention can be very demoralising for a child who strives to be good and organised.

That must have been very hard to handle as a child, OP.

We just thought it was normal.

It's just now I've grown up I realise it really wasn't!

How old are you bollocks? I just ask because I struggled a lot with that recognition that things I'd assumed were normal really, really weren't when I was in my 20s. I can only imagine that being a parent would really intensify that sense of a lack of compass.