After school detention is a thing now?

[PennyWhistleSweet]

My 11 yr old yr 7 son has been issued an after school detention for disrespecting a new teacher.

We never had them at my high school and wanted to know what you all thought of them.

Myself, I'm currently at whits end with him calling me a fucking bitch and pushing me etc (another thread for another day) so I'm hoping this might give him a bit of a shock.

Short temper is still verbal abuse. I presume he shouts. That can be really scary and unpleasant. If I had a partner with a “short fuse” our relationship would be over and I’d never bring kids into the mix.

No judgement from me but be aware about who your DS follows on YouTube. My DS (Yr 6) likes to listen to Gamers and I’ve overheard swearing and misogynistic language used. DS hasn’t a phone so YouTube is played through our TV.

So many children got one earlier, still have this access. It's a minefield. I don't think posters acting like I'm the first parent to get stuff wrong in thos area is realistic or helpful.

My children (one of whom has ADHD) were always told that having a phone was a privilege that could be revoked at any time. They didn't get smartphones until they were 14 anyway.

Remove his phone. Tell him he can earn it back when his behavior at school and towards you improves consistently.

OP, you seen very naïve about the risks to children of this age from interacting online.

Does he go on Roblox?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/apr/14/risks-children-roblox-deeply-disturbing-researchers

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/apr/14/parents-describe-children-roblox-problems

I agree with this. DD is nearly 14 and her phone is given to us at 8pm and she doesn’t get it again until she leaves the house for school. I check her WhatsApp at random. It can be done.

@PennyWhistleSweet I was a teacher for 25 years, ( and a parent for longer) and I wouldn’t like to be a parent or a teacher in this day and age. Far, far harder than I ever had.
If his behaviour has changed suddenly there’s a reason. Being bullied in school?
Has he got new friends he’s been spending a lot of time with?
What is different about this teacher?

I wouldn't assume he is immune to the incel influence because of his age. The sudden change as he approaches puberty may suggest this is relevant. How are friends talking about women, and older boys around him? Is he playing with older players online? His behaviour sounds extreme, stressful to live with and therefore difficult to manage, but he's clearly struggling with something. Can you get some support from CAMHS / pastoral team at school? At the same time as getting him some help, I'd still carry on being very firm with boundaries. In my book a disrespectful response to parental discipline is a reason for increasing the severity of consequences, not a reason to back off. Could you and your DH insist that, in order to begin to restore access to privileges he has to sit down with you and give a full account of the incident at school, with your DH modelling respect for you as the lead parent in this conversation? Your son's language about a (probably?) female teacher may give you insight into his thinking, and you also need to understand what he is finding difficult.

I'm not generally a fan of after school detentions because of the wider impact, but in this case I think you need to show 100% support for the school and see if they can also support you.

Being physically abused by your child is horribly difficult to manage, but not as uncommon as you might think. Don't feel you have to deal with this on your own x

His change in behaviour has coincided with his access to the internet via his phone.

It's not rocket science.

He is copying his dad's aggressiveness.

Again, not rocket science.

my dd 13 yrs school..they start with break detentions then if not doing the job they issue after school ones on the same day for an hour.

They've always been a thing. Maybe you didn't have them at your school, but some schools have always had them. I was at secondary school in the 80s and 90s and we had them. My nieces and nephews had them in the 2000s/2010s too.

I think they're a perfectly valid punishment. Athough we had a PE teacher whose detention tactic was to make you spend the the hour (or two hours, I can't remember now) doing some work from a textbook that was aimed at levels way above yours, eg if you were in Yr7 she'd give you some work from a textbook for Yr11 or something. Which kind of backfired on her with me, because as my PE teacher she had no idea where I was at academically and therefore gave me a Yr11 English test to do, unaware that English was very much my thing. I finished it in about 20 minutes and asked if she had any more for me to do. She didn't so I just read a book until I was allowed to go. If she'd had a clue about anything other than how shit I was at netball, she'd have been canny and given me some maths.

Secondary teachers are really quite limited in the consequences they can give children for poor behaviour.

I don't disagree with after school detentions as long as they are proportionate (e.g. for more serious offenses or after they have had a certain number of lunchtime ones).

Presumably this is in the school's behaviour policy which you signed up to when he started at the school. They should give adequate notice for you to arrange transport home, but parents shouldn't be allowed to simply refuse.

When I was at school nobody really cared about lunchtime detentions, they lasted about 25 minutes (because you still had to have time to eat lunch), and weren't a particularly effective deterrent. After school ones are more impactful.

However, year 7's could only be given lunchtime ones. After school ones kicked in from year 8. I think that's quite good because year 7's have a lot on their plate getting used to a whole new school. But different schools are different and ultimately you have to respect their policies.

Oh, absolutely. Our kids phones were always plugged in in the living room overnight, just as ours are. And the only time they were allowed to take them into their rooms was when they needed privacy to make an actual phone call. (Yes, there was some trust involved there that this was what they were actually doing, but it was a rare occurrence.) Similarly, their laptops lived in the common areas in the house and homework was done at the dining room table not in their rooms.
They are now in their early to mid 20's and have a very healthy relationship with technology. Both often prefer to read books rather than go online.

They've always been a thing as far as I'm aware, and I started school in the early 90s. But the situations in which they're meted out has changed and they certainly seem more frequent now than when I was younger. When I was a teenager, you had to have done something pretty bad to get an after school detention (lunchtime ones were relatively common though).

Mine isn't plugged in downstairs overnight, it's by my bed. Fire brigade recommends it. 👍

God I don’t know why but hearing how your son speaks to you I was NOT expecting to hear you have a husband. He should be addressing your son’s behaviour and how he speaks to you.

In the unlikely event that there is a fire in my house and it's bad enough that I can't get from my bedroom to my living room (a matter of a handful of steps and both on the ground floor) to grab my phone before getting out of the house, I'll run next door to call the fire department instead of using my phone. This is not something I lose sleep over.

Oh yeah because only children of single mums misbehave. Anyway sounds like this DH has anger issues.

Detentions have always been a thing

Your child sounds feral

They were a thing when I was in school in the 90s.
The only time I had one was when the whole class did. Someone stole a pair of scissors and didn't own up, so the teacher put the whole class in detention. I was very good in school, and the teacher even apologised to me for having to make me stay behind too.

My brother though... he was always in detention for being a gobby shite.

Inconveniencing parents may be the only way to get some of them care enough to possibly be prodded into action.

It's a massive stretch!
It's not PDA it's called parents who don't discipline as a team and keep excusing their child's bad behaviour!

After school detention was a thing when I was in high school in the 90s. I personally don't agree with them. I think its quite dangerous letting a young child make their way home on their own potentially in the dark etc. after all of their friends / school buses have left. I do get that they shouldn't misbehave etc. and they wouldn't get a detention but I don't think its always justified and there are other punishments such as lunch time / break time detention etc.

What does it matter what people think of after school detentions in here? You have some big problems by the sounds of it, year 7 and like this already, and timing of a detention is the least of them. Sounds like he needs some major discipline and needs to be properly punished. You allow him to speak to you like that, as well as a teacher who I assume is also female? What exactly are you teaching him … that this is an acceptable way to treat women? What’s his dad doing about it?? Take away the electronics for a start and go from there …

After school detentions have always been a thing, I was at school same years as you and we had break/lunch and after school detentions. You probably didn't know about them because you never behaved badly enough to get one.