OK help needed to devise a suitable punishment for my 3 yr old!

[mummyhill]

He appears to quite intelligent!

Do I laugh, cry or screech at the little angel and what form of punishment will work. Time out is water off a ducks back, a telling off is forgotten 2 mins later.

Mother in law was quite concerned as she has been trying to get hold of us by phone last night and this morning! I assured her it hadn't rung this end and then discovered why. My little angel kept himself quite busy the other day whilst mummy was making lunch! He climbed on my office chair to reach the stationary basket and removed the scissors. He then proceeded to cut every cable he could get at down the side of the soffa and then pushed the cables back so they looked like normal and put the scissors away!

I now need to replace my home phone two mobile chargers and the charger for the dust buster!

FIL was more worried that he could of electrocuted himself than anything else. I was annoyed but also vaguely impressed by the intelligence this must of taken! Mother inb law was shocked that he could be so naughty and when I phoned my mum to ask to borrow her spare phone and explained why she laughed!

Any one think of a suitable punishment? I told him that what he had done was naughty and I waved him off telling him to be very good for nanny this morning and even better for daddy this afternoon whilst I am at work!

I think he needs to learn that there are consequences for his actions.
take something off him, like a fvourite toy, and if he does something else, take something else off him.
You know your child best, so find something that will hit him where it hurts (not literally), also, you need to explain why you are doing what you are doing, and rub it in at every opportunity as in " it's such a shame you can't play with XYZ but I have taken it away because you cut all the wires"
Then tell him how big boys don't do silly things like that and you know he is a big boy, so he won't do it again.
Keep calm, it gets to them more if you don't shout.
Remember that kids can't be good all the time, that is how they learn, by making mistakes, it's all a learning curve, as they say.

Thanks purple. I thought maybe no telly for the rest of today maybe tell a little white lie that it won't work because all the cables were cut!

perfect!!
my DS is now 19 and still remembers when I took his playstation controllers away from him. Left him all the games and the console, he just couldn't play them! He said it really made him think and it was cruel.
Worked, though!

Might be a siily question, but he's 3; did he know it was naughty? Presumably you hadn't ever told him not to cut all the cables?

And having toys taken isn't really a consequence, is it? It's just a punishment.

no, it is a consequence
it happened because of what he did

He used to pull on the cables so we put them all in spiral cable tidies and told him not to touch as they are dangerous so he knew that by touching them he was doing something he shouldn't!

And no he hadn't been told not to cut them because I never thought something lie that would cross his mind.

If I had left the scissors in plain view I would be saying ok fair enough I left temptation in his path but he actually had to go looking for them to get them. He climbed on the computer chair, rummaged through the stationary basket and then walked across the room. He then cut the cables and put the scissors away when he had finished! When I looked down the side of the sofa initially everything looked normal it was only on closer investigation the cut cables were found!

We-ell, in that the consequence was that he's punished, yes. I get that the consequence of cutting the cables is that the phones don't work, or even that the consequence is that his parents are mightily pissed off.
Consequence to me means something that naturally follows on, I guess. I don't really get why you'd call it a consequence rather than a punishment. Bit of a diversion from the op, just always intrigues me.

X- post. Of course it wouldn't occur to you to tell him not to, just like it never occured to me to tell ds2 not to pour several bags of flour over his head in his bedroom

or colour his face with blue permanent marker

(sigh)

he does sound like a mastermind

of course it's a punishment, never said it wasn't
it's a consequence because it happened as a result of his actions

if I steal a million pound from my employer, the consequence is that i could get put in prison

saintmaye, even if you had told him not to do it, chances are he would have done it anyway
children learn by doing, not by being told not to

I am going to have trouble with him as he gets older. Must find some distractions etc for him to keep him out of trouble!