Consequence at home for school detention?

[FlippityFloppityFlump]

My DS is in year 7 and has today had a detention for disruptive behaviour in a lesson. It's his first one at high school.

I'm wondering whether other parents give a consequence at home when there has been detention at school? If it was for uniform or something i probably wouldn't but because it is disrupting a lesson (they get chance choice and then consequence) it obviously continued.

Would you give consequence in these circumstances? Would it being the first time make a difference to you.

I want him to know we support the school and his behaviour isn't acceptable but don't know whether double consequence is right way to go this time. Or a whether to support the school by talking to him.

If it makes any difference, I pre-empt he may not take responsibility and it will tell me it's someone else's fault 🙄

Slight aside, but "extra nasty consequences" reminds me of Howlers from Harry Potter: a letter which shrieks the parent's anger, for the whole school to hear; far more humiliating than the original punishment. Poor Ron Weasley.

I really did not punish my kids. You shouldn’t be telling posters to ignore the few of us who have said honestly we do not or did not punish.

I find it’s more the parents that punish who tend to misuse the words punishment and consequences interchangeably when consequences are really meant to be events that are directly and unavoidably caused by an action. Ie, you drop a tea cup, the consequence is it smashes and needs to be cleaned up.

Parents often say they do “consequences at home” and then talk about docking pocket money, or taking away screen time, or cancelling a play date or adding an extra chore- which are all technically punishments.

Perhaps that is the confusion you are having, in that as a parent who punishes you have blurred the line between what is really a consequence and what is really a punishment by calling punishments “consequences at home”

I forgot the comma
it should have read extra, nasty consequences

not that that is worlds better.

Thanks all. His teacher phoned me to let me know what happened whjch they do as standard apparently.

He was shouting out, interrupting her, talking. He got several warnings, beyond 3c ones they get and still carried on. He was taken out of class and had to a separate room. They told him to do homework. No way is he benefitting from having his homework done due to his poor behaviour so I will be making sure he does extra (of the subject he disrupted) over the weekend, which is when he would have been doing it.

I've decided not to give a consequence at home this time, as it's a first occasion. We've spoken about it and he told him firmly what our expectations are around behaviour. I'm going to make him send an apology email to the teacher. Making him spend some time doing that over the weekend (when he would rather be gaming) feels a more natural consequence

Although I've decided not to give a consequence as such, he definitely knows we support the teachers. We talked about how selfish to teachers and other students it is to disrupt the lesson.

I use natural consequences as far as I can I've pointed out to my son that means if he gets an after school detention he walks home it's an hour walk he has managed to avoid it by behaving in school for the most part

No extra punishment but I would probably talk it through with them .

So what do you do?

TA here! So the school uses a relational 3 Cs behaviour approach which is good. It seems to me that the school have handled it appropriately and your son had a number of chances to change his behaviour which he didnt. I feel at this stage the just the detention is an appropriate consequence. However have a calm and open sit down chat with him, find out what happened, explain how his behaviour was disruptive and how he should behave next time. If he was finding the lesson difficult or overwhelming then he needs to speak to a member of staff who could try and support him to prevent incidents like this happening again.

No I wouldn't. The detention is the punishment. I'd talk to him about what happened and why he behaved in that way. I'd suggest alternative strategies with him for the future.

Yes I absolutely would punish again at home - maybe take away something he enjoys for the afternoon / evening (phone, Xbox etc), and talk to him about it. If he is sorry then explain the consequence, follow through and then draw a line under it, but if he isn’t sorry or is trying to offload blame then I would give a bit of a stern talking to in addition to the above. We’ve only had one incident in almost 3 years of secondary school for our eldest and luckily it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity (he was blamed by a teacher for something and sent to isolation for 2 lessons, only for the real culprit to be found out the next day!). Anyway we talked to our son, quickly realised what had happened and we’re going to leave it there, but the school phoned the next day with an apology. No harm done. But being disruptive does need to be nipped in the bud I think, and it’s good to show your son a united front with the school.

No it's a school matter.

We tied pocket money to effort grades paid when reports came out (in part, I was being lazy) but I suspect my two would have been losing money at this stage if this impacted the report with lower effort grades

Punishing twice for one offence is excessive, but if it were me I would want to sit him down and ask him why he was being disruptive- and not let him off the hook until I got a reasonable answer.
Hopefully it won't become a pattern, but there might be a reason for it- he can't hear or see properly, or he has a new group of friends he wants to impress.
Best to head problems off at the pass,than let them grow.

My son got a few behaviour points in year 7, we spoke about then and expected behaviour etc. I knew he was having a bit of a shit time adjusting, but the points kept coming in so in the end i went with bad behaviour = 24hr fortnite ban. Amazing how that focused his mind! He's in y8 now and thriving, got taken om a reward trip for exemplarary behaviour. I have no regrets and he needed a home consequence to see that we wouldnt tolerate it. Teachers need our support, some of the behaviour i hear about is shocking.

No, I wouldn't, the detention is punishment, just have a chat and discuss what happened and why.

This

My DC would get a reasonable punishment for bad behaviour etc, but they knew that if I found out they had lied, the punishment would be much worse! I don't like lying. Their DF (ex-H) was a compulsive liar and lied about the most inconsequential things; quite unnecessary.

Support the school!

It is 16 years since I retired after 37 years in education. I still get stopped to be asked if this is, or that is, a 'good school'. I still give the same answer.

Please let me generalise. Teachers look for a job, a position, they bring their skills to that school. Where the parents are supportive the children do well and the school happily basks in the glory. Where the parents have a poor attitude to education and or are unsupportive the children do not do so well. It has always been this way.
Support your school. Your child is doing what comes naturally, pushing his boundaries. Show him his boundaries and stick to them. He will thank you later.

In thinking about that 'later' you might like to consider this...

"The only real indication that we did a good job as parents is when we see how our grandchildren have turned out".

But what do I know?

Best of luck.

I was going to suggest exactly this - an apology letter to the teacher. Something that is well written (so good practise for English) and that expresses exactly what they were doing wrong, how disrespectful it is, and a promise to do better in the future.

So what are your consequences then?

I have no consequences (aka punishments). The consequences are the consequences they can’t be owned or created by me.

My main aim was to warn them, oracle style, of what consequences would be and to educate them on better ways to handle situations or support them and say hey you’re right it is your choice and it’s ok to face the consequences.

The consequence would be the consequences of the behaviour that they would have to face up to themselves. We didn't impose consequences.
If they didn't tidy their room or bring their clothes down to wash they had to live with the mess, no clean clothes etc .
We spent a lot of time talking about choices, the importance of making good choices. And what would happen if bad choices were made. When they made bad.choices we talked about why and what could be done to put things right
I can honestly say my children were never grounded, had anything taken from them etc.
And now they are independent, happy responsible adults who can think for themselves and when they were teenagers they did the right thing because it was the right thing to do not because they were afraid of punishment.

“good practise for English”.

That’s the wrong spelling of “practice”. 🙂

I wouldn’t double punish him, I would ask him about what happened and how it effected others and what he could do differently.

As someone who works in a school I would say given he was so disruptive that he got detention in school he should have a punishment at home. Maybe something like a phone or technology ban.

It really helps show him you communicate with the school and he cannot get away with behaving unacceptably in school. It also teaches him their is consequences at home for him to if he behaves like that in school.

There is much less likely to be further incidents in the future of disruptive behaviour if you do show a strong stance around this.