is missing playtime the best punishment

[TessoftheD]

DS is in trouble fairly regularly at school, mainly for silliness, cheekyness and lack of focus. I have no problem with him being punished but feel that constantly being made to miss play times (often twice a day) is counterproductive and clearly not much of a deterrent. Wouldn't it be better to make him run round the field or pick up litter? Any views - he's y2?

What is he doing when missing playtimes? As a teacher, it can be hard to give any other punishment. The only thing we can take from them is playtime really, although obviously this is after much positive praise/reinforcement. If I made my children run round the field over and over, we would have lots of parents complaining.

You can work well with the teacher here. If you know something that might be a deterrent, tell them.

Missing playtimes has worked wonders for my dds class who were notoriously naughty!

In fact I asked her why she was so naughty at home but good at school, and she said that she didnt miss playtime at home!!!

I cna see Tess'd point tho- if he is cheeky and disruptive surely better to get him to run off some steam than to cage him in

Litter collecting at full speed rather than playing sounds ideal punishment!

Ds (yr 1) absolute worst punishment at school is to stand outside the staff room at break time. It has only happened once but he gets almost hysterical if it is threatened. I think it was the humiliation of all the teachers in the school seeing him and knowing why he was there.

Sometimes missing playtime can end up making this much worse. Often children NEED playtime to run around and let off steam. Keeping them in and sedate can be counter productive.

There are certain children in the Y1 class I work in where I would hate for them to be kept in and miss their play, as I could guarantee their behaviour in class would be even worse after.

If you know of a better deterrent do share it with school.

Teacher not particularly open to suggestions - but it seems obvious that if he's cooper up all day and not allowed to run off energy (of which he has plenty) it can't be helping. I do understand that it is difficult for teachers when options are limited but get a bit frustrated when they don't appear to acknowledge there may be a correlation between silly behaviour and not enough exercise.

I hate taking playtime away from children. It means I have to supervise them!

The problem is that picking litter could actually be a treat - my kids love helping out at school and doing things like that.

It would need to be a deterrent. Maybe the teachers need to run him round the field twice (which wouldnt take many minutes) then keep him in at the headteachers office while others continue with playtime. That way he gets punished but lets off steam as well.

I'be just remembered my primary school had a 'naughty mat' in school foyer that scared the crap out of us!

That is a good idea frogety - will suggest it. He's always worse towards the end of term when things begin to wind down - needs to be kept busy.

Hmm - something else to worry about. It hadn't occurred to me but will investigate

Does he miss the entire playtime? Generally I don't keep the children in for a whole playtime and do they do any in class exercise. We use an Active8 programme everyday, which gets the children moving and doing different routines. So even if they are kept in, they still have an outlet for it.

Ds had his punishment at the beginning of this academic year and the threat of a repeat has worked for all of the rest of the year. He missed all that break.

He certainly hasn't learnt his lesson - not sure if he is kept in for whole playtime. Will ask tomorrow. Thanks for all the helpful comments.

No, it?s a rubbish punishment inflicted on boys by (usually) female teachers who don?t understand that disruptive boys need to get rid of excess energy not store it up.

Boys generally need periods of physical activity to enable them to sit still and concentrate in class, so IMHO a punishment which involves less running around than normal is often going to prove counter-productive.

The time when I thought missing playtime was a good punishment was when another boy spent playtime knocking ds down. Yes, lunchtime detention may have given him even more pentup energy/aggression, but the alternative was for ds (who was innocent of any wrongdoing) to be too frightened to go out to play. If you don't punish a bully, you are in fact punishing his victim.

Also think it's ok for failing to do homework: it then becomes not so much about punishment as about the simple fact that the work has to be done- if you don't do it when you're supposed to, you have to do it when you don't want to; has worked well with my ds

cory, I don?t disagree with you in the case of bullying, but there wasn?t any suggestion of bullying by OP, just silliness and lack of focus, which is what I was addressing.

Depriving boys of physical activity will make those aspects worse not better.