30 Times Parents Came Up With Creative, Strange, And Random Ways To Deal With Misbehaving Kids

I had to write book reports on books of the Bible. I would have to read the book of the Bible, discuss the major themes, and explain how it related to my bad behavior. As a result, I really know my Bible and no longer believe in religion.

When I was preparing for high school I sucked at writing, particularly long response/essay questions. To mediate this my dad spent a week having me write a different essay every day of the most simple and mundane tasks. The one that really sticks out in my mind was the first one, “How to put a football away”. By doing this, though it seemed inhumane at the time, I learned how to expand a simple thought into highly descriptive details and became a great writer throughout the rest of my school career.

My parents said I was playing too much Skyrim when it came out, so they took the router with them to work every day. Good thing you don't need internet to play an offline single player game.

My parents routinely took away my library card when I did something worth punishing.

So I memorized it.

When they caught on they refused to go to the library with me for the duration of my punishment.

So I started volunteering at the library once a week so they had to take me.

Told this story before and was called Satan. I basically raised my little brother. When he was in middle school he was failing math. He would always forget to turn in assignments, refused tutoring and didn't study for quizzes. I told him if he failed I'd do something drastic. He failed on the year. So I deleted every save in his PS2. All of them. There were hundred of hours of saved games. Never saw him cry so hard in my life. He passed summer school with a B.

Edit: I am getting a lot of hate and will certainly get more in a minute but here is more to the story. This was a year long frustration. We would do homework together and he wouldn't hand it in and the teacher wouldn't accept it late. He refused to study. His pattern of behavior was out of control. For all the people saying I should have gave him blank memory cards and gave him the real ones later he would have seen right through it. He is smart. No, I deleted those files in front of him. He needed to change his behavior and I had a real hard time disciplining him as his brother and not his parent. I hated how hard he cried. It felt horrible. There was no other way. I know it was cruel.

No punishment. And that in itself was punishment.

I totally bombed during my first semester in college. I took 16 credits and ended up with a 0.77 GPA for the semester. Yes, less than 1.0.

My parents were disappointed, but told me that they knew I could do better, and they knew I would do better. They forgave me and basically said "Ok, so you screwed up, now make it better and make us proud".

The fact that they were not upset really weighed on me. It REALLY put a ton of guilt and shame upon me, even though they didn't put those things on me, *I* did it to myself!

It really motivated me to not d**k around any longer in college. I buckled down and really succeeded.

They were mad I was playing too many video games (civilization, master of Orion II, world of warcraft I, Final fantasy I, 2, 3, tactics, ogre battle, Ur-Quan masters, okay, so I played lots of games...), so they made me go out with friends more. Now keep in mind, I did have friends and was social and would go out once or twice a week with them... but ANY video games were BAD.

So my parents forced me to go hang out in my buddies garage where they just drank and smoked up at 13 years old. A couple of them ended up getting into some serious drugs by around 16, and my parents still were forcing me to go hang out with them - because their parents were "good people" that will "sort him out".

Well, they never did.

I always thought it was funny that they considered cerebral strategy games more damaging to my development than hanging out with 13-16 year old drunks.

Me and my brothers were fighting. As punishment our parents made us all read and give a book report. But I love to read, always have, so while my brothers got to read The Hardy Boys. I had to read a book about flower arranging.

After about 2 hours I came out crying about how I didn't want to read about flowers any more. They made me report on what I'd read so far. Apparently watching a crying 7yr old talk about how you can use baby's breath to accent other flowers is something you still laugh about 20 years later.

When I was 10, mom would take my NES games for a week.

When I was 13, mom would take my SNES games for a week.

When I was 16, mom would take my BLANK FLOPPY DISCS for a week.

I didn't explain the mistake to her until I moved out.

Withheld dinner & I was only allowed to have bread and butter.
My mother is a terrible cook so I was super okay with this.

If I cursed, my mom would make me go into the bathroom and say every curse I knew while looking in the mirror so "I could see how ugly I made myself look while cursing".

Well, I learned that if I wanted to curse with impunity all I had to do was say "A*s" and get sent to the bathroom where I could say any curse I could think of, punishment free, for as long as I wanted. lol

I was not allowed to read unless it was specifically for school.

I was always more the artist type. Didn't much care for throwing the football around or working on cars. I wasn't belittled or anything, my family let me do me.

But my step-father was an evil genius and when I did something that was considered a minor infraction he'd give me the option of either going to bed early or staying up till my normal bedtime but having to watch sports with him in the living room. And I couldn't just zone out or read. He'd sit there and make chit chat about the game or try explaining the rules or the players stats or something else I couldn't have cared less about.

I'm 34 and we still laugh about that sometimes. S**t was brutal.

Was 14yo. First time getting wasted. Like REALLY wasted. Had 0,5l bottle of 80% alcohol. No memory of the night. Apparently two of my friends had carried me home and talked to my father who had only asked whether I had anything besides alcohol.

Next morning my parents made me breakfast in bed. No penalty. Just a weirdly nice conversation about what went wrong. At the end my father just said, "I'm not gonna tell you to not drink, I know that doesn't work. All I want you to do is make better decisions in life than I did" and left the room.

Later that day we went shopping and they bought me a new snowboard. Weird.

Anytime i would come home hungover i would have to help my dad do manual labor outside in the heat. Fixing a lawnmower, planting/gardening, painting, robbing bees, you name it. He was always right there with me working too, he just always needed my help. I just thought it was just a shitty coincidence and my parents had no idea that i even drank, but once i was an adult i realized it was definitely no coincidence. They were on to me the whole time.

For some reason my parents allowed my brother and I to have a very basic bow and arrow which we were allowed to shoot at a cardboard box in the backyard. I, being very young and very dumb, crawled into the box while my brother was firing. Parents were not pleased and to demonstrate how dangerous what I had done was, they made me lay on the couch for the whole day and pretend I was in a hospital bed.

Not my parents but my sister was babysitting me and I was being an a*s so she sent me to my room. Now I had a TV so it wasn't a big deal but the buttons on it were broke so you had to use the remote. She set it to the 24/7 weather radar channel and muted it and walked out with the remote. Total b***h move

I beat up a bully, my mom had a strong conversation with me, and then took me out for Sushi.

One time I forged my mom's signature on a school discipline warning thing. She made me write my own signature 500 times "so I wouldn't write the wrong name again"

When I was little, my mom's go-to punishment was to make me kneel on uncooked rice for about 15 minutes. Had to keep a straight back or else the time was increased. She did this because that was how her mom punished her and her brother. She eventually stopped using this punishment after she set some clear boundaries with my very controlling grandmother. She never felt right making me do it. My little sister never had to go through it...I kind of resented that for a while, but eventually was grateful she didn't experience it.