Too Harsh???

[QueenOH]

My son usually gets As and Bs so he suddenly comes home and has an F on a Science test.

I made him rewrite the whole test 20 times with the correct answers so he knows the right answers next time.

I told him if he got another F then he would spend his summer studying Science and cutting the grass in the back yard with scissors (I have a big back yard and a broken lawn mower).

My mom is telling me I'm being too hard on him. (This is the lady that was mad when I got a B in English).

[123Diva]

Ummm, well you know what he is capable of.
At least you care, you already beat out like 70% of parents in our lovely society.

[LejaOMG]

That does sound a little harsh, yes. But I'm aware that different tactics work for different kids. And if you feel that that manner of punishment is appropriate for your child's age, maturity level, abilities and mental/emotional outlook, then do what you gotta do.

The only type of punishment of which I would disapprove is the method that my mother most often employed: that which is designed to make the parent feel better without imparting any actual discipline to the child and which produced behavioral results more out of fear of future reprisal than as a result of learning. Do you want the child to behave better because they understand why good behavior is important? or because they've developed an automatic fear response to getting punished? The latter way is how one trains pets, by the way.

[QueenOH]

I figure if he is going to get bad grades he might as well have a skill of lawn care to fall back on

[Noble Work]

Hope you are kidding about cutting grass with scissors....it get HOT down here.

My Son usually gets All A's except for a B in Math. That's the norm for him. One Progress report he got an F. I can't tell you how I felt and how disappointed I was. For the longest he stood by his excuse of "I don't know how I got an F". Long story short, I found out that my son was not asking for help for things/problems he did not understand. He was too embarrassed to raise his hand to ask for help.

My wife, calmly as I was, sat down with him. She found out what it was, showed him a different way of doing it other than the teacher's method and he got it.