Anonymous wrote:My daughter lied and told me her father approved something she knew I would have said no to (we're divorced and she was at his house the day before). Since I try not to undercut him and it didn't fall into that category of safety, I let it go. Soon after he and I talked about something else and he said how surprised he was that I signed off on this thing, because it didn't sound like something I'd approve.

So first, lesson learned on my part that I should have fact-checked. Now for the punishment...for some reason I still had an ancient flip phone in my drawer. It turns out that it takes the same SIM card as my child's smart phone. So out came the card and in it went to the flip phone. The smart phone stayed in my possession for a week. I swear, it was worse for her than just not having a phone, because in theory she could do things like text but it was incredibly hard and frustrating. By the end of the week she was begging for her phone back. Lately all I have to do is say the phrase "flip phone" and she reverses course on whatever she's doing.

Anonymous wrote:I caught my 14 year doing mean girl type things via text. Nothing crazy and nothing directly to the other girl but she was basically making fun of said girl to her friends. I will have NONE of that. So I took away her highly prized Lululemon pants. She had 2 pairs. One from xmas and one that took 8 weeks or so of babysitting money to buy. And I wore them. Every single day. I would change from my work pants while leaving work and make sure she saw that I had those suckers on every.single.day. Did it for 6 weeks straight. Of course when she earned them back she could never wear them again because "I stretched them out with my mom butt."

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I caught my 14 year doing mean girl type things via text. Nothing crazy and nothing directly to the other girl but she was basically making fun of said girl to her friends. I will have NONE of that. So I took away her highly prized Lululemon pants. She had 2 pairs. One from xmas and one that took 8 weeks or so of babysitting money to buy. And I wore them. Every single day. I would change from my work pants while leaving work and make sure she saw that I had those suckers on every.single.day. Did it for 6 weeks straight. Of course when she earned them back she could never wear them again because "I stretched them out with my mom butt."

LOL

I’m laying on my couch here with the flu and this just made me seriously LOL

Anonymous wrote:I caught my 14 year doing mean girl type things via text. Nothing crazy and nothing directly to the other girl but she was basically making fun of said girl to her friends. I will have NONE of that. So I took away her highly prized Lululemon pants. She had 2 pairs. One from xmas and one that took 8 weeks or so of babysitting money to buy. And I wore them. Every single day. I would change from my work pants while leaving work and make sure she saw that I had those suckers on every.single.day. Did it for 6 weeks straight. Of course when she earned them back she could never wear them again because "I stretched them out with my mom butt."

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I caught my 14 year doing mean girl type things via text. Nothing crazy and nothing directly to the other girl but she was basically making fun of said girl to her friends. I will have NONE of that. So I took away her highly prized Lululemon pants. She had 2 pairs. One from xmas and one that took 8 weeks or so of babysitting money to buy. And I wore them. Every single day. I would change from my work pants while leaving work and make sure she saw that I had those suckers on every.single.day. Did it for 6 weeks straight. Of course when she earned them back she could never wear them again because "I stretched them out with my mom butt."

Suprised she didn’t lose them again for that comment!

Seriously,though, good on you for not tolerating any bullying behavior from your teen(s)!

Anonymous wrote:Requiring 12 or 13 yo to clean the house from top to bottom. I don't even remember what she did to deserve it, but I recall that it took her a few days of work.

Anonymous wrote:I caught my 14 year doing mean girl type things via text. Nothing crazy and nothing directly to the other girl but she was basically making fun of said girl to her friends. I will have NONE of that. So I took away her highly prized Lululemon pants. She had 2 pairs. One from xmas and one that took 8 weeks or so of babysitting money to buy. And I wore them. Every single day. I would change from my work pants while leaving work and make sure she saw that I had those suckers on every.single.day. Did it for 6 weeks straight. Of course when she earned them back she could never wear them again because "I stretched them out with my mom butt."

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Anonymous wrote:My oldest (now 28) lied about playing video games late one night. He was about 11 at the time. I told him I was taking his Xbox. He said I couldn't because it was a gift from his grandparents. Instead of arguing, I cut the power to his room. His room was on the third floor and on a separate circuit from the rest of the house. He did homework with a lantern for a week. Super great parenting moment.

LOL . I aspire to this level of parenting genius. Well done.

It's well balanced against my epic fails.

Why would you let a kid have a tv and gaming system in his room? That was the bigger issue.

Because clearly I am not nearly as good a parent as you are. That kid is a college professor at a huge state university. I have four college grads all with great jobs. I'm going to claim success.

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Anonymous wrote:During high school, I took the car keys away for a week. He lied to me about wearing his retainer. Silly, I know, but don't lie to me. He had to take the bus to school and I would pick him up from athletic practice.

That’s it?!

My worst was being grounded for the entire quarter if my grades dropped below a 97 (we didn’t have a 4.0 scale). No phone with friends, no going out, could only watch TV with my parents in the living room (we didn’t have TVs in our rooms anyway though).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:During high school, I took the car keys away for a week. He lied to me about wearing his retainer. Silly, I know, but don't lie to me. He had to take the bus to school and I would pick him up from athletic practice.

This is a standard go to for my teen driver. Driving is the ultimate privilege.

I took a phone for the the full summer a few years ago. He was 15 at the time.

I’ve had 10 days of “hard labor” (mainly yard work, mopping floors, cleaning walls, power washing house), with no electronics. Once labor was over he would read. He read a book a day for ten days.