My 16 year-old daughter flipped the bird

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I thought the argument for corporal punishment was that kids can’t really be reasoned with. Makes no sense to use it on a teenager. Heck, why would you give your kid something that we don’t even dish out to hardened criminals in our justice system?
 
Right. I don’t think it would fly legally either to give a “whippin’” to a 16 year old.
 
Nowhere would I advocate forced confession. That’s not even theologically possible. But we go to confession as a family bi weekly. It’s my job to help my kids learn how to form a conscience. They dont have to confess. Im sure they could sit outside while we are all in line and not go. I’d be fine with that. It hasn’t happened yet. Driving there we go through a examine of conscience. And they see their mother and father go in first. Some of my children ask to go if they feel they need to. And that is fine. We will make time to go. It’s our job as the primary educators of the faith to our kids to properly teach them. An example. This week my 10 year old and my 13 year old were caught in a very blatant act of disobedience. So, they lost some privileges. Now when confronted with ot my 10 year old lied. It was a silly illogical lie but she doubled down on it. So there were consequences. And tomorrow as a family we will be going to confession Nd when examining conscience in the car we will discuss lying. I wont single her out by name but it will be discussed probably because I can think of an example from my own life to mention. No, forced confession is never a good thing. But here we have a teen in religious education acting out in the very class that should be teaching these things. That’s not unhealthy to drive the family OFTEN to confession. It doesnt cause rebellion. It causes reconciliation between God and others…
 
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I’m a spanking advocate but 16 years old is too old to be “whipping” or assaulting anyone as a form of punishment. There are far more effective and example setting tools to use.
 
thequeen said:
No you need to know why she did it.
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I assume that if the teacher was insulting her newly deceased father, or desecrating a religious item, or threatening or cursing out the child that would make itself known. Aside from some horrible action by the teacher it is uncalled for.
 
Teach your kids to respect you, not fear you. At 16, a boy can be capable of kicking their dad’s butt. At that point, fear of physical pain does not work. A teenager will listen if they respect you. And they will respect you if they have reason to respect you. And they will have reason to respect you if you are a respectable person.
 
I admit I still flip off my friends as a joke.

Not to random people though. I would just tell her it’s rude and we must respect people we disagree with.

Let’s be real. She’s 16. You can’t drastically change her behaviours. I’m sorry but it’s true. She can put on a show for you, but at the end of the day she must believe it’s wrong.

She’s pretty old too, so she’s at the age where she might disagree with the teachings and such. So telling her that we must respect people and focus on civil conversations might be a better route.

I wouldn’t go with the whole rage and anger thing parents tend to do. This is coming from someone with strict Asian parents who would cane the heck out of me if I called my brothers stupid.

When I was older and ended up in a similar situation (told a teacher to shut up when I was 14), my parents were stern but basically told me it was rude and that I should have expressed my anger in different ways. Like to stand up for myself if the teacher was being unnecessarily strict.

It really helped that my parents gave me an alternative behaviour and were willing to be on my side if the teacher was the one being rude. This is pretty huge as Asians tend to blindly respect authority.

Now with my mom dead and my dad being absent, I do the same to my 13 year old sister. Whenever she expresses that she wanted to shout at her teachers, I tell her ways to express it. She now finds asking teachers ‘what exactly did I do wrong?’ to rile them up, or even calmly walking out of the class to be a lot more satisfying than yelling and getting into trouble.
 
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This thread certainly gives the Original Poster a range of options to choose from.
 
Yes. Cursing and calling out names is actually a passive form of expressing anger. Because you’re not doing anything really except express your feelings. The other party may even enjoy seeing you so worked up.against them.
Being able to walk out or ask for.clarifications is an active way of not being stepped.over and that is why is even harder to do.and most people just prefer wording their anger out or making silly signs.
 
Hoosier-Daddy said:
But we go to confession as a family bi weekly. It’s my job to help my kids learn how to form a conscience.
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This to me is fine. I think confession should be a regularly scheduled, family activity, like brushing your teeth, or going to Mass. I see other families going to confession as a family every couple weeks or once a month and I think that’s a good way to go, especially if they do something pleasant afterwards. It makes confession a more “normal” activity rather than associating it with stressful situations and bad behavior. I got over most of my fear of confession by simply making myself go at least once a month till it got humdrum.

What I mean by “forced confession” is the parent, usually still angry over the situation, ordering the kid to go to confession ASAP or bundling them into the car on the very next confession day - not as part of the regular family schedule - and basically making them go. Now if the kid has actually committed a very grave, possibly mortal sin, I can maybe understand it, but sassing a teacher to me is not grave matter. It’s bad behavior and the parent should take steps to nip it in the bud, but it’s not like the kid just desecrated the Eucharist or was caught in the act of having sex with her boyfriend on the family room couch. Even if the kid did something very bad, the kid is the one who needs to come to terms with its being a sin and decide to approach the Lord with contrition. It’s not something where the parent can order them to go be repentant, at least not when the kid has become a teenager with ideas of her own.

In my case, my mother would frequently decide I had committed sins without me thinking I had, or when I didn’t intend to do anything wrong. These were not “sex with your boyfriend” level sins, it was more like I said something she didn’t like and she blew up and accused me of all kinds of disrespect, etc. and next thing you know we’re all suddenly off to confession that very night. (Mom would go too because by then she felt bad for yelling at me but would also be blaming me for the fact that I made her mad. ) Often I wasn’t even sure how exactly what I’d said or done (like not doing the dishes because I literally didn’t notice there were dishes in the sink or didn’t realize I was supposed to do them or didn’t understand why they were such a big deal because we had dishes there every day) was so awful.

I also think if you have a regular confession time, it’s fine to suggest that your kids maybe think about something they recently did, in order to form their conscience, e.g. “You might want to prayerfully consider that business with Mrs. Jones, your teacher.” Again this is totally different from, "I’m taking you to confession RIGHT NOW and you’re going to get in there and tell the priest what you did in front of Mrs. Jones! "
 
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Hoosier-Daddy said:
Nowhere would I advocate forced confession. That’s not even theologically possible. But we go to confession as a family bi weekly. It’s my job to help my kids learn how to form a conscience. They dont have to confess. Im sure they could sit outside while we are all in line and not go. I’d be fine with that. It hasn’t happened yet. Driving there we go through a examine of conscience. And they see their mother and father go in first. Some of my children ask to go if they feel they need to. And that is fine. We will make time to go. It’s our job as the primary educators of the faith to our kids to properly teach them. An example. This week my 10 year old and my 13 year old were caught in a very blatant act of disobedience. So, they lost some privileges. Now when confronted with ot my 10 year old lied. It was a silly illogical lie but she doubled down on it. So there were consequences. And tomorrow as a family we will be going to confession Nd when examining conscience in the car we will discuss lying. I wont single her out by name but it will be discussed probably because I can think of an example from my own life to mention. No, forced confession is never a good thing. But here we have a teen in religious education acting out in the very class that should be teaching these things. That’s not unhealthy to drive the family OFTEN to confession. It doesnt cause rebellion. It causes reconciliation between God and others…
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This…not forced. We also attend Confession as a family activity and everyone goes…I tell the kids if they haven’t sinned, they can discuss the weather with Father, I don’t care, but you do need to go, just like I need to go…

And I think flipping off the teacher is grave matter.
 
Flipping off a teacher is bad but it’s not on the level of murder and adultery etc. And I’m a teacher! Have the child do a detention at school, and move on. Follow up at home with taking their phone/ laptop away for a week- the ultimate punishment for a teenager
 
I don’t have kids, either. That doesn’t mean we don’t have substantive thoughts on child rearing. Maybe sometimes we can see better, being further away from the subject.
 
How would that work, anyway–dragging the kid to confession? Once inside, the kid probably won’t mention the incident and would then lie about confessing it, and the priest isn’t allowed to say in any case. A kid who would commit whatever bad act is probably capable of lying about confessing it.
 
But I’d take it easy on her if possible. As easy as I could. In fact, I’d let her go Scott free.
 
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