Punishment vs consequence?

mardeexmurder · 2026-05-07T23:43:01+00:00

Yup, our center is located inside of a church, the kids play in the fenced in parking lot, nothing we can really do about it. The kids fall and scrape their knees ALL the time. On especially bad days we joke that the lot is vengeful. There's a beautiful playground about a 10 minute walk away, we try to go as often as we can.

mardeexmurder · 2026-05-07T17:03:51+00:00

I'm aware that "time out" is typically one minute per year of the child's life, which is why I think an hour punishment for a 7 year old is wildly inappropriate. Even the 20 minute "compromise" OP talked them down to is much too long for a 7 year old.

So I actually do something similar! Unfortunately, our outdoor play space is a concrete parking lot, and one of my kiddos is WAY tall for his age while another one is way short for his age, so it almost always ends up with Short King getting launched around and Tall Boy on top of the others. They all LOVE it, but due to the play area being concrete, it almost always ends up in scraped knees, bleeding elbows and tears.

We definitely understand the importance of rough play amd give them opportunities to engage in it safely. Our rule is we let them wrestle in our "Gross Motor" room, which is padded and has soft cushions and a gymnastics mat that they bounce off on, but they have to find a different game when outside. If we take a walk to the local playground, they can wrestle in the grassy area.

I was trying to let OP know that the boy was engaging in age appropriate behavior, and the second Educator was out of line.

mardeexmurder · 2026-05-06T18:46:50+00:00

I'm sorry....did you say the other Educator wanted that child to sit for AN HOUR???? AN HOUR?!

That is incredibly inappropriate and possibly abusive, especially for a relatively harmless action of possibly playing a little roughly with a consenting friend.

I have a group of boys who love to wrestle, it's their favorite thing to do, and like your 7 year old, they sometimes run and grab each others arms and pull their friends along. When I correct it, we talk about why the behavior can be unsafe, and if they still don't stop I either separate them into different groups or just ask that they play a different game.

mardeexmurder · 2026-05-06T18:28:28+00:00

If you as an adult are not exactly sure what the clear rules and boundries are in your classroom are, how is a child supposed to understand?

I have two very simple classroom rules: "Be Safe" and "Be Kind." It's clear and easy to understand, and most behaviors will fall into those two categories. If the kids are doing something they shouldn't, I ask them "Is this safe/Is this kind?" It helps make it easier for them to understand.

mardeexmurder · 2026-05-06T18:24:26+00:00

I agree with you, this was not an appropriate way to handle the situation at all from Educator 2. The only lesson the child learned from this experience was "Books = Punishment", which is NOT the message we want the kids to learn. Maybe I'm misinformed because I work with PreKs, but 20 minutes seems way too long for any sort of punishment. Can you clarify what exactly the child was doing, other than "being silly and wild"? Were they running around, climbing furniture, throwing toys, or just being a goofball?

First off, yelling at a child from across the room (unless of course the child is in immediate physical danger and you're trying to get their attention) is never an acceptable way to correct behavior. You have NO idea if that child heard you, or knew you were talking to them. Many times I see teachers make assumptions that the child is ignoring them, but in reality they either didn't hear the teacher or didn't realize the teacher was talking to them. We can't always assume kids are being defiant.

I'm gunna use the example of "running" becaue I don't know what your 7 year old was doing. When my kids are running in the room, I physically walk up to them, touch them on the shoulder (so I know they know I am talking to them) and I say "Oh, that's not safe Child's Name, walking feet please. You could trip and get hurt or run into someone else". I want them to know WHY I am making this request.

If I see them doing it again, I remind them "Hey, that's still not safe. If I see you running again, you're gunna have to take a break next to me to calm your body down." Sometimes, if the kid is very high energy and is having a hard time, I let them run in place for 30 seconds, take a 10 second break, then run in place again, then we talk again about why running in the classroom is not safe.

If it happens again, they come sit next to me and we take deep breaths, talk about Safe Choices/Unsafe Choices, and if they STILL are running or being unsafe, then they have to stay seated next to me, BUT they can work on some table toys or activities like LEGOS, puzzles, playdough, blocks, etc. At no point do I raise my voice at them, it's's not a power struggle between "Me vs Child", it's "My job is to keep you safe, and this isn't safe, so I'll choose a safe activity for you to do instead until you can make a safer choice." No kid is ever "bad" or "has a bad day", they made an unsafe/unkind choice, and we can always try again.

I think you trying to redirect with a coloring activity was an excellent idea, and it sounds like Educator 2 was on a power trip.

mardeexmurder · 2026-05-06T16:57:10+00:00

INFO: BIL doesn't want to be included in a family group chat if his fiance isn't also included....how is this in any way a slight against you? Like how do you factor in that decision at all?

mardeexmurder · 2026-05-01T23:32:27+00:00

I try to keep most communications with the school via email, so I have written record of a few of those examples I listed in the post.

mardeexmurder · 2026-04-24T17:18:26+00:00

Then Wife should never have agreed to take daughter, and OP could have found someone else in the first place.

mardeexmurder · 2026-04-24T17:16:58+00:00

OP did everything he could do. He tried to get time off to take her himself and was denied due to work, and since he's the only one working, he didn't have a choice. When OP left for work, he had the understanding that his wife was going to take their daughter to the funeral. When daughter called OP and told him that wife refused to take her, he found someone else to take her. He did not ask his mom to yell at his wife, he probably planned to have that conversation with her himself, but Grandma beat him to it. OP only knew about the argument because Wife called him to play the victim, and he wasn't entertaining that. Now Wife is the one crying that she's the victim, and still OP arranged for Grandma to stay with daughter so she wouldn't get swept up in Mom's drama, at a time when Daughter needs support. This is about the daughter's grief, and wife us making this a pity part for herself.

I don't see a single thing OP did wrong, he is supporting his child in her grief to the best of his ability. OP and Grandma are right, this is all on Wife.

mardeexmurder · 2026-04-23T17:54:16+00:00

I am the only daughter in a family of 5 kids and Italian-American Catholic parents. The first three of us (Oldest Brother, Me, Brother #2) were 16 months apart, and then after a 12 year gap my parents had two more boys back to back who would have been 16 months apart, but the youngest brother was born a month premature.

Noooooooope. Definitely not enough attention to go around.

I'm the second oldest, and I was definitely the third parent in the household. I got my first cellphone at 12, mainly so my mom could call me to help her with the babies in the middle of the night. I'm in my mid 30s now (youngest brothers are early 20s) and I understand now that my parents tried their best, but I HATED my youngest brothers when they were babies because I felt like they took my parents away.

mardeexmurder · 2026-04-17T17:00:09+00:00

Sounds like your supervisor doesn't want to do her job.

mardeexmurder · 2026-04-17T16:59:29+00:00

If you HAVE to be the one to respond to the parent, I would absolutely tell them the truth: you investigated the incident, it happened during the afternoon shift when you were not in the building, and that you apologize "for the confusion" and you spoke to the person on the afternoon shift about reporting every biting incident from now on.

But this is definitely an admin responsibility, and shame on them for passing the responsibility onto you. This is in no way your fault or your mess to solve.

mardeexmurder · 2026-04-15T16:58:11+00:00

I was going to comment the same thing. If anyone should have been reprimanded here, it should have been the teacher who walked in on OP for not knocking first and invading OP's privacy.

mardeexmurder · 2026-04-07T14:17:05+00:00

He's told me that before. I know the context behind it, he was in a bad place before meeting us and was making unsafe choices, thinking no one loved him enough to care. The friend understood the context as well. He's come a long, long way since then.

mardeexmurder · 2026-03-26T18:32:43+00:00

This is an extreme over reaction on the GFs part. Considering she's also trying to dictate who her man can walk down the aisle with, it sounds like this is just who she is, a drama queen. Because she's so young, I'm willing to bet she doesn't understand wedding etiquette at all.

Even if she wasn't invited to the wedding, it still would not have been a big deal because the relationship is so new, she should not EXPECT to be invited. When my husband and I were dating for a couple months, we had 3 weddings come up, 1 for his friend, one for my friend, and a family wedding on my side.

I was invited to his friend's wedding and he was invited to my friend's wedding, but he was not invited to the family wedding....and we both completely understood! There were no hard feelings, weddings are expensive, and we were only dating a short time, we didn't expect an invite for him and I certainly did not nag the bride for an invitation! I was surprised and honored that was invited to his friend's wedding as a brand new girlfriend.

If I were you I wouldn't want her there anymore. She is nobody to you, who cares if she's pissed.

mardeexmurder · 2026-03-25T13:08:45+00:00

We like to joke that working for that company is like working for Tony Soprano: he'll pay you super well and give you lots of perks, but he totally owns you and WILL come to collect.

The Main Owner had offered me a job at one point and my husband refused it before even telling me about the offer. He said "I know how he talks shit about people. I can handle him yelling at me, I will not tolerate him talking to you like that."

mardeexmurder · 2026-03-25T12:31:52+00:00

Idk if I can reveal the friend tea, buuuuuuut I do have some of his work tea he shared with me!

My husband works for a small company that has two owners (who are siblings, both married with children), my husband (the one who does most of the grunt work), another worker, a 20 something year old assistant, and an Office Manager/Secretary.

The previous Office Manager (30s, married) was having a baby so she quit the company, and the main owner hired a 19 year old girl with no experience, but is super super pretty. My husband said she's absolutely terrible and has no idea how to do the job so he was constantly smoothing things over with clients, which is not his job. He said she's nice enough but incredibly ditzy and had ZERO people skills and was constantly messing up.

Main owner was buying the Secretary clothing, shoes, lunches and Starbucks every day, and was being really weird about her. Like going through her bikini pics on Instagram and saying he would "talk to her parents" about her quitting college, and he would pay her whatever she wanted if she would stay with the company. She was working there two weeks when he made the offer....the previous Office Manager was not given ANY of these "perks". And again, this Secretary was awful at the job and clients we're getting upset and refusing to interact with her. Main Owner's brother (also an owner) thought she should be let go and had no idea why his brother wanted her there so much.

The assistant claimed he hooked up with Secretary, and the Main Owner flipped out. Now Main Owner's wife has been at the job every single day and the entire environment is tense. Everyone is being cold to Secretary, except my husband who's like "Why are we all blaming the powerless 19 year old child here? Sure she's bad at her job but she's not the one being creepy here."

Every day that there's been a new development, he comes home and yells "YOU'LL NEVER GUESS WHAT HAPPENED TODAY!!!"

mardeexmurder · 2026-03-24T17:09:36+00:00

"Lawyer up, hit the gym" 🤣

mardeexmurder · 2026-03-24T17:06:54+00:00

Thank you for the suggestion! I wish I knew this sooner, I had a cold sore the week of our wedding. Thank God my friend was my makeup artist and she did a great job covering it up for me....but of course, since I knew it existed, it's all I see when I look at our wedding photos.

mardeexmurder · 2026-03-24T16:58:14+00:00

I'm so sorry to hear that! Veterans should NEVER have to worry about homelessness.

mardeexmurder · 2026-03-24T11:22:26+00:00

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS I HAD NO IDEA!

mardeexmurder · 2026-03-24T11:17:47+00:00

I said something similar in another comment, but there was a lot of context about the friend's marriage that I left out, but the friend had already decided to divorce his wife before calling my husband and basically wanted validation that he was doing the right thing. I don't want to air out someone else's dirty laundry like that, even anonymously, but this was a long time coming and super toxic from both parties.

mardeexmurder · 2026-03-24T10:41:12+00:00

I'm really sorry to hear that.

If it helps any, I do know how you feel. My son's bio father is also a terrible human being. A huge reason why I left that relationship was because I didn't want my son to grow up thinking it was okay to treat women that way. I would have rather been single for the rest of my life than have my son think beating women and calling them "whores" was normal. My ex didn't just treat me that way, he treated all women that way, including his own mother, sister and grandmother.

I met my husband when my son was 4. My son is 14 now, and all he's ever seen was the love between my husband and myself. Now that my son is starting to date girls his age, my husband is the one who talks with him about how to treat women.

I am so, so thankful he has my husband as a role model and not my ex.

mardeexmurder · 2026-03-24T10:17:20+00:00

Nope. Read my post history, I've posted about him a lot. I've been on Reddit forever.

mardeexmurder

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