How should I discipline my 8 year old son?

A

Angelyn

New member
My son is attending summer school and rides the bus to school and back home. My son was involved in an incident where him and a few other kids were throwing paper airplanes at the bus driver. According to the report, he started this by ripping pages from his notebook, making airplanes and then throwing them at the bus driver and others kids watched and started doing it. I looked in his math notebook and found pages ripped off. He received one week of suspension from the bus so I will have to drive him to school and back home.
 
I would make him write a letter of apology to the bus driver as well as apologize verbally. In the letter, I'd want him to address the danger of what he did as in "I am sorry for endangering your life and the lives of all the children on the bus." Make sure he is aware of how important it is for a driver to not be distracted and how dangerous his silly prank was. Maybe even show him pictures of school buses from the internet that have been in accidents.

Have him give up his allowance (if he gets one) or do chores to earn $$ to pay for the gas it will take for you to drive him every day for a week.
 
Take away things that are privileges - TV, computer, games, friends - the usual grounding. I don't believe in hitting or spanking. I just don't think it teaches anything. Instead of not doing something because they know it's wrong, I think kids just learn not to do it because they fear the spanking. What I think is really important is that he knows WHY it's not okay to distract a driver like that. Kids are smart and really do get things if explained to their level of understanding. If you explain to him that people - including him - can be hurt if the driver is distracted, maybe that'll be enough for him to know why he can't do that again. Taking away the privileges is still good though to re-inforce how bad what he did was.

edit - I like the idea of him paying for the gas money or working it off. I couldn't think of anything to make him active in what he did, but that's a great way to do it!
 
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