There is a deterrent effect, but not what you'd imagine

I have a problem with punishments. A couple of problems, actually.

Not a problem like Sweetie has, with punishments that are either imaginary, or incomprehensible. But problems nonetheless.

Here's problem number one: I can't keep track of my punishments. I forget what punishments I've imposed or when I've imposed them until, and how they are to be implemented. I lose track of groundings or can't enforce them because I'm home from work late or I have to go to bed early because Mr Bunches and Mr F were up at 4 am or didn't sleep at all and because of that, I'm not around to make sure that they're not doing what they're not supposed to be doing, or I'm too busy or to distracted to remember. I'll ground the kids off going places or having friends over or watching TV, but then I forget about it and they go off with their friends to watch TV and when they get home I'll remember and say something like Weren't you grounded from that? And they'll say, "I don't know, was I?"

And the tone of their voice implies exactly what they mean it to: Shouldn't you, as a parent, have some kind of clue as to what you are doing here?

And I should. But I don't.

So I switched from long-term punishments that never worked because I forget them to short term immediate punishments: No more groundings! Instead, I would make them do some kind of chore immediately. So if The Boy forgot -- that should be 'forgot' because if you forget something 15 straight years, it's not forgetting, it's just a habit -- to put his shoes away, I'd make him not only put away the shoes, right now, but also do another chore, like mop the kitchen.

That unraveled almost immediately, because they would often not do the new chore right, and then what do I do? Make them do it again and impose another chore? Where would it end? What if I ran out of chores? I'd have to make things up, impose bigger and bigger tasks. All I could foresee was a day when Middle forgot to clear her plate and I would have her up reshingling the roof.

So I switched again: Get 'em where it hurts, I thought, and decided that I would fine them portions of their allowance. If they fought or backtalked or screwed up a job or got bad grades, I'd simply deduct from their allowance, an escalating amount each time. First time equals a dollar. Then two dollars. And so on. Leave the milk out, don't clean your room, forget to take out the trash... pretty soon, there's not much allowance left. It was brilliant, I figured: they'd hate to lose their money, I'd put it away to do something for them later, and as the fines escalated, they'd become more careful.

But the opposite happened. The kids outsmarted me again. They burned through the $1-$4 range almost immediately. (Okay, maybe outsmarted isn't the right word when I'm discussing how they lost a great deal of their spendable cash almost immediately.)

Then the fines hit $5 and I had to think about how I was imposing them. I came downstairs one morning and saw that The Boy had left his shoes in the hallway again. Was that really worth $5? It was, after all, a pretty minor infraction. A minor infraction that had occurred 5,475 consecutive times in a row, but a minor infraction.

I used some discretion and got The Boy and made him pick up the shoes. "You're lucky," I told him, "That I'm not fining you because you wouldn't want to lose $5 for this."

That was the end of that. Every infraction -- every one -- was simply too low to warrant a $5 fine. They made sure of that. They must have gathered that there were things, lots of them, that I didn't have the heart to fine them $5 for -- or more, if it went on -- because they did nothing major. But they did a lot of minor things. It was weeks of unmade beds and backpacks on the couch. I was dying for them to get suspended, or break a window, something worth $5 bucks. They didn't. Just more socks not put away.

So that was problem number two: I'd imposed a system that wouldn't work. They're not bad kids. Sure, they on more thaan one occasion have put an open jar of mayonnaise in the cupboard rather than the refrigerator, and, sure, it's not real clear to me why they had the mayonnaise out at 6:45 a.m. anyway, but at least they put it away, right? Was it worth $5 to punish them for putting it away in the wrong location?

(And, to be fair, maybe they forgot that they got the mayo from the refrigerator a few moments before. Long term memory doesn't work so well at 6:45 a.m.)

That's when it hit me: The new problem, problem three, was my heart's not into punishing them. I want to change their behavior, but I don't want to always be battling them. So I hit on a new system: "Punish" them by making them to more of what I want them to do and taking them away from the things they would prefer.

That sounds more complicated than it was. What I did was: when they act up or get bad grades or leave a mess, I assigned extra homework or reading to them. So, The Boy last month got a low grade in a class. I assigned him to do, on top of all his regular homework and chores, extra homework in that class and he has to read a little each night from a book I chose. (The book I chose is, by the way, a very good one -- Slaughterhouse 5, which I read when I was his age.)

This was awesome, I figured. It was foolproof! Simple, and something that I wouldn't mind enforcing. Plus, it would help The Boy grow as a person, while also cutting into his free time, so it would serve as a deterrent to future misbehavior.

Deterrent... I liked it. Not punishment. Deterrent.

About a week into it, I realized, though, that I had not been policing it as effectively as I should in that I'd completely forgotten about the punish... deterrent, and The Boy wasn't doing any extra work at all. I took care of that: I wrote myself a note reminding me to make sure The Boy did his extra work and reading and posted it where I'd see it each day. Learn from experience -- that's me! I was effectively implementing my new system!

After a few days of working after dinner on the extra homework and then reading Slaughterhouse 5, The Boy asked me if instead of Slaughterhouse 5, could he read The Lord of the Flies instead since they were reading that in school.

"Sure," I said. It was working! He was complying, and I didn't mind enforcing my punish... my deterrent.

Then, a few days later, The Boy asked if instead of doing his extra homework that night, he could use the 30 minutes instead to study for a quiz in a different class. That seemed reasonable to me, so I agreed -- after all, the goal was to deter him from slacking off, and here he was, voluntarily studying more!

He did that again the next day: Could I use the extra homework time to work on my math? Sure, I said, pleased. And we went on like that for a few days, until I realized something:

The Boy was simply bringing home his other homework and doing it during the time he was supposed to be doing his extra homework.

All I'd done was give him a reason not to do his homework in school or after school. He saved it all for when I got home, then did it, and got credit for his punish... deterrent by simply doing what he should have been doing in the first place. He was, in effect, doing less as his punishment.

I don't remember it working this way when I was a kid. We didn't get out of punishments when I was a kid. Granted, "punishments" then involved a lot more spankings than they do now and you could only get out of a spanking if you could outrun Mom -- and you'd have to come home sometime. Even with the emphasis on spanking, I had my share of groundings and chores and loss of allowances, and I don't remember ever getting out of it like my kids do.

It's to the point now where I'm not sure what to do, or whether I should punish them at all. Everything backfires on me; they're obviously smarter than me, now. For all I know, the next time I try to levy a punishment, I might end up reading Slaughterhouse 5.

After I finish reshingling the roof.

Science is SO over.

I think scientists ought to just stop, admit that science is done, and go get real jobs.

The more I read about science-- "science," the more I am convinced that there really are no big questions out there anymore that remain to be answered, but scientists don't want to admit that and end up working at Starbucks, so they have just resorted to making things up to keep their jobs.

Exhibit A in my case against science was the very convincing proof that velociraptors never existed until scientists saw "Jurassic Park," realized that the entirely-fictional-velociraptors in that movie were cool, and decided to pretend that there really were such creatures. I guess we're just lucky that those same scientists didn't get around to seeing "Godzilla," since you can arrange those bones any old way you want to and we'll never know the difference.

Exhibit B now comes from the discovery of 73 million new planets in our solar system. Okay, maybe it's not 73 million, but it's a lot. 12. Or maybe 53. Or more. Maybe even the Moon is a planet! Maybe I am a planet.

(No weight jokes here. I've been working out. And doing yoga. It's all winter weight. My sweater just looks bulky. Leave me alone.)

Scientists, bored yesterday, decided to recast what makes a planet a planet. They abandoned the old definition of a 'planet.' A planet was defined (by NASA) as "a heavenly body other than a comet, asteroid, or satellite that travels in orbit around the Sun; also such a body orbiting another star." (Interestingly, a "planet" was defined by "Wikipedia" as "Adam Sandler's butt." All hail the knowledge of the masses!).

That definition -- which was very straightforward, and understandable, lacked a certain something, that something being "continued attention and employment for scientists." So instead, it was scrapped in favor of the new definition, in which a planet is "anything we say it is; we're the people with advanced degrees, so just shut up and go watch Tyra while sending us more research grants."

Under that definition, you can see how the number of planets can grow exponentially depending on how many children a scientist has in college at a given time. Whatever the actual number of planets in our solar system turns out to be, it will almost certainly need more money thrown at the problem.

And under the new definition, scientists have expanded the number of planets already to 12, including Pluto-- which famously became not a planet just last year but is now included because people missed it, and including the asteroid "Ceres," which is included because it's round. And the planets now include Pluto's moon, Charon. But not our moon. Yet. Maybe other moons, someday.

Oh, and the new planets are not quite planets, they are plutons. Keeping up with this? I hope not, because if you understand it the scientists will change it again to justify their existence. So pretend you don't get it and send them money.

But you're looking at that list and saying Wait a minute, hold on a sec, that's not 12 planets. Even adding Pluto back in and those other things I've never heard of, that's only 11. And you're right. There's also a new mysterious 12th planet, and, no, it's not Oprah's ego. It's "a far-out Pluto-sized object known as 2003 UB313."

That probably won't be its formal name. Here is what 2003 UB313 looks like:

And here is an artist's rendering of life as seen from the surface of 2003 UB313:


So you can see that 2003 UB313 is clearly a major planet, and probably friendly to us.

If you wanted further proof that science is just a bunch of screwed-up guys making it up as they go along in order to get publicity, consider this: Although the new definition includes 12 planets, the new award-winning mnemonic device to remember the planets includes only 11 planets. Here's the saying:

My Very Exciting Magic Carpet Just Sailed Under Nine Palace Elephants.

Why'd they leave out Charon? Huh? Answer me that. I think they left it out for the same reason the stars never tell you the baby's name on the same day it's born -- because delaying that news gets an extra day of publicity. So J.Lo gives birth and they announce that and we all thrill to it, and then when the publicity dies down, J.Lo says Oh, by the way, the babies' names are Hector and Waverly and we all go nuts again.

That's what scientists are doing. While we'll all spend the day committing that saying to memory and reciting it, and singing along with the upcoming Lisa Loeb song about it...

...that's for real, she's really writing a song about it...

the scientists will sit back and wait until we're done with that and then they'll bump Charon into it and there'll be a whole new round of publicity with scientists and planets on the cover of "US SCIENCE WEEKLY" (Best and Worst Beach Bods and Periods of Orbital Frequency!) and we'll all fall for it again.

Haven't we had enough? Isn't science done? Can't they quit just making things up and messing with our heads? If they're worried about having to find real jobs, hey, I can sympathize -- I spend 98% of my day trying not to do any actual work, and the other 2% figuring out how to translate that into a raise. So I won't insist that they all start working the drive-through at Hardees's, even though that would mean that "fast food" would again be "fast." They could work on something else, instead, like discovering a way to make a snack chip that doesn't turn my fingertips all yellow. (Sweetie says the answer to that is to eat them without putting my fingers in my mouth, but if science has a purpose, it's to find a way to let me eat with putting my fingers in my mouth, right?)

UPDATE: Even if you don't ordinarily read comments, Mark's comment on this entry is awesome and should be read and committed to memory.