No matter how much we want to believe our children are flawless, the harsh reality is that none of them are.

Now, I’m not implying that most parents aren’t fulfilling their responsibilities – quite the opposite – it’s just that childhood is a challenging journey of learning, where almost everyone will make mistakes that they will later reflect on and feel remorseful about.

Maybe the most important thing when things like this happen is not what actually happened, but how the child learns from it and moves forward.
Introducing punishment early teaches kids a lesson when they do something wrong, making them face the consequences of their actions. This helps them understand and hopefully not repeat the same mistake.
What would you do if you caught your child doing something really disappointing—like making fun of someone who has cancer?

One dad got a call from school about his 16-year-old who was making fun of a classmate of hers who had lost all her hair from chemotherapy—even pulling off her wig—and he couldn’t believe his ears. He knew he had to punish her in an extreme way.

“Apparently there is some pre-existing bad blood between the two of them, but I don’t think that even begins to excuse her behavior,” he wrote in a message forum as background. “Not how I’ve raised my daughter to treat people and it truly disgusted me to hear how she acted.”

Dad goes on to say that his daughter “showed no remorse,” he said. “She tried to excuse her behavior by saying the girl in question deserved it.”

But dad wasn’t buying that. He gave her two options of how she’d prefer to be punished—and they were both pretty harsh (but dare we say, deserving).