Colonel Rather Than Corporal Punishment

At some point, perhaps many times a day, as a parent, you are forced to confront and deal with the bad behavior of your children. My parents dealt with my bad behavior with Körperstrafe, or Corporal Punishment. Personally, I never thought it worked. If it worked so well, then why did it happen so often to me? My dad would use whatever shoe he was wearing while my mom would use a special stick that had been handed down from generation to generation in her family.

When I became a parent, I rejected all of that. It simply doesn’t work. One could argue that World War II is the ultimate Körperstrafe and that didn’t turn out well. Still, I needed a replacement. After a lot of error and trial, I came upon the concept of Colonel Punishment. The idea is really simple, though it only works if you have more than one child. This is how it works:

When a child does something wrong, they are brought before a tribunal of their peers. Their peers are their brothers and sisters. I suppose that if you only have one child, you could bring over one of their friends. The child can admit their guilt for a lighter punishment or deny their guilt for a harsher punishment. The peer children propose the punishment and then vote on it. The peer children are then responsible for carrying out the punishment.

I don’t think that any punishment system can work hundred percent of the time, but I have liked the results of Colonel Punishment. In the two years since I instituted it, they have been less bad than they were beforehand.