AITA for not siding with my wife and agreeing with my mother after she did a group punishment that made my middle child unliked by the other kids

Class clowns in my school district were dealt with on an individual basis. 

There's no way my Mother would have tolerated the entire class being punished. 

But there's a big difference between a Grandmother watching a group of kids for free/cheap and a classroom full of kids. 

There's different ways to deal with these things and they don't always work in the same settings. 

I would use this approach when talking to your wife.

Ask her what she will do when it's a classroom, and he has no friends because his behavior and lack of understanding about actions and consequences. Would she go scold all the other parents? The teachers? The older they get. The less disruptive behavior will be tolerated.

Some might pull out "well he could have ADHD" or "boys are just active," etc. But to me (having one really, really active kid) no matter the reason, it's just even more important to teach them that there are a time and place to use that energy. And be mindful of others.

Tell your wife that it wasn’t safe to take your son to the pool while he was acting out and refusing to listen. He could have been seriously injured or died while ignoring her instructions, or one of the other children could have been seriously injured or died while Grandma was distracted by your kid’s antics. Your mother made the only safe choice, fair or not.

NTA. Congratulations! Your mother figured out Jamie's "currency"! USE IT. No child is the same, as in, one discipline (i.e., timeout) doesn't work for every child. As a parent, the hardest part about discipline is figuring out what works on each child. I'm guessing Jamie likes the attention he gets from his "bad behavior" because he wants to be included and whatnot. Now that everyone is shunning him, he's learning that crap isn't the way to go. The next step in parenting is figuring out positive ways Jamie can act and be to fulfill is social and attention needs. Kid needs a blueprint.

As a teacher who works with challenging students sometimes, try the opposite as well: Jamie, if you make it the whole morning without [pick one big irritating behavior], we can ALL go out for ice cream.

What was your mom supposed to do? Take them to the pool when one kid is not listening? Because that seems dangerous for everyone if he’s going to be pulling her focus while she is supposed to be watching all of them

Or was she just supposed to leave him at home by himself while she take the rest?

This is a lesson he needs to learn or kids aren’t going to like him anyway, group punishment or not

In general, I dislike group punishments, but what choices did granny have? Either all kids stay home, or all kids go to the pool: I would not have been happy to supervise seven kids, one of whom is being a brat, at a pool.

NTA

PS: your kid has been evaluated, not (I hope) evacuated.

Not only that but seriously... don't piss off your mom. She was not only correct but she also watches your kids. Does your wife want to take on that task or set up some sort of daycare/camp during the summer? Don't bite the hand that feeds you.

If you haven’t already have a conversation with your son. Go over safety and trust issues. Explain to him that grandma has to trust him to be safe and listen if she is going to take him and cousins fun places over the summer. Hopefully the peer pressure from his cousins will get him to think about his behavior in the future. Sometimes kids need the peer pressure to learn that their behavior isn’t okay, it can be harsh, and you need to make sure they’re not bullying him after this, but peer pressure is a great motivator.

What would your wife’s solution have been?

NTA. I'm usually against collective group punishments. The Geneva Convention, and all.

But think of it from this side:

How is one older woman supposed to look after the safety of seven children in a POOL, when one of them is DELIBERATELY misbehaving??? Before the trip even began?!?! 

No, sir.

I would NOT be going on that outing. And, sadly, that means no one is going to the pool today.

And Jamie learning his damn lesson for once is all to the better.

He's heading there, whatever punishments he gets for the misbehaving obviously aren't working. You may have to go another route. My mom uses standing in the corner for the great-grandkids, they hate that but all kids are different.

From the other kids’ perspective, they might start misbehaving if they are going to be punished regardless. It’s why schools don’t really do group punishment anymore

And what was your mom supposed to do, take the other kids to the pool and leave him behind home alone? (I assumed she needed your dad's help to wrangle all the kids in the pool). Take him anyway even though he was acting up? (Which is potentially dangerous in a pool setting). 

Her only viable choice was to cancel the pool trip for everyone. 

It's not the same at school where you can deal with the kid individually (leave them in the office if the class is going on a field trip, for example).

Nothing else seems to have worked. What she did seems to have been effective. I don't think it would good to overuse it, because that would lead to ostracization from the other kids, but it's absolutely valid when necessary. NTA

You’re also raising a brat. You should be serving consequences too. 

Behavior is too much for your mom? He doesn’t get to go. You don’t get to save money.  

Did you actually sit down and talk to your son about his behavior, and experiencing natural consequences?

What your mom did is exactly what coaches everywhere do. You missed that pass?? Everyone runs. And it works!! It’s a great motivator. He needed to learn that his actions have consequences.

As long as it’s not used all the time, I don’t see an issue. He immediately started behaving so this is a win!!

As well as a punishment for Jamie, this was also a practical reality. The way Jamie was behaving, he couldn’t go to the pool, since he was behaving dangerously and wouldn’t be tolerated there. But your parents would have needed both of them in order to properly take care of the others at the pool, because there were too many for one of them to supervise alone. So what other choice did they have? With that many grandkids, they need good behaviour to handle them all at once.

If his behavior changed for the rest of the day then he learned his lesson. Behavior does have consequences. My mother and I have a rule. If we can’t correct or punish the child, we don’t watch the child. Your mother didn’t abuse him. We have laws in our society, you must follow them otherwise there are repercussions. You have to be consistent when raising kids. If you say to a kid if you do A then B happens. The kid does A and you don’t do B then you have shown them the rules don’t apply to them. But more importantly if I’m watching 7 kids and one or more is not listening and following directions there is no way I would take them to a pool. Pools are dangerous if you have kids that don’t listen. Someone could get hurt. I was watching the young kids (not mine) out at the pool at my mom’s. I’m an adult. One didn’t listen to the warning so he had to sit on the step in time out and watch the others play. My mom came back out and asked why he was sitting and questioning why he couldn’t go back out. I put my foot down, it may have been her house but I was left in charge. What he had done was dangerous and had had ample warnings. He did his time and everything was fine. My mother and I were fine. Your wife needs to let this go or she will loose this babysitter. This would have been appropriate in a daycare with limited staff. You need to make that clear too.

In general I’m not a fan of punishing a group because of one child but when it comes to a water activity if a kid doesn’t behave I don’t take them. I love my nephew dearly but he’s on the spectrum and has a hard time controlling himself because of that. I won’t take him swimming especially with others because I can’t guarantee his and the other kids safety because if I’m busy handling him I can’t properly watch the others.

I think using peer pressure in a constructive way can be helpful! I grew up a middle child and my mom would do that to maintain harmony, like if the three of us were well behaved while she was running errands we might get a sweet treat as a reward, but if one of us acted out we’d all miss out and understand the reason why. We caught on quick and would help keep each other in line to try to get soft serve ice cream. It helped me understand that my behaviour affects other people and can have negative repercussions.

If your mom is looking after that many grandkids at once (superwoman) she needs to find a way to keep your son in line that doesn’t require more individual attention than she can spare.

Your mother is not going to be able to fix the damage your wife does over the year in a few days in the summer. If you're wife doesn't change her parenting your child's life will be destroyed.

Also it's going to the pool we are talking here, and a pair of grandparents vs 7 kids can be alot, and if they can't keep them all in check even before the pool, shit can hit the fan fast when they get to the pool, it sucks for the other kids, and I'm sure it sucks for the grandparents too, but this is both a behavioral AND safety issue

He will literally be socially shunned if you don’t get it under control as he gets older. Grandma was right

You’re absolutely correct in your memory. The class clown was shunned.

This seems like it has the potential to be a valuable lesson. NTA

Seems to me that this kid has both a mother and a father…

Here’s what I think: multiple other forms of consequences have been tried, to no avail. Each kid is different, and she had to find a way to get through to him. She made a cause and effect statement, and followed through. Jamie knows that grandma will flow through, and he’ll be more likely to not push the boundaries as much.

It is not okay to expect anyone to take a child to a dangerous environment like a pool when they won’t listen, and when they don’t have consequences.

I mean just look at Reddit. People delete their accounts just because they get too many downvotes. How you get viewed WORKS, even with arbitrary online "likes"

I personally don't think it should be a habit or a regular occurrence but heck, Jamie could have hurt himself or others if he would have been running around a poolside so the punishment well fit the crime IMO

Also your mother didn’t have much of a choice. She can’t take 7 kids to a pool and watch them all closely while one is misbehaving and being a nuisance.

She did the safe thing of keeping them all home rather then not being able to pay full attention to the whole pack

My partner told me about the most memorable 'punishment' of his childhood. He and his brothers were misbehaving in the grocery store, so his dad walked right up to the store manager and apologized for the inconvenience, but his sons weren't behaving themselves so could he please ask one of his staff to put all of the groceries away? Apparently he really hammed it up, saying he knew all the workers were super busy and this would be a real trouble for them - and the manager totally played along and said it was no problem, he understood that sometimes kids have a hard time controlling themselves, he'd take care of it. Then when they got home, he apologized to their mother for coming back without dinner. She played along too, said she was so tired from a hard day at work but she'd go back to the grocery store alone to feed everyone. There were no raised voices, punishments, or rebukes required.

That's the last time they ever misbehaved at the grocery store!!!

Your mom has the right idea.

Maybe next time suggest your mom call your wife to pick up your son. He has the consequence of missing a fun trip to the pool, she gets to deal with him all day in the way she deems best, and the other kids get to go to the pool. I hate group punishment. However, Grandma couldn’t take 7 kids to the pool when one was being unsafe. I’d reframe it as, “His actions have consequences that impact everyone around him. If he can’t be safe, he prevents Grandma from keeping every other kid safe at the pool. Because of this, Grandma made the decision to stay home.” 

It’s true, and it seems like the consequences he has received in the past don’t work based on what you said. Time outs don’t matter much to kids, it’s not like they will be stuck in it for that long, and it’s hard to dole out other consequences when watching over that many children. Talking to him later doesn’t work because it’s done immediately and isn’t enough to alter his behavior.

Your mom did a very smart thing, social consequences work much better in those situations and he was preventing them from being able to get ready anyway and it’s not like he could’ve been left behind. Honestly it’s wild that your mom was even willing to watch over that many kids at a pool, she must be a bad ass. Her method worked and wasn’t traumatizing. It’s something that will happen more and more in the future in different situations if he doesn’t learn that he shouldn’t behave that way. It’s okay to be silly and a bit rambunctious, but taking it too far isn’t okay. She provided the opportunity for him to learn that.

My oldest is in highschool and she almost lost her shit on a class clown this year. 

She is usally in advance classes but took an elective that seemed fun. Anyways she got stuck with someone that kept interrupting the teacher. 

She was miserable that whole semester and really dislikes that girl. 

Ok this is a big NO in my book. I have plenty of relatives who think it's perfectly fine to whip a child with a belt. If I have no other choice but to leave my son with them, they had better not think about abusing him.

There is a reasonable level of discipline/rules other adults can be expected to apply and if they go outside of that, a parent has the duty to protect their child from that person.

(That said, grandma was totally within reason here)

We got told "Grandchildren are you reward for not killing your teenagers" when we would go to visit Grandma and Grandpa. It was a whirlwind of junk food and TV watching and running around with Grandpa (who still got on the floor to play horsey with kids at the ripe age of 81!) and stories with Grandma. It was kid paradise, but even as a little kid I understood why the rules were different at different places because that was true pretty much everywhere I went.

Your mom sounds like a hoot! I'm so happy she got to enjoy her time as a Grandma.

I was initially thinking the same way when I just read the title, but i think your mothers choice of word is more appropriate. It was a consequence that affected everyone (once).

If he had say stolen a cookie from another child and your mothers reaction had been to ban all kids from ever eating cookies again, that would have been collective punishment for a "crime" by an individual rather than a natural consequence.

Fun fact about war crimes, you need to be at war. The Geneva convention doesn’t apply to babysitting

When I ready the title that was the first thing that popped into my head, but this isn't collective punishment at all. This is just the responsible adult deciding that it would be unsafe to take the children to the pool if one of them would not behave.

Try rephrasing that issue to your wife. From the description there was no safe way for your mom to take the kids to the pool with your son behaving that way.

How does your wife want her to have handled this?

NTA Your mother did an excellent job.

Show your wife this post and the comments. She needs to learn a thing or two.

Heck, it would be unsafe to take them anywhere public. Can you imagine Jamie running off through a parking lot or pushing another kid and horsing around in a parking lot? YIKES!

I don’t think your wife understands group care. 

This is high risk activity.  As a former daycare lady, one can tell if the day is going sideways.  Either everyone is minding or we don’t go.  It doesn’t matter if it is a walk, hike, splash pad or story time at the library . It is a risk. 

We might be at the event, and if someone does danger (hitting, or trying to escape the group for example) we ALL go home. There is NO second chance in that outing. It is too much risk, and time out canNOT happen out of the house with multiple kids like that. 

If a parent had a problem with that, they needed a different daycare where jr can stay behind with the director or a daycare where they go nowhere and never leave the property.

And when was this magical time out of hers supposed to start working? You said he is just as bad after.

Your son’s behavior would likely have posed a safety risk for himself and the other kids at the pool. Having 7 young children under your care while in/around a pool is a lot - and if one of them is constantly running around, grabbing things, and not able to follow instructions, that can very quickly become a dangerous situation.

Perhaps your wife should consider that this was a safety measure for all kids - not just a punishment.

Is a time out the worst punishment your 8 year old son gets? I don’t have experience with kids that age but I really can’t imagine a punishment that works well for my toddler nephew has the same effect for an 8yo.

Retired child psychologist here. I see that your kid is neurotypical & just a middle kid trying to find their way.

Unfortunately, your wife needs a bit of a reality check; time outs were attempted and they didn’t eliminate the behavior, which is the whole point of a punishment. Your middle kid has outgrown time outs as punishment; they now function as nothing more than a short break away from the action.

Punishments, when used in discipline, should effectively cause the behavior to stop (or change, if that is the goal). In order to do that the focus of the punishment must be on something the kid holds in very high regard. It has to be important, and it needs to cause quite a bit of discomfort in order to work. Mom might feel her own discomfort when her kids learn painful lessons, but it doesn’t mean the lesson isn’t a good one, it just means Mom is a sensitive , in-tune Mom.

While I am not generally in support of group punishment, in this case it sounds like it was a good choice for 2 reasons in particular. First, it got your kid to stop horsing around when it was not appreciated, and second, your mother could not safely take all 7 kids if 1 wouldn’t listen & respond to her appropriately anyway.

As long as your muddle continues to behave his transgressions will be forgiven & forgotten by the other kids within a couple of weeks.

Peer pressure isn’t in inherently bad. The definition of Peer Pressure “influence from members of one's peer.” So other kids influencing him to behave is good.

Well, technically, your mother did give him a time-out. She just had to give the other kids a time-out as well.

I mean, I guess your mom could have taken the other kids swimming, and left Jamie at home with your dad...but I shudder at the idea of one person trying to keep an eye on 6 really active kids at a pool. I only have 2 grandsons, and my husband and I agree that it takes both of us to keep an eye on them when we take them somewhere. Recently my husband had them both for awhile (before bringing them back to our house), and in just those two hours, the boys ran him ragged.

I agree with the other commenters who say that peer pressure sometimes works better than timeouts, gentle coaching, and other parental/authority methods of discipline. 8 years old is plenty old enough to start learning about social expectations and consequences.

She's not understanding the situation if that's true.

Bottom line, your son didn't deserve to go. Your mom is responsible for all the children so she can't just leave him behind. A time out only works if it's time away from something enjoyable.

Giving him a timeout then going is like saying, do what you want, you'll just have to stand alone for a bit but then you'll get what you want.

This also wasn't a peer pressure punishment. Being a social outcast is the consequence of his actions not the punishment.

Has time out worked in the past? I suspect not. Additionally, there is no way she can take kids anywhere at all if one of them is misbehaving and has out of control behavior.

Would your wife be happier if that son was left at home while your mother took care of the ones that don't act out?

Sounds like that's been tried and failed several times already... Your wife may be in denial.

School evaluation, or a real doctor?

Was it by a pediatric neuropsychologist? They do comprehensive testing and test for everything. He does sound like a stereotypical ADHD kid, but ODD (Oppositional Defiance Disorder) can present similarly. Also look into removing Red Dye 40 from his diet completely, as this has also been linked to behavioral issues. Also one quick way to find out if his brain is wired different is to give him little bit of coffee. If it calms him down then it’s probably related to ADHD and have him re-evaluated, if it doesn’t let him run around the backyard, the energy boost is usually followed by a nap so it’s a win win lol 😂