this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2026
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Well little Timmy, since you were SO thoughtful taking the labels out of the cans, you are going to play canned flood roulette for the next week. This means, for an entire week you pick one can at random for your dinner, and you are not allowed to have another food outside of what the can offers. In the meanwhile, the rest of us will eat your favorite things in front of you, while you are in your sad corner eating your can of food. Me and your mother are going to place bets to see how long your spirit lasts. Let the games begin
My friend's parents tried this sort of punishment mindset with him when it was a kid. He ended up grounded with increasingly draconian punishments for roughly five years because of the shockingly impressive stubbornness of all people involved until they "gave up on him" after 7th grade (yes, this literally started when he was a 2nd grader). He ended up moving out on his own at 16 and dropping out of school and didn't really have a relationship with them for a good decade and a half.
I don't really have any words of wisdom from this other than never underestimate a person's ability to defy logic. It just ended up ruining the whole family's experience for a long, long time.
Edit: I did just remember something "funny" about the whole thing. My friend didn't really know how to, or enjoy, doing a lot of things that pretty much all kids did because of his seemingly eternal grounding. And he was quite literally the palest person I have ever known because he only went outside to get on the bus for school. His parents turned him into some sort of cave person lo.l
Punishments are like the least effective way to convince/teach someone
For most kids, getting rid of something they like for a day or weekend tends to be enough of a punishment. From that story, tho? Parents were going waaaaaaaay overboard
Yeah in small doses they can work, generally it's just better to talk to them
Is your friend Butters Stotch?
Nah, he was (well is, we're still friends after 30 years) actually pretty cool unlike the South Park character. I guess it was easy to be cool when you gave no fucks about getting in trouble.
it did not start when you said it started probably
it is true that I can't say for when it initially started, but we became friends in 4th grade and I saw the last three years of it first hand and he was already quite used to not being allowed to leave his yard or have friends over. He was notorious for being defiant, though not violent, to teachers as well and was constantly being written up.
My parents attempted that with me, not the can-roulette part, but I was a picky eater, so in order to get me to eat new foods and expand my palate, they would give me food and say, you're not having anything but that. You're sitting at the table till it's done. While they ate food that I definitely did like.
They ended up giving up on it because I would sit at the table for hours on end and even sleep at the table. And due to the fact that I don't feel hunger until im basically almost fainting, I would basically put myself on the brink of feeling faint, which concerned them.
I'm no longer extremely picky. I'm still picky, but no longer to the extreme extent that I used to be.
That's an entirely different situation though. Picky eater is more of a clinical issue. And brute forcing such things never works. Kid being an asshole however, well that, that we can fix reverse assholianism.
Well it can till you end up dealing with a kid stubborn enough to harm themselves.
Then you just end up ruining your relationship with your kid for life in an attempt to harm them psychologically because your parenting skills are dog shit.
There is a galaxy of difference between a kid who thinks they can get away with being a brat with no consequences and a kid who has the level of emotional problems that can lead to self harm. Not to mention the difference between a parent who is just teaching their kid that there are consequences to their actions vs a parent who simply doesn't care about whether or not they are harming their kid with excessive punitive actions.
And then they'll wonder why he wants nothing to do with them as an adult and why they never get to see their grandchildren and then eventually why no one visits them in their nursing home and why they die alone.
Pretty sure that this is not the catalyst for why that happens. This is a good learning experience for a child as to why this type of behavior does not benefit them or those around them. More likely, the type of family situation you described develops as a result of abuse, physical or emotional.