Parents often ask me how they should respond to children who won’t listen and whether punishments are useful. I do not believe in punishments as an educational tool. In any case, much depends on the child’s age, seriousness of the ‘crime’, if there are aggravating circumstances such as lying, recurrence etc. I won’t say that children should never be punished. However, it is not easy to punish convincingly, in a useful way and without exaggeration. A few ‘rules’: a precise agreement or rule must have been broken and punishment should not suddenly be given for actions that until recently were condoned. There should be no doubt that a certain action will lead to a certain punishment. A parent who confiscates the kid’s smart phone at the tenth time the child consults his phone during dinner must realize that the kid was lucky the previous nine times. So once the phone is given back the child might well try out his luck again since the chance of new punishment is 10%. Punishments must be relatively small. If big what level of punishment will be required if the crime is repeated? For example, if by ignoring a red light, drivers had a chance in a hundred to be fined 100 euro or the certainty of being fined 1 euro, from the mathematical standpoint the two situations would be identical, but many more drivers would jump the red light in the former case with respect to the latter case. In fact, a chance in a hundred to lose 100 euro is an exciting gamble whereas the certainty of losing 1 euro is dumb. Finally, a punishment should produce something. Rather than “tonight you are not going out” or “I’m confiscating your phone” it should be “write an essay entitled…” “wash the car inside and outside”.