Spinning wheel metes out random punishment to kids

NewImage
Jose R. Gonzalez was issued a patent in 1989 for his punishment wheel.

An apparatus for choosing a punishment for a child, and a method of its use, are disclosed. An assortment of adhesive-backed decals designating various punishments is provided. Decals selected from the assortment by the parents are positioned around a base wheel. The child spins a knob and pointer that are centrally and rotatably mounted on the base wheel. When the knob and pointer come to rest, that punishment is imposed as indicated by the pointer.

Punishments include: "NO TV," "GROUNDED," "TIME OUT," "K.P.," "NO DESSERT," "DONATE A TOY," "NO SPORTS," "NO PHONE," "NO FRIENDS," "SWATS," "NO VISITING," "NO TREAT," "HOUSE CHORES."

Also, "PARENTS CHOICE," (parent chooses the punishment to be imposed on the child), and "KID'S CHOICE," (child choose his own punishment).

Punishment wheel (Via Futility Closet)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

xzzy

The NHL implements a similar scheme for their discpline.

http://www.nhlwheelofjustice.com/
- http://aqfl.net Ant
  
  LOL! Is there one for NBA and other sports too?
fuzzyfuzzyfungus

Bust a deal, face the wheel.

Somebody had better hope that bartertown doesn’t take intellectual property as seriously as it takes contract law…
- Jonathan Badger
  
  I think the classical Rota Fortunae (sadly without Vana White) has precedence .
- bcsizemo
  
  Totally what I was going to post…epic!
- niktemadur
  
  No, no, not Mad Max, but Looney Tunes “Early To Bet” instead.
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAujd7GQTmU
starfish and coffee

Apart from ‘Time Out’ the list of punishments pretty much sums up my adult life…
- timmaguire
  
  Yeah, act badly and his punishment is to be you for a day.
  
  There was a short-lived sitcom–a white collar criminal gets sentenced to janitorial work as his community service and the other janitors can’t believe it. “He steals 3 million dollars and, as punishment, he’s sentenced to my life.”
Nash Rambler

Wheel of Morality, turn turn turn,
tell us the lesson that we should learn.
mccrum

“The child spins a knob”

Harsh. When you’re busted the thing you most want to do is to be responsible for where that spinner lands.
Henrix Gudmundsson

I…what? 1989?
Teller

Yesterday, my Punishment Wheel landed on Lose Doc Watson.
- http://www.iandicomputing.com Clifton
  
  Oh man – I hadn’t heard that yet. Sunday we were listening to his singing ‘My Grandfather’s Clock’.
  
  How appropriate in retrospect: “Ninety years without slumbering – tick tock, tick tock – his life seconds numbering – tick tock, tick tock – it stopped short, never to go again, when the old man died.”
Alan

I envision a dystopian short story/film in which the courts use these, except with pardon, probation, 10 years, 20 years, life and death.
Navin_Johnson

Needs more:

“Get dropped off down by the river”
“Off to military school”
“Go out behind the shed”
- Sanjaya Kumar
  
  They already thought of it. From the patent description: “An assortment of adhesive-backed decals designating various punishments is provided.”
  
  No mention of a Vanna White action figure, though.
ComradeQuestions

Good job, patent system.
bobtato

Kneel in Prayer? Know Pain? Kill Pets? Knuckle Prolapse?

I almost don’t want to know.
- haineux
  
  Army slang — “Kitchen Patrol” — ie. peel potatoes, wash dishes.
  - thecleaninglady
    
    Great way to instill hate for any kind of kitchen work. And condition the pattern “work = punishment”
    - http://www.madziabryll.com Cefeida
      
      I was just thinking that. :/
    - dragonfrog
      
      Indeed – my two year old daughter often asks to help washing dishes, mowing the lawn, etc. In can’t imagine a better way of crushing that impulse as soon as she gets old enough to do those tasks.
  - http://twitter.com/kinnon87 Calum kinnon
    
    i figured it was “Kitchen Porter” could be either I guess, same job
- reglisse
  
  Kaiser Permanente:
  
  “You just earned yourself a flu shot, mister!”
http://twitter.com/digitalArtform Joseph Francis

I’m just glad it wasn’t a Catherine Wheel.
silkox

Fortune presents gifts not according to the book
What various paths are followed in distributing honours and possessions
She gives awards to some and penitent’s cloaks to others
Sometimes she robs the chief goatherd of his cottage and and goatpen
And to whomever she fancies the lamest goat has borne two kids
Because in a village a poor lad has stolen one egg
He swings in the sun and another gets away with a thousand crimes
SomeGuyNamedMark

I’ll put $5 on “No TV”
Ito Kagehisa

“I want it by tomorrow evening at the latest. If it is not ready, the Great Wheel may become as a juggernaut upon its ministers. Do you hear me and understand, Lord of Karma?”

…

The Lord of Karma made an ancient and mystical sign behind his back.
http://profiles.google.com/marc.k.mielke Marc Mielke

Prior Art: “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome” 1985, assuming the narrow concept of wheel that determines the spinner’s punishments.

And the punishments on that one were a lot cooler.
- http://twitter.com/samthepea Sam Pourasghar
  
  Where’s Gulag? This is quite tame.
http://www.iandicomputing.com Clifton

Some friends keep promising to institute a D&D “Random Punishment Table” for their daughter – roll a d20, select appropriate row. Fortunately she seems singularly well-behaved and they seem singularly nice parents, so it’s unlikely they will ever follow through. See how those go together?

The strongest punishment we have ever inflicted on our son is to sit down with him and ask him to tell us exactly what he did, and what he was thinking when he did XYZ (biting another kid at school, IIRC), insisting that he think about it in depth and talk through the consequences. This is really a pretty harsh punishment; I think most kids would probably prefer to be spanked, lose a toy, and lose dessert, but it brought the lesson home to him and there were no repetitions.
- thecleaninglady
  
  Believing in punishment = training a child to be a slave to a higher authority constantly evaluating their behavior and deciding if it was right or wrong. So the child disengages their intrinsic motivation and moral compass and sells themselves out in order to please someone else in order to be safe.
  
  Check out Alfie Kohn’s books filled with tons of research on the futility and harmfulness of both punishment and rewards: Punished by Rewards as well as Unconditional Parenting.
  - http://www.madziabryll.com Cefeida
    
    My good friend employs Consequence instead of Punishment. It’s never ‘you have to suffer because you were bad’, but rather ‘you did something bad and the result is that you have to fix it/ make amends/ work on improving yourself so that you don’t do it again’. Could just be a coincidence, but her kid is an AWESOME kid.
  - Teller
    
    Children have an intrinsic moral compass?
    - bcsizemo
      
      I was always under the impression they had one, but it needed to be corrected ever so often. Cause frankly if I was left to my own intrinsic motivation I would have just taken what I wanted from other kids and been an asshole… But when your parents put limits and consequences on you (including punishment) then it has a tendency to narrow how far that compass swings.
      
      Personally from what I see in children today, I think parents need to start dishing out some real punishment – no one I know who is 30+ got away with a quarter of what I see kids doing today.
- ihavenomouthandimustscream
  
  Under that model would the daughter have gotten a saving throw? Of course with modifiers for the severity of the infraction.
- snowmentality
  
  sit down with him and ask him to tell us exactly what he did, and what he was thinking when he did XYZ […], insisting that he think about it in depth and talk through the consequences.
  
  Oh God, that was the most excruciating punishment when I was a kid. Right up there with your parent sadly shaking their head and saying “I’m not angry, I’m just … disappointed in you.”
  
  But yeah. Super effective.
thecleaninglady

Parental love being replaced by Stockholm Syndrome “love” for generations… No wonder we love violence, romanticise war and believe that punishment is a good strategy.
timmaguire

In my neighborhood, any parent using this would be shunned. But if it were renamed “The Learning Wheel” they just might put it in the schools.
TheMadLibrarian

Cleaninglady, how do you get your kids to understand misbehavior=consequences? How’s that working for you?
bcsizemo

Pst. Maybe I’m old (at 33), but I didn’t have these weak punishments as a child. It went from being sent to your room, to being grounded, to having to pick your own “switch” to be beat with (or for some of my peers which belt).

Needless to say I’ve was sent to my room a few times, grounded once, and even picked my own switch out….and that I only did once (because that was more of a mental punishment than any of the others by far).

Maybe I’ll end up being a horrible parent, but when I see kids running and scream around stores I feel like someone needs put those little hellions in their place. I don’t, but I just think it.
- ihavenomouthandimustscream
  
  Did you pick a thin switch instead of a thick one?
  - bcsizemo
    
    Actually that was the torture of the punishment, not the actual being hit with it. If you picked one that was too small or frail you were sent back out to find one more suitable, but you’d be get twice as many licks as you were going to. But pick one that was larger then it needed to be and you just caused yourself more pain.
    
    Obviously this only works on a child that can grasp such things, so doing it to a 5 year old might prove useless, but an 8-10 year old shouldn’t have much problem grasping the dilemma of the situation.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Your parents are violent criminals and belong in prison.
http://twitter.com/googoogjoob42 googoogjoob

HOW HAS NO ONE YET COMMENTED ON HOW THIS PATENT IS REFERENCED BY THE PATENT FOR “Homeland security advisory system threat status indicator device”
Rossi

I’m comforted by the fact that
“Second Chance” is included. Although, it wouldn’t be long before my kids improved their spin technique such that it lands there 3 out of every 4 spins.
jwkrk

Swats, that’s the best you got?
I think an Old Testament Biblical version would be a LOT more interesting…
“The Rod”, “stoning”, “cut off hand”, “death”…
http://profile.yahoo.com/ALUBVN76BIAAXDENONGIJ5XQLM Denying The Antecedent

The optimal strategy is to misbehave as frequently as possible, with the goal of landing at “Kid’s Choice”. Once there, you’d want to choose the punishment: “Take on the responsibility of rewriting all of the punishment categories, and the added responsibility of determining the situations under which the wheel will be spun.”

If the parent complains later on, point out that by living a completely decadent and hedonistic lifestyle, you’re doing yourself long-term harm and therefore this can legitimately be classified as a punishment.
http://profiles.google.com/gherghetta Robin Gherghetta

What is “K.P.”?
- reglisse
  
  It’s North Korea.
John Maple

Is this not a very bad idea to take the thought out of punishment? To turn it into some sort of aleatoric event?

I think “Clifton”s idea, involving an explanation, is far better since it requires awareness of the offense.
bunaen

Break a deal. Face the wheel.
tenesmusD

I would add a VERY small sliver on the wheel that just says “CANDY!”
Sometimes you just get away with things, but not often.
semiotix

The spinner came up “NO FRIENDS” one fateful day the summer I turned 11. But it said nothing about the duration of the punishment.

I often wonder how life would have been different if I’d cleaned up my room that day, like I was supposed to.