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| Whenever you give a negative consequence you must consider it to be your "opening move." You are offering the child the opportunity to pay a one-hundred dollar ticket for a "crime" he has committed. However, if he doesn't pay that ticket, then he "goes to jail" so to speak. It works just like that for us adults. If we get a speeding ticket and choose not to pay it, we can eventually go to jail. Your son isn't paying his ticket - he watched T.V. after you removed that privilege for hitting his brother. The next time he doesn't pay a ticket just say to him, "When I give you a punishment you must cooperate with it. If you choose not to then that punishment is automatically over and such & such will happen to you instead." Name the "such & such" - a specific very very unpleasant consequence that he cannot control. The problem with your choice of two more nights of no T.V. is that you couldn't get him to comply even with one night of no T.V. Your jail level punishment for a kid who is that uncooperative needs to be something that he can't control at all - for instance, you take everyone out for ice cream but leave him home with a babysitter or you physically remove the computer that's in his room so that he can't use it for a week, or you do not take him to his sports game for two weeks and so on. Whatever you pick must be devastating to him so that he realizes with only one jail experience that he is much better off paying his tickets than forcing you to the next level. Sarah Chana
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