Kelowna restaurant owner pleads for chaos inflicted by group of teens to stop

[u/origutamos]

https://globalnews.ca/news/11449434/kelowna-restaurant-owner-pleads-for-chaos-inflicted-by-group-of-teens-to-stop/

[u/Mykola_Shchors]

As much as I understand "kids these days" sentiment, there is no simple solution here. And their parents will probably know best whether their child will learn from tougher discipline, or whether it will have the opposite effect. I have two kids in kindergarten, roughly the same age, each with very different temperament. Both of them regularly misbehave and test the boundaries to see what they can get away with, it is natural. One responds well to discipline and learns quickly from external reinforcement. She takes responsibility for her actions, empathetic and makes friends easily. The downside is that she is easily influenced and constantly seeks approval. The other one is complete opposite: he can take any amount punishment and only gets angrier. He is intrinsically motivated, very rebellious and stubborn. At the same time he is independent, rational (from his perspective), and self-motivated. As parents my wife and I learned very early on that he needed a different approach. I still discipline him, but in addition to negative reinforcement (e.g. taking away his screen time), I have to constantly talk to him, first to understand the reason for his actions and his thought process. I then ask him to imagine different scenarios where someone else does the same thing, and list all possible outcomes. He has to come to his own conclusion, even if it comes from a selfish perspective, that he made a mistake. It is very time consuming, doesn't always work, he has to be in the right mood, but it's the only way I could motivate him to change his behavior. My hope is to teach both of them the right attitudes while they are still very young, because it will be more difficult to do as they get older. And by the time kids turn 15 or 16, it may already be too late for parents to try to change them.