Said It Here

How to motivate a child who doesn't care about punishments

Conventional disciplinary measures like grounding, losing privileges, and taking away toys fail entirely because the child genuinely does not care about the consequences. This leaves parents stuck yelling out of frustration after days of deadlock, completely out of ideas on how to get basic tasks done or encourage them to succeed.

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

  1. 1
    Threatening to ground them from tech
  2. 2
    Making them stay in their room until it is clean
  3. 3
    Taking their toys away for a month
  4. 4
    Yelling

In their words

Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.

r/Teachers1 person · September 2026

“I have a behavior kid in seventh grade. He causes a lot of chaos in class and doesn't follow with me, and doesn't do his homework. There's an exam coming up and I don't think he's going to get a good grade.”source ↗

“My coworker and I have a lot of trouble dealing with him and we want to find the best way to deal with him and encourage him without patronizing him. I want him to do well.”source ↗

AblaKamel · r/Teachers · 3 upvotes
r/Parenting1 person · September 2026

“i have to struggle for 30 min to go outside a saturday when there is a great weather.”source ↗

“They won't clean their room because "i don't care to sleep in a messy room, it doesn't bother me, and i don't want to clean"”source ↗

“I tried to explain that we don't always do what we wants, then threat them (but guess what... they don't give a damn about it) to ground them from tech, that they will stay in their room until it's clean, to take their toys away for a months... they still don't give a damn f*...”source ↗

“I end up to yelling after 3 damn days to lock the toys for 1 months.... and i feel bad because i don't want to be this person... but i'm all out of ideas tbh...”source ↗

Lady_Onanism · r/Parenting

Where this came up

r/Parentingr/Teachersbehaviorclassroom managementdisciplineeducationparenting

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