<p>How would you punish your kid under these circumstances:</p>
<p>New driver (4 days!)
Law prohibits non-family passengers for 6 months
He gave a teammate/neighbor/friend a ride home from practice</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>Assume we’re revoking the car keys. Need opinions on how long.</p>
<p>I’ve always believed that the best punishments are those that are tied to the offences. Unfortunately this may be more difficult for you, but I think you need to take away the keys for a period of time.</p>
<p>I have two relatively new teen drivers and I promise you that a similar offense in my house would result in loss of driving privileges for at least two weeks. I know that will probably make things more difficult for you, but my philosophy is that you have to let him know that there are consequences and you are looking out for his safety and the safety of others.</p>
<p>Frankly, too many parents in our neighborhood would not do anything at all. If my kid did this, driving would be off limits for some period of time as toledo suggests. I am not sure for how long though.</p>
<p>Take away the keys for a month. If that meant that I had to drive him places, I’d charge him for that service. Would extend by one month the 6 month period in which he couldn’t drive with nonfamily passengers. The rule makes sense to me as it’s very easy for new drivers to become distracted.</p>
<p>If not being able to drive means he’ll have to miss events, etc., too bad. Those are the consequences of his own actions, which really were dangerous.</p>
<p>I used to charge my teens when I had to drive them to school due to their missing the school bus.</p>
<p>Loss of driving privileges for 2 weeks was our standard punishment for both driving an unauthorized passenger or riding with a friend who was still under driving restrictions.</p>
<p>Agree with toledo – and I would take away the keys for a significant enough time period that it would make an impression on your child! I mean, I doubt your child can claim he didn’t know about this law?</p>
<p>Yes, I agree. But how long?</p>
<p>H and I disagreed initially on the amount of time, then we compromised. </p>
<p>I’m going to revise the OP to be more specific.</p>
<p>Two weeks was our rule - only had to enforce it once. Apparently there was a good trickle-down effect with our second new driver, too.</p>
<p>I would also impress on the kid that if the police had caught him, the consequences would have been worse. It is against the law, after all. Perhaps you could find out what the legal consequences would be, and let him know that as well. Could that be your consequence?</p>
<p>I think two weeks is fair - however, you could take into the new year otherwise you’re throwing a new driver into the heaviest traffic of the year. You could divide the time and take keys away across the board and then give them back for practice only (which I imagine includes school if practice follows school). </p>
<p>I also like the “pay” for services add on. and you don’t need to charge money, you can charge time. If my kids forget something and call me to bring it, depending on what it is, I will charge them for my time that it took to bring it to them. I only do that for important uniform things or papers, etc. Otherwise they face the consequences of having forgotten. Of course this happened much more when they were younger, but you’d be surprised how many projects you can get down with teen labor. and oh! NO WHINING. That would earn ME 10 more minutes of their time.</p>
<p>I think that for a teen 2 weeks seems like an eternity. I think 2 weeks with the warning that if this happened again that it would be a minimum of 4 weeks next time. Just wanted to add that if you say at least 4 weeks if it happened again, you must follow through on that.</p>
<p>I’m also in favor of 2 weeks, with the “warning” that the time increases with any additional offenses. As a matter of curiosity, what are the official legal consequences in MD for this?</p>
<p>I’d make it till Jan 1 to avoid driving in New Year’s traffic…</p>
<p>You can also restrict where you’d be willing to drive him. However, if you do that, you have to consider the alternatives carefully. (If the alternative is his buddies driving him, you might want to reconsider, or rule that option out to begin with…)</p>
<p>Remember, the alternatives can be paying to use a taxi, taking public transportation or staying at home.</p>
<p>If he had been killed due to inattention while driving with his friend in the car, he wouldn’t have had any more options.</p>
<p>[wbztv.com</a> - 2 Teens Killed In Middleboro Car Crash](<a href=“http://wbztv.com/local/middleboro.car.crash.2.885126.html]wbztv.com”>CBS Boston - Breaking News, Sports, Weather, I-Team Investigations)</p>
<p>This tragedy happened yesterday morning with two students from a high school a few towns over from us. The 18-year old driver had his full license for only 4 days. Here in MA, new drivers have the 6 month waiting period before they can have non-family members as passengers. So sad to see this happen, particularly during the holidays.</p>
<p>Thanks for the opinions, everyone. :)</p>
<p>As I posted above, H and I knew we would be revoking driving privileges. We just disagreed on the duration. He wanted 3 days, I wanted until the end of the marking period. (Jan 23) I won’t bore you with a recap of our negotiation, but you can envision words like “good kid” “what if there was an accident” “first offense” “broke the law!” “sneaky behavior” “4.0” :rolleyes: </p>
<p>We settled on 10 days. No car. No cell. No screens. No social life.</p>
<p>No car is punishment for breaking the law.
No cell is punishment for betraying our trust.
No screens and no social life are punishments for giving in to peer pressure. </p>
<p>Im not sure what the penalty is for breaking this law in Maryland. I <em>think</em> its loss of license until age 18.</p>
<p>I like Northstarmoms idea about extending the non-family driving period. Alas, we didnt think of that. At this point I think it would be unfair to pile on. </p>
<p>We live in a place without taxis and public transportation.</p>
<p>Have a great weekend.</p>
<p>Thanks for the link, allie’smom. I’m printing the article and taking it home. </p>
<p>It could be us.</p>
<p>Off topic but something to be aware of: When my daughter was a new driver she was heavily pressured by her coach to drive other students to where the team trained for cross country…to the point that my D asked me to call the coach and tell her to back off. Some of these coaches might not know (or possibly not care about) local driving laws. This particular coach was snide in front of the team about the D not driving other students even after my phone call.</p>
<p>Dougbetsy, I think the punishment is apt, and BLESS YOU for having a punishment. Too many people look the other way. Northstarmom (?) is right–it is a good idea to tack on another month to the 6 month rule for every infraction–we’ve had to do that once, and the kid was soooo close to the 6 month mark. Oh, well!</p>