Parents only: have you ever punished your children for something they did not do?

I’m not a parent so I’ll let you do all the talking.

However to be more descriptive, I went into places where a couple of people have said they “falsely punished” their sons. I wondered about it since I couldn’t find any instances where a parent admitted they falsely punished their daughter.

This might be the wrong place to discuss this though. But I was wondering if any of you have had kids of your own and wrongfully punished for something they didn’t do.

Anyway, thanks!

um yup lol its a normal parenting thing that happens. especially if a parent has more than one child, and or the one child or children is prone to the terrible two's where every question is answered by the child with one word "no".

as parents you dont immediately believe a child who says no I didnt do that.

parents use their experiences with that child and their parental intuition.

sometimes as parents its discovered you called the wrong twin or not twin the wrong name, or punished the wrong child for not picking up their things or not doing their chores.

sometimes parents also have to deal with the sibling thing where one sibling will "claim to fame the wrongdoing" and you discover later that they were covering for another sibling who promised to never do that wrong again if their favorite sibling didnt tell on them. lol

sometimes parents dont always know which child did what so they pick the one most likely to have done it

as parents you learn there are many areas of parenting where a parent may end up falsely punishing a child especially if theres more than one child in the household.

the key isnt in the false punishing. its the after it happened how did the parent handle it.

in my family the children have a right to come to us and let us know they feel they were punished unjustly and why. and if it turns out we parents did punish them unjustly we apologize, hold a family meeting and hold the correct child accountable. being clear why the first childs punishment is null and void and why we must hold the correct child accountable.

I have two sons. I did punish one for getting the bathroom floor wet, causing my older son to fall and break his arm. Come to find out, a towel was draped over the tub and the water came from it. I still feel bad about it. I did apologize to my son.

I blamed my older child for making a mess it turned out my younger child had made. The older one tried to tell me the younger one had done it, but I didn't think the younger one was capable of it, and I was so, so wrong. I felt terrible and could not apologize enough.