I am not a harsh punisher by nature, I tend to prefer gentle discipline (my husband would probably say I’m a pushover but I’m not! Really!). The harshest punishments we dole out lately are probably taking away their iPod Touch or Nintendo DS — screen time stuff that they wouldn’t be happy about losing privilege to. However, yesterday I did have an incident where one of my boys had very bad behavior on his way home from the bus stop and a severe punishment was in order. He has been looking forward to getting pet gerbils since we moved, but I told him he won’t be getting gerbils when he has behavior like that. So now he has to prove he will be on his best behavior if he wants me to reconsider about getting gerbils. It’s working, too, because this morning he asked if he was on his way to gerbils again and has been on his best behavior!