Kids Will Be Kids

I'm just wondering what kind of punishment is really in order???? Here's the story. I know a child that has done some very odd stuff. Let's call him Tommy. Tommy was home with his family one day, actually it was "clean up" day. The one day of the week when everyone takes time out to clean any and everything out of order around the house. As always Tommy was taking a ridiculously long time to clean up his bedroom. His mom went to help and while she was helping noticed that there were some clothes sticking out from underneath his mattress. As his mom picked them up she noticed that one of the shirts was really large and it was damaged. Ripped and torn in several places. So now his mom is wondering what the heck happened to it. Interrogation time!!! During the line of questioning his mom finds out that he purposely cut the shirt thinking it was hers one day when he was mad at her. WOW that's crazy!!! The actual confession wasn't that clear and to the point however. This is what he actually said, " I THINK I remember going into the laundry room one day and getting that shirt out the dryer. Uuuummmm, but I'm not sure if it was that SAME shirt. And I THINK that I got it out the dryer and took it back to my room to hide it until you were sleep. Then I THINK that I got my scissors out of my book bag and cut it up because I was mad at you. Uuummm, but I don't know, but I THINK that I thought it was your shirt, but I'm really not sure. And I THINK that I hid it because I didn't want to get in trouble." As he starts crying he then says, "I'm sorry that daddy's shirt is messed up. I THINK I might have done it."............OK, after his mom heard his mangled confession, she was speechless. Not only did she not know what to say, she didn't really know what to do. Yea, punishment or even a butt whoopin was a possibility but she hadn't been faced with a dilemma of this magnitude. A premeditated crime, on a fairly expensive shirt, by her own child. Not to mention him standing with a face full of tears looking sooooo pitiful kind of tugged at her heart. So she decided to turn the punishment decision over to his dad. She walked Tommy right into his dad's office and made him retell his story to his dad. She was sure his dad would be pissed. After hearing the story his dad laughed for what seemed like 30 minutes. He thought it was hilarious. His mom knew then that apparently when Tommy's dad was about 9 years old he must have done the same kind of inexplicable stuff Tommy was doing. It had to be in his genes. Who does that kind of stuff? Right now, Tommy's new nickname is Tommy Scissorhands. The family teases him, and he will probably never live that down. And he was punished, but it took forever for his mom to decide that his punishment would be to make him wear that huge cut up shirt over his clothes to school. That way he'd have to explain to everyone else why he was wearing it. She hoped the embarrassment would be enough to traumatize him and prevent him from doing something that ridiculous again!