Reddit user u/Tatey180pro1 asked people to share the most creative punishment their parents ever gave them, and these are entertaining as hell:
1. "We lost the snow shovels building snow forts, so our parents made us shovel snow using pots and pans."
2. "My best friend and her brother wouldn't stop fighting, and their parents had tried everything — taking their toys, early bedtime, grounding, etc. So one day, their dad had the bright idea of putting them in the garage, sitting next to each other while holding hands and watching paint dry on a canvas."
"And every time they said something rude to each other, he poured a little more paint over the canvas." —shelbygirl1919
3. "My parents always made us repair things we broke. One day, my sister and I were roughhousing, and we accidentally made a hole in the wall. So my dad drove us to Home Depot and told us to figure out how to fix the hole on our own. We had to talk to the employees, ask our own questions, gather repair items, select paint color, and then fix the hole on our own..."
"We messed up a lot, but we learned the value of taking care of our things; we realized how hard it was to fix things, and we learned new skills. All this without yelling or a lecture."
4. "If I slammed a door really hard when I was mad, my mom and grandparents would make me practice closing it nicely — I'd have to open and close it gently about 50 times, counting out loud. If I closed too hard, I would have to start over."
5. "I once misfired a Nerf gun in front of my dad, and he had me go through a manual on gun safety."
6. "When my brother and I bickered, my parents made us stand side by side with our non-dominant hands free — his right hand, my left hand — then told us to clean the kitchen."
"It was difficult, but we were laughing about it by the time everything was clean."
7. "My mother wouldn't just take my Game Boy away for a few days. She knew her way around Pokémon Yellow, too — so she would threaten to release my highest level Pokémon if I was bad. I once had a fight with my brother, so I immediately stashed the Charizard I was working on in the PC. She took the Game Boy and, sure enough, released it."
8. "When my kids would fight and it got ugly, I would send them to their shared room for an hour and tell them they can't come out until they came up with a really good secret handshake. They would immediately forget they were mad at each other and start working on the handshake. And I would hear them laughing their heads off while they did it."
"They would come out an hour later and show me this super-long fun handshake, synchronized to the minute. I would congratulate them for their hard work, and then they would go back to playing. It still brings a smile to my face."
9. "I had a coworker whose son was 13 and had all the hallmarks of a sulky teen. Her favorite punishment was making him sit next to her on the couch for a few hours while she did all the best 'mom things' — hugging him, making bad jokes, etc."
"Punishing him with mom love — a teenager's worst nightmare!"
10. "The most creative punishment I ever received was the World War I lecture. I got in trouble for something mundane, and my dad sat me down and gave me a three-hour lecture about the direct causes and nuanced issues surrounding the start of World War I."
11. "I love baking, and my mom loves a clean kitchen. Well, I once baked something and left all the dishes in the sink for her to do, so she took my sugar and flour away for a couple of weeks."
12. "When I was 15, I drank way too much at a party full of college kids, and my ride home never showed up. I was hours past curfew, so my mom came to find me. She didn't say a word to me the whole way home, and I spent the night sick in the bathroom. The next morning, my mom woke me up early, sat me at the kitchen table, poured me a shot of tequila, and said, 'If you're going to drink, drink with me.' Just the smell sent me back to the bathroom, and I haven't drank tequila since."
13. "Every time we failed to take the trash out on time or cut the grass before it rained, we were fined $25, which we were told went into the vacation fund. When I turned 18, my dad sat me down in his office and handed me an envelope stuffed with bank statements. Turns out he was investing every one of the $25 fines into a mutual fund!"
14. "I'd often ditch school to spend the day at bookstores, museums, or tagging along with an older sibling in his college lectures. Once I got suspended for a week for ditching, and my parents offered me to perform free lawn care for an entire month to my elderly neighbor. After the punishment was over, my dad gave me a list of other neighbors who would pay me to take care of their lawns!"
"Turns out, my dad was going around the neighborhood telling all of our other neighbors about what a good job I was doing! And when I wanted to stop mowing lawns to get a 'real job' in fast food like my friends, he had me figure out my 'hourly take-home' vs. making minimum wage. I learned that I was making five times the amount they were per hour. Talk about opening my eyes to the entrepreneurial way!"
15. "When I was 9 years old, I kept stealing my grandma's spot on the couch. She kept telling me to scoot over, and I resisted. So after the fifth time of arguing with me that day, she said, 'If you don't move right now, I'm gonna sit on you and fart.' I laughed and refused to move, and she literally sat on my stomach and fucking farted! I never took Grandma's spot on the couch again, and even 22 years later, I will not argue with that woman about a goddamn thing."
16. "My mom created the wheel of punishment. When I was naughty, I would have to spin the repurposed board game spinner, and whatever punishment it landed [on] was the punishment I had to do."
17. "When I thought I was big and tough, I got into an argument with my father and told him I didn't need him anymore. He simply went downstairs and shut off the power to my room. After hours of being stubborn in the middle of summer, I finally caved, and I never said anything like that to him again."
18. "Once I broke a couch while roughhousing with my friends, and my punishment was having to be responsible for getting it repaired. I had to provide three quotes from different repair shops, include a pros and cons list for each price, note which company would pick the couch up and which wouldn't, and then I had to cover the costs myself."
19. "My mom called it the 'Stone Age Punishment,' in which she took away every piece of digital technology I owned, and I had to get good grades each week to earn something back, starting with my radio. I never remember music sounding as good as it did that day!"
20. "My dad once grounded me and my sister. We were blaming each other when he decided to separate us, and then he came into my room and explained that he knew my sister was the one to blame. He asked me how long I think he should ground her for. I said a few days..."
"Then he went into her room and told her the same thing — that he knew it was all MY fault! He asked her how long he should ground me for, and she said a month. So he grounded her for a month, and me for a few days, since that's the punishment we each thought was appropriate."
21. "Once, when regular punishments weren't working, my mom simply said she was putting a curse on me that someday I would have kids just like me."
What about you? What creative, funny, or totally random punishments did your parents come up with when you misbehaved? Tell us about them in the comments section, and you could be featured in an upcoming BuzzFeed Community post!
Note: Responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.