Family Discipline Dilemma

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Family Discipline Dilemma

                A couple of weeks ago, my dad put a punishment on my sister for not getting her work done.  However, she isn’t the only one that is ending up being punished.  My mom, my sister and I are all off our contracts for our phones, and would all like to get the new iPhone 5.  However, since my sister has been behind on her schoolwork, my dad told her that she doesn’t get a new phone until she catches up on all her work and demonstrates that she can get it done on a regular basis for a month.  He then set the date in stone, October 31^st.  Since she doesn’t get a phone, we all don’t get our phones, because we need to buy them all together in order to save anywhere up to one hundred dollars.  Therefore, we are all being punished for my sister’s problem.

                My sister finally got caught up with all her work today, and normally my dad would be happy enough and lighten the punishment almost to nothing.  However, he is very serious this time, and won’t budge.  My first thought was, ‘damnit, _______, why can’t you just get your freaking crap done?’  Then, I grew indignant toward my dad, who invented this whole stupid deal.  Keep in mind that I haven’t said anything yet.  To any normal person, this would be an obvious total burn to my mom and me, who aren’t involved in the situation.  My dad isn’t punishing us on purpose, but that’s just the way it worked out, because of Verizon’s discount when buying numerous phones at once.

                Most teenagers would explode at this unjustified catastrophe, quickly suggesting that my sister should pay the difference that we would have paid if we all got our phones together, so that my mom and I could get our phones immediately.  But let’s be reasonable here.  My sister has developed this bad habit of not getting her crap done, and realistically, she needs this.  I ask myself how much I really need this phone, and it’s not very much.  It definitely isn’t going to kill me to wait another four or five weeks.  And maybe this will get through to my sister and break her bad habit of extreme procrastination to the point of lateness.  Any normal kid in my situation would be furious, but I’m not a normal kid.  Maybe I should just wait this out.