Riddle me this: how do you make parents and their teens work together to create something meaningful?
If you're Judge John Sholden, you assign them a thousand-piece puzzle to put together . . . or pay a $500 fine.
I'd be picking the puzzle, how about you?
With recent news about judges who require their parents to spank their children and judges who give the go-ahead for desperate mothers to collect their dead sons' sperm, it was nice to hear about a magistrate whose taking out-of-the-box justice seriously.
So what if it's out of the puzzle box? It's still sound reasoning - if parents and their teens are so disconnected that the kids are getting in the type of trouble that lands them in a courtroom, putting them in a room together to work toward a common goal puts them on an even playing field. And doing so with a pile of puzzle pieces instead of requiring the traditional "sit down and talk it out" method allows for an icebreaker, lets two people who might have been doing a lot of fighting instead of talking to focus on something outside themselves.
Sholden has a second motive - getting kids who are skipping school to understand that they can tackle major undertakings and come out on the other side. "When you open a puzzle up, it's a mess.
But you get it in your head that you can solve the problem. Once
student have a sense of accomplishment, it transfers to accomplishment
at school also," the judge told a Dallas newspaper.
Some judges are hanging judges, but I'd take the puzzling judge any time.
Image: TheCincyBlog
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