Mumofthree - what would have been a good punishment then?? The idea was to remove things he loves eg his bike. He did use his bike to go to the other childs house.

Grinity - my son has been playing in our front yard for a while now without a fence/gate/full supervision & he has never gone off.

This rings home for me - "But that isn't the place to start, because we have kids for whom breaking the rules is interesting, in and of itself"