In your example, I agree that taking the phone feels more like punishment. Working to pay of some or all of the bill is teaching a child to take responsibility for their actions. If they are not capable of that, or if it happens repeatedly, then taking the phone away is a reasonable consequence because that's what will happen in real life. If you don't pay your bills, you get evicted. If you don't pay your cell phone bill, it gets turned off. Now, with a teen, they might not have the money to pay an outrageous bill immediately, and that's where a parent can step in, and then expect them to work off the balance. That's not mean. That's helping them in a time of need and having them learn from the consequences of their actions.
I also think it depends on the child. I was the child who would learn from talking. My brother was not. It also depends on the age of the child. A 3 year old often needs to experience things.
Two examples (because I'm procrastinating from grading papers ugh).
#1 Last weekend, dd and I went to a Mother-Daughter brunch at church. After the brunch she wanted to play with a couple of her friends for a bit, so we stopped off in the nursery. She took off her 'church shoes' and ran around in her tights.
When it was time to go home, I asked her to put her shoes on. She refused. I suggested that I help, she refused. I told her "It's raining out, if you go out without your shoes, your feet will get wet." She ran outside without her shoes.
Her tights got wet. She had a major fit because she wanted them dry. I sympathized. I offered to take off her wet tights. She had a major meltdown because she wanted her tights dry right then! (I didn't have extra tights and we were a 5 minute drive from home, so it wasn't an issue of major, long term discomfort.)
However, the next time I asked her to put her shoes on and she refused, I reminded her that her feet would get wet, and she put them on. She had to experience the natural consequence of wet feet before she 'got it'. We've been through the same with cold and rain.
#2 When my brother was in high school, he began playing poker at lunch with a crowd of boys. My brother was (and is) a kind, gentle soul who always sees the best in people. But he was also not very popular and thought playing poker with these boys would make him (more) popular. What happened in reality is that he racked up $100 in debts to these miscreants and they began calling him at home demanding money.
When my parents found out, they did three things:
1) Immediately talked to the school to put a stop to the gambling. (It had happened in the lunch room which wasn't all that well supervised)
2) Had a long talk with my brother about trust, gambling and healthy skepticism. (Which resulted in one of the famous lines in our family. "When you sit down to gamble, look around the table and find the sucker. If you can't find one, get up and leave, because you're it!)
3) Made my brother get a job to earn the $100 he owed.
Now, they could have stopped at 2. But they felt it was important for him to experience the consequences of racking up debt to unsavory people. For him, talking wasn't enough. He needed to have to work for a whole week of spring break and then see that money disappear before he "got it".
He's never gambled again. He did have some periods in his early 20s where he spent beyond his means because the guys at work were pressuring him to do the cool thing. Once again, my parents didn't bail him out, but helped him work out a payment plan (which included cutting up his credit cards).
My parents didn't 'punish' him in the traditional sense, they didn't forbid gambling. They did help him understand the consequences of his actions at a level where it wasn't going to ruin his life. If they had bailed him out, it was entirely possible that he would have continued to rack up debts when he was out of school until he got to a point where he would have had to declare bankruptcy (he's not got a lot of internal discipline, as much as I love him).
He's now got a successful job, owns a house and is able to live within his means (with a little help from his wife!).
