Short answer. Yes. Family Code Article 223 lets a parent, or whoever exercises parental authority in the parents' absence, petition the court where the child lives for an order of disciplinary measures. The child gets counsel and a hearing, and the same case can backfire on a parent the court finds is the one at fault.
What the law says
The parents or, in their absence or incapacity, the individual, entity or institution exercising parental authority, may petition the proper court of the place where the child resides, for an order providing for disciplinary measures over the child.
Family Code, Article 223 — Court-Ordered Disciplinary Measures. Read the full provision →
Who can file, and where
The petition belongs first to the parents. If they are absent or incapacitated, it passes to whoever else is exercising parental authority over the child at the time — a guardian, an institution, or another relative standing in that role. Article 223 directs the petition to “the proper court of the place where the child resides,” not wherever the parent happens to live or file from. That distinction matters if the family is separated or the child is staying with someone else while the disciplinary problem plays out.
The child is not simply the subject of the case
The provision gives the child a real role in the proceeding: the right to “the assistance of counsel, either of his choice or appointed by the court,” and a summary hearing where both the petitioner and the child are heard. This is not a formality. The court is deciding what will happen to a minor, and the statute treats that as reason enough to make sure the child's side of the story is actually presented, not simply assumed from the parent's account of events.
The case can turn against the parent who filed it
A parent asking for disciplinary measures should know the hearing can cut the other way. Article 223 lets the court, in the same proceeding and “irrespective of the merits of the petition,” find the petitioner at fault instead, and respond by depriving or suspending that parent's authority, or adopting whatever other measure it considers just and proper. Filing is not risk-free for the parent; it puts the whole household's conduct, not only the child's, before the court.
What this does and does not settle
Article 223 is a narrow mechanism for a specific problem: a child whose behavior the household can no longer manage on its own, and a parent asking a court to step in with some form of disciplinary order. It is not a vehicle for resolving custody disputes between parents or for punishing a child outside a court's supervision. What measure the court actually orders is left to its judgment on the facts of the case, guided by what it finds just and proper for that child.