Grounding – More Work For the Parents
It is very common to use “you are grounded” when your adolescent misbehaves. But what are you really doing? You are really creating a lot of work for yourself as the parent.
Common grounding rules: No TV, no computer, no phone, in bed early, no going out with friends. This means you must now become like the gestapo police. You have to watch that your child is NOT watching TV, since that is a regular thing they do, you may not notice that your “grounded child” is amoung the children watching TV. Same goes for the rest of it. You have to become even more vigilant than you usually are.
This tends not to work for the parents and the “grounded child” becomes “ungrounded” by default. Then no punishment has been received for the wrong that made you ground them in the first place. This won’t work very well towards teaching them how to behave properly and what rules they have to follow.
Depending on the age and maturity of your child, you may want to sit down with them and let them pick a punishment. No, I am not crazy. But when you try it, don’t be surprised when your child actually picks a more difficult punishment than you had in mind. I have had my children do it on many occasions. I usually will go with their suggestion, after talking it out and perhaps modifying it. When they have a say in the punishment, it seems to be something that they actually do. Whether it is to clean up a siblings room or clean out the garage or something else, they see it as better than whatever you were going to do to them.
By doing this you also help your child in their growth towards a more mature attitude. They decide you aren’t as bad as they thought. But still drop them off for school at least a block before school! Wouldn’t want their peers to see this. And just forget that hug and kiss goodbye, they are way too old for that.
But, if it is a younger child, you may want to ask them the same thing. But now you will have to guide the discussion. Your young child may not know what is a good punishment. When you do guide them, make sure you get them to think it was their idea. Say something like “do you mean” in front of whatever your idea is. This way they can agree with you and decide it was their idea to begin with.
I have done this when the children were young. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. My daughter has come to me and said “I changed my mind” and then wants to change the punishment. At this point I try not to give in to the changes they want. Because this will only defeat the purpose. Punishment is not supposed to be pleasant or easy. If it was, it wouldn’t be called punishment.
