Does grounding work? How do you know ?

[Anonymous]

Genuinely curious. I think it’s often the easy parenting way to feel like you’ve done something without really addressing what the underlying issue was/is. I also think it can close you kids down so they don’t talk to you about stuff.

[Anonymous]

What do you consider grounding? DD loses privileges if she doesn't take care of responsibilities. The natural consequence of her not doing the things she is responsible for is that she doesn't get to do the things she wants to do for fun. Do you consider that grounding? If so, yes I find that it generally works.

[Anonymous]

Studies show that long term punishments aren’t extremely effective. The same is true for punishing kids for lying. A lot of old school punishments dont really work except to make kids fearful and hide things from their parents better. However, a lot of parents don’t want to feel ineffective, and they feel doing something-anything-is better than letting kids learn from their mistakes so they go with hard core punishments. (I think it’s sort of like when people give antibiotics for viruses. They know the science shows it won’t help, and can actually harm, but they can’t stand the thought of doing nothing.) There’s also the defensive stance that scientists can’t possibly know what’s best for their kids. The psychologists running these studies are probably hippies who never say no to their kids.

[Anonymous]

If the behavior changes, I guess it worked. I’ve found taking away electronics is effective. However, we haven’t faced any serious behaviors like drinking, drugs, stealing, or active lying. My older DD who is now a young adult skipped school a couple times senior year. The younger one went to a friend’s house on a half day without telling us. Both lost their phones for a couple days. Which is the worst as a teen!

[Anonymous]

When my daughter was 15 she made a conscious decision to begin hanging around with less academically minded friends and start hanging out with the "fun" crowd. Another mom clued me in to some behaviors I was unaware of and shocked by. I grounded her for a year. She wasn't allowed to do any overnights anywhere, or have others overnight at our house, and she had to come straight home from school. Evenings and weekends she hung out with her family instead of friends.

It curbed the opportunity for the sketchy behavior and kept her out of trouble for that year. It did not totally change her point of view. She did thank me a few years later, she said she was in some ways relieved to have an excuse to say no to the new friends.

She's a stubborn one, and even now as an adult she likes to party, although her life is otherwise successful and on track. I didn't change her by grounding her but I changed the year she was fifteen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When my daughter was 15 she made a conscious decision to begin hanging around with less academically minded friends and start hanging out with the "fun" crowd. Another mom clued me in to some behaviors I was unaware of and shocked by. I grounded her for a year. She wasn't allowed to do any overnights anywhere, or have others overnight at our house, and she had to come straight home from school. Evenings and weekends she hung out with her family instead of friends.

It curbed the opportunity for the sketchy behavior and kept her out of trouble for that year. It did not totally change her point of view. She did thank me a few years later, she said she was in some ways relieved to have an excuse to say no to the new friends.

She's a stubborn one, and even now as an adult she likes to party, although her life is otherwise successful and on track. I didn't change her by grounding her but I changed the year she was fifteen.

Appropriate response. You may have saved her life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When my daughter was 15 she made a conscious decision to begin hanging around with less academically minded friends and start hanging out with the "fun" crowd. Another mom clued me in to some behaviors I was unaware of and shocked by. I grounded her for a year. She wasn't allowed to do any overnights anywhere, or have others overnight at our house, and she had to come straight home from school. Evenings and weekends she hung out with her family instead of friends.

It curbed the opportunity for the sketchy behavior and kept her out of trouble for that year. It did not totally change her point of view. She did thank me a few years later, she said she was in some ways relieved to have an excuse to say no to the new friends.

She's a stubborn one, and even now as an adult she likes to party, although her life is otherwise successful and on track. I didn't change her by grounding her but I changed the year she was fifteen.

NP here. could you elaborate on the 'behaviors' so that the rest of us with teens can keep an eye out?

[Anonymous]

It works when your child wants to do things outside?

My son is happy to stay in his room.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
It works when your child wants to do things outside?

My son is happy to stay in his room.

I was a homebody bookworm so when I got in trouble my mom grounded me by arranging tons of play dates or making me play outside without a book.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When my daughter was 15 she made a conscious decision to begin hanging around with less academically minded friends and start hanging out with the "fun" crowd. Another mom clued me in to some behaviors I was unaware of and shocked by. I grounded her for a year. She wasn't allowed to do any overnights anywhere, or have others overnight at our house, and she had to come straight home from school. Evenings and weekends she hung out with her family instead of friends.

It curbed the opportunity for the sketchy behavior and kept her out of trouble for that year. It did not totally change her point of view. She did thank me a few years later, she said she was in some ways relieved to have an excuse to say no to the new friends.

She's a stubborn one, and even now as an adult she likes to party, although her life is otherwise successful and on track. I didn't change her by grounding her but I changed the year she was fifteen.

NP here. could you elaborate on the 'behaviors' so that the rest of us with teens can keep an eye out?

The mom of one of my daughter's friends contacted me and told me she had read her daughter's journal and it documented activities like getting high, drinking and sexual activity her daughter and some friends had engaged in, my daughter was named as one of them. I believed her but she also showed it to me so there was no doubt, even though as far as I know my daughter had not done those things previously. Ironically I had been talking to her about saying no to such activities when presented with temptation and my daughter had been lying to me about how she would never do such things. Ha.

I did not reveal exactly how I knew but I told her I absolutely knew what she had been up to and named the activities. There was no denying it, she was kind of shocked that I knew details. So although she resisted the grounding my husband and I were vigilant in enforcing it, we spent a lot of time with her together and separately doing wholesome family things in the evenings and weekends. We all actually enjoyed that. It is easy to cut back on that stuff as your kids are teens and want to hang out with their friends, but not a good idea.

[Anonymous]

I was grounded frequently as a kid for breaking the rules. Sometimes for a weekend. Once for 3 months.
My single mom honestly did it because she was afraid something bad would happen to me.

It worked. I turned out a very good kid/adult. No traumatic incidents happened to me in my teens.

Seriously, when 1 in 3 females is sexually assaulted, sometimes it makes sense to put limits and curbs on a wild child who may get in situations they are unprepared for.

I will ground my children if/when the situation calls for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
It works when your child wants to do things outside?

My son is happy to stay in his room.

Ok, does that mean you never give him consequences for negative behavior? Parents have to find the consequences that work for their children. It is not one size fits all. It also isn't a great idea today grounding won't work for my kid, so I don't give him any consequences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Studies show that long term punishments aren’t extremely effective. The same is true for punishing kids for lying. A lot of old school punishments dont really work except to make kids fearful and hide things from their parents better. However, a lot of parents don’t want to feel ineffective, and they feel doing something-anything-is better than letting kids learn from their mistakes so they go with hard core punishments. (I think it’s sort of like when people give antibiotics for viruses. They know the science shows it won’t help, and can actually harm, but they can’t stand the thought of doing nothing.) There’s also the defensive stance that scientists can’t possibly know what’s best for their kids. The psychologists running these studies are probably hippies who never say no to their kids.

So, what works? Rewards, which has also been studied, don't. I can say this-when DD get consequences, her behaviors change.

[Anonymous]

We were grounded by in ancient past. My sense is that the 21st century solution in the DMV is to take away electronics. Why is grounding a punishment when your kid can have a full and active social live from the privacy of her bedroom.

And yes, I take away iPhones. Usually because a kid has not done something they should. If a kid doesn’t do a chore, doesn’t turn in a project (“I forgot,”), is making below a B, then more often then not, a part of the problem is they are distracted by the interweb rabbit hole. Not having an iPhone is a constant reminder of what needs to be done. And they are in control of getting it back. They just need to do whatever they “forgot” or “didn’t have time to do”. (And yet, 2 hours on FB Messenger). It works well.

An aside on grades. My kids are very capable of Bs. We have only had one time when a kid could not get a grade up to a B pretty quickly by turning in missing work or taking advantage of test corrections/retakes. The time my kid was actually struggling academically with a class, they got a tutor, not an electronics ban.

When my kids screws up and punishment is called for, we usually don’t ground or take away electronics. Instead, we try to get as close as we can to a logical consequence or making the situation right. An easy (but dumb, I admit) example is if you are mean to a member of the family, you need to apologize and come up with something nice to make it up to the person you hurt. Artistic DD might do a little I’m sorry doodle. DS who gets up early will often make me a cup of coffee after my alarm goes off and bring it to me in bed. 10 minutes of something to impress on them that they hurt someone’s feelings.

I’m lucky that I have introverted little nerdlings, and we are not dealing with big things like alcohol, drugs, sneaking out, arrests. Knock on wood. So right now, I am most worried that one of my kids will do something dumb and then not call us for help (e.g. go to a party with alcohol and not call for a safe ride or DD will not tell us she was assaulted).