I have a confession to make. I love my children equally but treat them entirely differently. By “different,” I don’t mean better or worse, I simply mean that I go about raising them in completely different ways. Some rules in the family are routine, while others may vary depending on which child I am dealing with. This policy holds true when it comes to determining how to ground my kids or otherwise discipline them for their behavior. Although grounding is often an effective consequence, it doesn’t work uniformly well with all of my 4 kids. While an hour-long timeout works well for one of my daughters, the other finds it quite a welcome break. When my 7-year-old hits a sibling, it is handled much differently than when my 11-year-old is the one throwing the punches. Similarly, when the 2-year-old throws a tantrum, it is dealt with very differently than when the 7-year-old does it. Consequently, the discipline I choose for my kids—even for the same ‘crime’—is not always the same, because it’s clear to me that what works for one doesn’t work well for the other. My children play the “unfair” card and accuse me of liking one better than the other, but I am not swayed by their attempts to invoke guilt. Realistically, though, even though I love them the same, I know them as completely different individuals and handle their behavior according to their personalities.
The Role of Grounding in Parenting
Probably the first step in deciding whether or not grounding really works is by defining the term. When I was a pre-teen, grounding meant being sent to my room for a certain length of time (usually a week) and having no privileges—no leaving the house, no talking on the phone, etc. Although it irritated me, I always had my subsequent school days to keep me up to date on my social calendar. If there was a birthday party or something going on, grounding frustrated me; but it was never enough to keep me from doing the next ‘horrible’ thing. The older I got, I also recognized that there was a 50/50 shot of being caught, so somehow the risk of spending a week or two in seclusion seemed worth making the party of the year. For me, grounding didn’t work. As I raise my own children, I try to keep that in mind.
In my house now, with kids who are not yet teenagers, grounding means finding something they consider important—what I call their “currency”—and taking it away. Since they are still not in the phase of sleeping over at friends’ houses or attending parties, I find that forcing them to stay in their room day in and day out only tends to distance them from the family core. Plus, it is much more punishing to make them be with the family than to quarantine them from the rest of us. Another issue I face when considering “grounding” my children is that they are seriously involved in team sports. As I stress to them the importance of dedication, commitment to their team, and developing a winning attitude, not allowing them to attend practices or games actually interferes with the lives of their peers and limits their role in showing responsibility to their endeavors. Perhaps this would be a good form of punishment, but it’s not my intention to humiliate them through any discipline I choose.
That being said, I find that taking away the Nintendo, the Wii, the pool in the summer, phones, favorite toys, and other commodities that they value is extremely effective. It is usually at this point that my children can understand the difference between what is a privilege and what is a right. The problem, however, is that the focus often shifts to what is being taken from them rather than on what they did to deserve the discipline. For years, I have been taking things away from my children and putting them in plastic bins. Each time I do this, they understand that with good behavior, they can earn back their possessions and privileges around the house. I feel that this puts greater emphasis on their choices to improve their behavior and highlights the good things they do. The assignment of chores, which I cheerfully dub “community service,” is also effective for my older children. They hate to clean anything, and by assigning them KP duty or toilet bowl cleaning for a week, it seems to drive home the message of consequences for our actions. As an added bonus, it helps me get things done around the house!
I am a pretty laid-back mother—possibly too laid-back—and discipline is not really my forte. So far, I haven’t had to be very good at it. Even when my kids were toddlers, I felt like time-outs in front of the refrigerator were a bit ridiculous, so I chose to talk with my kids as much as possible. What I have found is that although all of my children have serious personality and behavior quirks at home, they do manage to act well in public and rarely get into trouble. Many people might be thinking smugly at this moment that the reason my kids don’t act well for me is because I don’t force them to, but I see it another way. Let me explain.
My children know when they’ve crossed my line and are acutely aware of the boundaries and limitations that I expect. For the most part, they adhere to them. But being a kid at any age is very difficult. With the expectations placed on children, there needs to be a safe place for them to lose their minds and test the limits of this world. I would much rather they do it with me, where clear and conscious dialogue can result from it, than to act out at school, in Wal-Mart, or at friends’ and relatives’ houses. I would much rather be the sounding board (within limits) than for them to feel as though they have no right to express their emotions and thus bottle up negative feelings.
So, the question comes back to “Does grounding children work?” In my mind, discipline is intended to evoke a general response of remorse and the realization of not only what they did that was wrong, but why it was wrong. Much to my kids’ amazement, after many calm discussions about their negative behavior (just when they think they are about to get off easy), I choose to implement a grounding of sorts anyway. Not to further impress them with how bad they are, but rather to show them that in life, there are consequences to actions. I feel it’s the role of a parent to teach them this before they end up in trouble later on. The consequence or grounding method has to be entirely personal and suit the child’s emotional “currency.” When it’s done this way, grounding does work. However, when grounding is not preceded by discussion, clarification, support, understanding, or love, and is dealt with in the midst of anger or disappointment, I feel that the grounding itself becomes completely ineffective. Children will never remember anything but their parent’s anger. Discipline, in its raw form, is meant to improve behavior and redirect a child toward positive actions, not to foster grudges or harm the fragile psyche of our kids. In my mind, the grounding method we choose for our children should be as individual as the child herself. Had my parents caught on earlier that for me, direct, open, and warm dialogue—playing on my guilt and eagerness to please—would have been more effective than grounding, there are lots of things I may not have done or tried in my life. It is these things that I am hopefully going to help keep my girls away from.
