I’ve always felt that a perfectly acceptable punishment for a child is to lock them in their room from the outside. An hour or so as a time-out seems like a reasonable punishment. Now, granted, when I grew up I didn’t have a TV, video game console, DVD player, etc in my room to keep me occupied. But even if I did, I’d probably still have considered it punishment to be locked in just because I wanted to be OUT.
But when I mentioned this to my friend who has kids, he said that he considered putting a lock on the outside of the kids door to be tantamount to abuse. I just don’t see it that way.
Please weigh in on this. Experiences and anecdotes welcome.
I have never and would never have locked my child in her room. In fact, we never had doors that locked from the outside anyway. Besides, in an emergency, how could a kid get out? The chances of fire or something my be remote, but it’s not something I’d be willing to risk.
Not even close to abuse as long as someone else is in the house, but if you’re in the house anyway and the lock thing is an issue, why not just close the door and tell them they better not open it?
I’m pretty sure most doors don’t lock from the outside unless it’s a closet or something. But Wee Bairn has the idea. At least that was my experience as a kid. My mom would send me to my room and I’d better not come out lest I’m grounded for a while or something worse.
All that great stuff in the room? It’s more of a punishment to lock them out!
My step-kids have DVD players, video games and satellite TV. Telling them to stay in their rooms is more like catering. You’re in such trouble! Go to your room! You’d better not come out! I’ll come by in five minutes with ice cream, and you’d better eat it, young man!
My gut reaction is that locking a child in a room is A Bad Idea. Like FairyChatMom said, if there is a fire or some other emergency, the risk is too great if the child is unable to leave the room of their own volition. My parents, and my dad especially, were adamant that bedroom doors be unlocked at all times.
My dad is an interesting character. He worked for CPS for several years when I was growing up. (He was the big, mean social worker that would take kids from their drug-addled abusive parents.) This experience has affected his opinions on child rearing. And even if the fear of emergency situations is unfounded, if I had a child I would never consider locking them in a room to be a viable punishment, because at the very least it would send my dad into apoplectic shock.
Of course, we also cut the door in half so we could see in. She’s at the age where she can climb over baby gates and right outside her door is a stairway. I don’t want my 2 year old wandering around the house.
I don’t have kids so keep that in mind, but to me, part of the punishment was staying in your room. If you came out, you’d get in more trouble, and end up even more punished. A lock just suggests someone has no self control.
Oh come on. The idea isn’t to lock the child in their room and go on vacation.
The parent(s) are still right there. Daughter#1 is in Kindergarten and is just flat out defiant and stubborn by all reports. We as parents and her teachers simply run out of ammo if physical measures aren’t allowed. She is smart as a whip and gives you a virtual finger with her eyes if you play the role of a lightweight. She has been that way since she was born and I have seen the same thing in other gifted children, especially a cousin who has a child psychiatrist as a father.
Everyone that has ever cared for her agrees on that and she has been in structured programs of some sort with actual teachers since she was 8 weeks old. Everyone that deals with her learns to up the stakes until she feels the threat is severe enough to be worth her time. Sometimes that means physically picking her up, putting her in her bed, and locking the door. Sometimes it means something else but she usually ignores verbal warnings and threats until someone is brave enough to stand up to her for real.
Her 1-1/2 year old younger sister actually listens and respond to verbal warnings in a more typical manner and she probably will never have the same discipline applied to her. It depends on the child. Some children, no matter what the age, are smart, manipulative, scam artists and they require a bigger bag of tricks to counteract that.
I’m a parent of a 1-yr old and a 3-yr old. We don’t usually send the older to his room as punishment yet, but probably will when he’s a bit older. But we won’t lock him in; why bother? We’ll just tell him he’d better not come out until we say.
Also, he does not have (nor will he have) a TV, computer or video games in his bedroom. Neither do his parents. Those are all in the common area of the house. Partly because, if he’s being punished in his room, it shouldn’t be a party.
I think the distinction people are drawing is that what is supposed to keep the kid in the room is the knowledge that he or she is to stay in the room and there will be consequences if he or she comes out. IOW, the mechanism keeping them in the room is the parent, not a lock on the door. Granted, that’s not of much value to kids who don’t understand “stay in your room or there will be consequences” – younger than 3 to 5, depending on the kid – but for a kid who is old enough to get the concept, you’re enforcing boundaries and underlining the difference between “you can’t” – physically cannot – “leave your room” and “you may not” – do not have permission to – “leave your room.”
I think for some kids with serious behavior issues or kids that are super high-energy and exhaust their parents, a lock may be necessary. But for most kids IMO it isn’t a great idea because you are replacing “may not” with “cannot” and that’s not 100% the lesson parents are teaching when sending a kid to his or her room.
True story: My friend’s 3 year old was one of those wandering types. He’d pull chairs to the door, unlock the deadbolts, and wander outside in the middle of the night. In Chicago. On Devon Avenue. (Big street, lots of traffic.) One day, at Grandma’s house, the kid let himself out, but stopped to take Daddy’s keys off the hook by the door first. Curious as to how far he’d go, his mother and father and uncles followed, but kept out of sight. He walked outside to the car. He unlocked the door. He climbed in. He had the keys in the ignition and was turning them before they rushed out shouting and stopped him.
Lock a kid in his room? Damn right. For his own safety, that one needed to be locked in, from the outside, before everyone went to sleep for the night.
As far as a punishment goes, I agree that “…and you’re not to come out until I say so!” is part of the deal. We’re trying to teach self-control here, not turn the home into a penitentiary. IF our self-control is so very lacking that we’re acting like that 3 year old, then yes, a lock is required for their safety just as much as it was for my friend’s kid. (Who is now a very well-behaved and sweet 16 year old.)
This reminded me of a friend I had in elementary school.
She had a T.V. , VCR (this was the early 80’s), a phone, a record player, video games etc… When she would get into trouble, instead of her parents sending her to her room as punishment, she had to sit in the hallway facing her room and looking at all the stuff she couldn’t use.
I think it’s a bad idea. You can accomplish the same thing by forbidding them from leaving their room until you permit it, but even this must be reasonable. You can’t starve them, deny water or bathroom use. I think it can be misused by some and therefore shouldn’t be common practice. I recall a news story about a woman who locked her incorrigible teen age daughter in her room, only letting her out for meals, bathroom and school. The woman was charged w/ a crime.
It’s just a bit too extreme and really signals a lack of faith and trust on the part of the parent. There is also a very real danger involved, as FairyChatMom pointed out.
Grounded, yes, locked up, no.
The child whose behavior brought up this point won’t stay in a room for three minutes. He is just too energetic. That’s why I suggested a lock on the outside. To enforce the punishment.
I did it with my youngest. From Jr. High to High School he went from a sweet kid, honor roll student in the GAT program to hell on wheels. And I do mean hell on wheels. I was blind sided and came down hard on him as far as school and chores and what was expected of him.
I took everything out of his room, canceled our cable, and kept him on a short leash. That lasted for about a year when he realized the easiest way to prevent being punished (told to stay in his room or in the house in general) was to just not come home. He’d disappear for days, I’d file missing persons reports and drive around town, call and visit friends, you name it.
In a futile attempt to keep him home and safe, I reversed the locks on the door to his room and the door to his bathroom in the guest bedroom, locking him in his bedroom and bathroom, basically. We were always home though. I wouldn’t in my wildest dreams consider locking him in the house and leaving it, that’s just insane and incredibly dangerous.
By this point I’d completely emptied his room, and I mean completely. He had the few clothes I allowed him to have, a pillow, and a sleeping bag. That’s it.
One weekend when he came down to the living room to eat, he snuck my phone out of my purse. When I sent him back up to his room and locked him in, he apparently called the police. Police knocked on the door stating they’d received a call of abuse. I laughed and apologized. Brought them upstairs, unlocked the door, and let them speak to my son, who was sitting on the floor on his sleeping bag. Gave the officers a brief overview of the situation and let them alone to talk to him. They gave him an earful, told him it was perfectly acceptable for me to lock him in the room with nothing but a sleeping bag, came down and wished me the best of luck with him and left.
Things just got worse after that. I’d drop him off at school, he’d walk right through the campus and disappear for days again. Things ended up coming to a head and his father and I decided it would be best for him to be in a different environment altogether, so he moved in with him last year. So far that’s proved to be an amazingly smart decision. He’s getting great grades again, has a ton of friends, is always home by curfew, and is just in general the sweet kid he was just a few years ago. (He’s almost 17 now.)
So, I guess I’m saying I don’t think it is abuse and neither did our local police, but it didn’t really have much of an impact on how my son was behaving at the time anyway.
This pretty much sums up my feelings on the issue.
If it’s just three minutes, why doesn’t Mom or Dad just stand outside the door with their hand on the knob, preventing the child from opening the door? My mom did that with us when I was a kid. Not that I am in any way recommending this as a suggested punishment for kids, because I think it’s kind of dumb, no offense to the people you know, Hypno-Toad. (You gotta do what you gotta do as a parent.)
If the kid is too energetic and the “go to your room for 3 minutes” thing isn’t working, have they tried alternate punishments/consequences? Like, if the bad behavior is, say, drawing on the walls, then make the kid help clean it up. Or if it’s throwing a toy through the air, take the toy away for a period of time. Just a thought; don’t know how applicable it is in this situation, of course.