Parents. How Do You Discipline kids or Teens These Days

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am not talking about spanking and such but being “grounded” or sent to your room… Do parents still do this? Back in the day, getting sent to your room was agonizing. All I had was a crystal radio I made from a Radio Shack kit and a bible.

After a couple hours I was ready to roll over “yes mom i did stick the balsa wood rubber band airplane propeller wound up to triple knots in my little sisters hair…”

I was grounded and made to miss cool kid things a few times.

What do you parents do now? Can’t send the kid to the room these days right? They have a computer/games/TV/phone…They would look forward to it.

A younger friend with kids says he will take the door off the bedroom of the teen offender. For two weeks. I like that. Not mean but just taking privacy away from a teen has to be a decent punishment. What do you think?

2

Time outs, especially with younger kids.

Additional chores or rescinding privileges with bigger kids.

3

Grounding, internet ban, and if I really want to get her attention, I take her mobile (cellphone).

I didn’t use to use a lot of punishments but my teen likes clear rules, and knowing where she stands. So now we say, these are the rules, here’s the reasons why, this is what happens if you break them, now make your own decisions.

I would rather let her have her privacy, for both our sakes.

4

IME as a high school teacher, the door off is for Big Things that demonstrated a lack of trustworthiness: ditching school, lying about where you were going with your friends, sneaking out of the house on a school night to go party. It’s not something you pull out when a child doesn’t do their homework or shows up half an hour after curfew.

5

When my teen didn’t do his homework, he risked failing the class. Then he had to explain to his teacher, with me sitting there, what his problem was and what, if anything, he intended to do about it, and what help he needed from his teacher and me to fix it. It was his problem he created, and his problem to fix.

That took care of that. Did he do all his homework? I don’t know. It wasn’t my homework to do, and he didn’t ask me to make sure he did it. But he passed all his classes once we got him to the better school he wanted to go to where he didn’t get hit walking down the hallway. He graduated on schedule, with a high school diploma and an Associate’s Degree at the same time, thanks to an innovative charter school.

He’s never had a curfew, per se. I’ve never seen the sense in them; they seem arbitrary and controlling and illogical. If he’s out past 10, or later than he estimated he’d be, he’ll call or text out of courtesy. I do the same for him. Did he always do that? No. But then he got home and saw my worry and apologized and set an alarm in his phone to remind himself next time. We also agreed that if I was worried, I should call or text him, rather than continue to be worried, and that I should have the number of at least one of the people he was out with, in case his phone died or he forgot his charger. These were not all arrived at in one conversation, but evolved over time as we identified what the actual problems were that were impeding him from calling on several different occasions. The natural consequence of a worried - not angry, but worried - mom inspired him to find solutions to the problems.

When he started sneaking booze (which was about as stereotypically “bad” as he got as a teenager), he asked us to please lock it up and keep it out of sight, because he felt like he couldn’t control himself otherwise. He was also not entrusted with babysitting his little sister for a few months, since he got drunk while “watching” her. So he lost income and trust. This was at the end of a long, tearful conversation, don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t easy. We discussed a lot of different ways we could handle it, including traditional “grounding” or losing privileges. But the final solution came from him, not imposed by me. And it seemed to be a lot more on point and useful than most of the other options we considered.

And that pretty much sums up my parenting strategy. I give him the benefit of the doubt that he is not, in fact, a jerk who’s trying to make me mad. These are problems which have natural consequences, and he’s capable of fixing them. He doesn’t need to be punished, he needs strategies for solving his problems and not creating these problems again.

(Everything useful I learned about parenting I learned from Parenting With Love and Logic.)

6

I am not sure if this is really punishment but my daughter thought so. When she didn’t answer her phone or respond to my text, I called her swim coach and had him call her and tell her to call me. She was very angry with me but I only had to do that once, after that she responded to me. I picked the swim coach because he was the only adult whose call she would answer.

7

I see the problem - my 8yo has none of these things in her room. She has books and toys like Barbie and Lego and that’s it. So sending her to her room (away from the Wii and the TV) is a real punishment. Way I see it, if she reads a book or builds with Lego in defiance of being punished, I’m winning either way. Still not sure about the Barbies, though.

8

Whatever happened to good old fashioned thrashings. Worked wonders in my day.

:smiley:

9

Man, I wish you had my parents’ ear when I was a teen. Speaking as someone who was a pretty good kid whose big offenses were poor grades in Math and occasional back-talk, parents, please don’t take your kids’ bedroom doors away without a really good reason.

I didn’t have a phone, car, TV, or anything else my parents could take away from me when they needed to punish me, so taking the door off was their go-to punishment for anything. (They had already taken the lock off the door as a precaution against…what, they wouldn’t tell me. I didn’t date, didn’t drink/smoke/do drugs…I don’t know what they were afraid I would do behind a locked door.) And then they wouldn’t give it back to me until I asked nicely for it back, which I refused to do out of pride, so on some occasions I went months without a door. As a person who really values her privacy, not having a door was pretty mentally rough.

10

My son usually gets grounded, which includes losing his phone. The next step is losing the internet. That’s sufficient for his usual offense, which is letting his grades get below C’s.

There was a time when he was stealing, and we were finding paraphernalia in his room…for that, the door came off.

11

Oh how I wish I knew. My son is 15 and nothing I do really has any impact.

The computer and video game system aren’t in his room. His cell phone gets parked in the dining room between 9:00pm and time to leave in the morning.

What he does that requires discipline is pretty minor on the scale of the sort of trouble teens could get into. Nothing yet that I’d even consider taking his door for.

He does get sent to his room when he’s being lippy, which is fairly often. He has to hand his cell phone over.

When I catch him in a lie he’ll have a prolonged time with no electronics.

He also gets grounded a fair amount.

My latest struggle started one recent morning when I went to wake him for school. He moaned that he didn’t feel good. I felt his head. No fever. Not puking, no fever equals You Go To School. It has for every generation of my family that’s attended public school. I told him to get up, take a shower and get ready. He took a shower and got back into bed. I told him he did not have permission to stay home and I would not write him an excuse note. He didn’t budge. He isn’t intimidated by me in the slightest. It never occurred to me to mouth off to my mother the way he does to me. She never did it but I had a strong sense that if provoked she’d have backhanded me across the face. I’m not advocating fear as a parenting technique, it’s just a difference I don’t know how to adjust for.

I hid the wireless router, the xBox controllers, and the cable box and went to work. He got that punishment extended last time by leaving obvious evidence that he had been rooting around in my room looking for them. “Don’t YOU want to watch TV, Mom?” Not as much as I want you to do what you’re told.

I didn’t write him a note. I figured he’d get a detention the next day for an unexcused absence. Perfect! He’d miss the only extracurricular think he does. An actual consequence that he’d feel. Right? Wrong. I called the school to ask what happens to a student with an unexcused absence. Nothing, until he has more than five.

(Oh, and I do see the value of an occasional mental health day, but it was the day after the Monday off for Presidents’ Day, and he’d missed a day the week prior.)

12

Boarding school.

Actually, that wasn’t a punishment, that was a move that was born out of having tried literally everything else and nothing was working. We were all in a house where everybody was mad at everybody else, and after several years of counselling and having actions having consequences and police turning up for theft and other really bad things, we decided to try boarding school. It has actually worked a treat and my now 17 year old is a fine young man getting ready for university and doing his final year at school.

Now that our problems are normal kid problems, we let his actions have their natural consequence, or if that would be too harsh or too inconvenient for us, a consequence we have all agreed would happen. (Normal teenager problems are just awesome. I love having a kid who is merely surly and lippy occasionally or just half-assed does his chores or something, because I’ve lived with the alternative.)

The way I do it now when he’s home - and he’s home for long stretches at a time - is that I give him the maximum amount of freedom that’s age appropriate, and with that comes some responsibilities. Do you want to go out with mates and stay out till midnight because that’s when the party is over? Great, go. You tell me when you’ll be home given the location of the party and public transport from where you’re going. Add in half an hour for emergencies, that’s tonight’s curfew. If you’re going to be late, call and explain. And before you go, here’s this list of things I want you to do and do well. (His major problem is doing things quickly and half-assed so he can just go already.)

Did you not do the things I asked you to do and do a proper job? Well, you’re going to be late, because you’re staying until they are done. Did you come home after we agreed you’d be home? Well next time you’ll be home at 10pm until I can trust you to do what we agreed, which was not an onerus requirement. Do you not have enough spending money (I give him a certain amount every month) to get yourself there? Gosh, that’s too bad, because we did work out a budget for you to make sure you’d have enough to go.

If he’s being surly or lippy, he needs to just go away from me and go to his room so we both cool off. (He’s a boy, and he doesn’t express himself, he just growls.) If he’s done something bad - in our house, given all of our respective histories and the discussions and the counselling and so forth, the Really Bad Thing is lying - he loses his screens and whatever the next fun thing he was going to do. And then it’s over and we all start again.

Also, because I’m a horrible mom sometimes (just ask him, it’s only sometimes!), if I’m extra super annoyed he gets to write me an essay on the topic of my chosing and the number of words of my choosing and I grade it until he gets to about a B level.

This actually was the best thing I ever did. He was failing until year 10, and he pissed me off about something unrelated, and I made him write an essay in which he picked four ‘real’ careers (attainable for him, so president, astronaut and rock star were right out) and tell me what the pros of that career were, the cons of it, how much school you had to do, what schools provided that major (or what tech school/apprenticeship you had to get into), and what you had to get on our school leaving test to get into that major. Best punishment ever, for some reason he picked primary school teacher as one of the four choices and the more research he did, the better he liked it. Now he’s doing awesome in school, because he did some research and had a goal and now he’s decided that’s what he wants to do. (I remember the other three were lawyer, electrician and something else I forget.)

So I guess my suggestion is have them write essays. It improves their writing skills, makes them get out of your hair, and might even do them some good in the long term. :slight_smile:

13

I should also add we’re fairly open about lots and lots of things that our parents were not open about. Sex and alcohol are the main ones. As a result he’s opened up to me about a lot of things that could have quickly become huge problems and ended up with him needing some kind of consequences. Plus, the drinking age here is 18, and alcohol is everywhere (in Australia) so we have normalised that hoping he won’t go nuts and get into trouble the minute he turns 18. So the rule is you call me and I come get you with no hassles. And that’s worked out. So not discipline per say but more education so we don’t HAVE to discipline.

We are all about the condoms, and we talk about sex vs love, sex and STDs, sex and protecting yourself and her, but also how to treat girls. The worst trouble he’s gotten in since he’s been to school was when he referred to a girl he was dating as his bitch. I just turned on him and roared, “WHAT DID YOU SAY?” I’m not usually that shouty and if he’d been closer I might actually have slapped his face, I was that furious. (I’m not advocating that and I am glad I did not, for the record, but I was just enraged.) It went against every conversation we’d ever had about how you treat someone you want to be your partner, even if it’s just for a short time.

That essay (because I was too mad to talk to him) was about the history of feminism, how men can be feminists, too, and how feminism works for both genders. It ran to 5k words and and bibliography, and he had only restricted access to the internet for research which he did at the kitchen table with no phone or other screens including TV for the week it took him to write it, AND I made him apologise to the girl, who promptly dumped him. He’s never done it again. He was big into Eminem and rap in general at the time, I know where it came from. I was livid, though.

Afterwards we talked a lot about music (he’s a singer and sings very well, competes and so forth) and how that can affect your world view. I never forbade him to listen, though, that’s just silly. It was better we had a chat about thinking critically about what you’re listening to, and that has seemed to work in that he came to me recently and said he’d gone off some stuff because it ‘they talk about women and say stuff about them that makes me feel gross for listening to it.’ So that was a good outcome.

I was never as proud as a parent that he he called me one night for advice about what to do about a situation he’d gotten himself into regarding a girl he’d been dating (and physical) with, who had a boyfriend she hadn’t told him about. The boyfriend found out, and was giving my son grief. The girl was in his TAFE (community college) class - he has a certificate as a fitness trainer now even though he’s still in high school. (/proud mom brag) So we had to talk about how that would play out with her in his class every day, (and what if you worked on a job with her, hmm?) and how to deal with the guy and all that.

Anyway, he came to me about it, and I felt as though my being open and acknowledging that sex and relationships happen and so forth had paid off, rather than just saying no you can’t and no you shouldn’t and punishing him if I knew he did. My mom used to punish me for even saying I thought a boy was cute, I’d have NEVER gone to her with a relationship problem.

Modern parenting is hard work! Good luck to all you teenager-having people out there.

14

:smiley: Yes!

Once my son covered for his friends, who were also several of my goddaughters, when the girls got stupid drunk. Like, throwing up in the bushes drunk. All witnesses agree that, on that occasion, he was not drinking, but he was holding back hair and herding them to more or less safety, and - this is the key part - he did *not *alert any of the grownups in the vicinity.

The whole community looked to me to “deal with it”. Er…okay…

All the kids involved, including my son, were assigned an essay on the legal consequences of underage drinking for them, their parents and the property owners and also the medical consequences of alcohol poisoning. It was pretty eye opening for all of them, especially when they realized what could very easily have happened to the Type I diabetic who got drunk without showing anyone she was with how to recognize hypoglycemia and what to do about it.

They’ve been much more responsible about their illegal drinking ever since.

15

What’s so bad about having your door taken off? When I was a kid I might as well have had no door. My parents never knocked, they’d just open it whenever they felt like it. They also regularly went through my stuff when I was at school. Fuckers.

16

My mom did all that, too. I’d come in the door and she’d make me dump out my handbag on the table so she could paw through it.

It’s damaged my relationship with her forever (I still don’t trust her and I’m 44.) I try to treat my teenager first and foremost like a human being with basic rights. I did take his door off when he was 13 but that was after the police turned up because he was a neighborhood 1 kid crime spree. He’s lucky to have not been arrested - I was all for it but his counselor worked with kids in the system and she talked me out of it. I was lucky I actually had a choice. But his door came off for that, and that was when I realised I was out of options, actually. That was the nuclear bomb. He was already grounded for the foreseeable future and we were all of us in the house (including the dogs, they hate us to be angry) miserable. I couldn’t trust him. He wouldn’t talk to me. It was dysfunctional and bad and awful. We broke the cycle by getting him away from us in a controlled fashion, and we were lucky to have that option.

But taking off a kid’s door is completely the last resort. Human beings need privacy, even kids, even little kids need some time that is just theirs. Even if they share a room with sibs they need a door.

Every parent says, “Oh, I will never X because my parents did X and I hated it.” I did, and 99% of the time you end up doing X because that’s all you can think of to do. Although I did with good cause remove his door, I have never searched his wallet. The only time we searched his room we knew he had stolen things and was lying about it. I would never have done that otherwise, and when it was over I hid in my room and sobbed because I felt dirty and awful about it, that’s how badly my mom doing it to me affected me, but I had to.

It’s terrible and your parents made a terrible choice to do that to you, Reticulating Spines.

17

Egad, that’s awful. :frowning: That’s definately scary essay time.

We drill into the boy to call us. We cannot promise no consequences, natural or otherwise, but we can promise it will be 1000 times worse if you do not call us.

I’m a big advocate for responsible illegal drinking. Most kids are just going to, and you can’t really stop them. It’s not so bad here when it’s 18, but in the US when it’s 21, my og, it must be shocking to try to do any alcohol education with minors. So glad I live here now.

I am mostly flabbergasted at parents (and I know some) who pretend that if they just say to their teenagers, “Don’t do that” and leave it at that, the kid won’t. I’m more of a “I wish you wouldn’t. Here’s why I wish you wouldn’t. When you ignore me and do it anyway, here’s what you should know/do. Do that, and you’re mostly fine.”

18

I have a 15 yo boy. For the most part, I couldn’t ask for a better kid. We have always had very clear cut expectations for him and he has always known what the consequences are. At the same time, we’re flexible. For example, he doesn’t have to do the dishes right after dinner, but they darn well better be done before bedtime (10pm). The consequence for not getting them done: he has to stay up and do them and then there are no video games until the dishes are done on time the next night. We take away video games because playing games is nearly always the reason he forgets to do the dishes.

We’ve also put an emphasis on personal responsibility and respect for authority. At the beginning of the school year, he was struggling with an assignment in English, so he just didn’t do it. He had to go to the teacher, explain why he didn’t complete the assignment, ask if he could do it for part credit, and apologize for being disrespectful in not doing the work she assigned. He seemed to have learned from hit. This semester he screwed up an assignment in another class (misunderstood the instructions) and handled the whole thing before I even knew about it. He was able to come to me and say, “I screwed this up, but here’s how I’m fixing it.” I was so proud.

As for privacy, I cannot imagine taking his door away. Mostly because his room is typical teenage boy messy. All the fun stuff is in the family room (TV, video games, etc) so he doesn’t spend that much time in there when he’s not doing homework or sleeping. I don’t search his wallet or backpack unless I have reason to, which I haven’t in a long time. The last time I did, was 6th or 7th grade when I wasn’t getting school notes and progress reports and it was a natural consequence. If he couldn’t be relied on to give me the papers I needed, I would get them out of his bag myself. My parents never took our door away or searched our bags or purses (unless they were really sneaky about it).

I guess mostly it’s clear cut rules and expectations with consistent consequences known in advance. And talking, lots and lots of talking. We’ve had lots of conversations along the lines of “I hope you never do X, but if you do, and you’re honest about it, it will be much easier than if I find out from someone else.” We talk about drugs, alcohol, sex, school, financial stuff, everything. Seems like at least some of it is sinking in.

19

I think it’s great that you felt that bad about it, that means you’ve ended the cycle. It’s so hard and it becomes part of your core; I always said I’d be totally different than my parents and in some ways I’ve been successful, but I still sometimes look at things I do and think “Holy shit, that’s just what my mom would have done.” Or I’ll tell people, for example, that I don’t care if my annoying coworker gets fired and they’ll respond, “Wow, you’re really heartless, she has two kids” or something like that, and then I’m kind of momentarily shocked at how callous I naturally am. I would be a TERRIBLE parent.

20

My solution in this scenario was particularly evil. With the advance agreement of the teachers and administration, I explained to him that I would be sitting beside him in every class, every day, until the homework and classwork problems were solved. I pretended to be ecstatic about the fun I would have meeting and talking to all his friends in class each and every day, and what great buddies we all would be. (he was 15)

I have enough flexibility at work that I can do this. The mere threat of this was sufficiently terrifying that the classwork/homework problems somehow solved themselves. :stuck_out_tongue: