With technology so advanced nowadays, and with information about everything right at our fingertips, it should come as no surprise that there are over 32 million parenting articles online. If you have a question, there's twenty blogs about it, fifteen studies about it, and thirty other forums for it. Everything from attachment parenting to sibling relationships to preparing for high school can be answered with just a few clicks.
I recently read an article where the subject was the terrible, long-lasting effects of grounding your child. I'm serious. The writer spoke of conditions such as low self-esteem, high stress levels, and diminished creativity. She is positive that parents keeping children at home and taking possessions away will ultimately ruin their children's psych.
As a child who was grounded (more than once), I have decided to do something I should have done a long time ago. Mom, Dad, thank you for grounding me. I mean it.
When I got in trouble at home or got a bad grade at school, you both promptly took the things that meant the most to me. Television, video games, playing with certain toys, I lost all of that until I started to behave or until I got my grade back up. Going to a friend's sleepover? Definitely not. Candy at the store? Nope.
You two were trying to teach me what happens when you don't follow rules or live up to your potential. Bored without PowerPuff Girls or Rugrats to keep me busy, I had to figure out a new way to stay entertained.
If you two hadn't of grounded me, I would have never started to read for fun. I remember the first time I was grounded. I was seven years old and my grade in math was less than satisfactory. Friday night, instead of tuning in to my favorite cartoons, I was laying on my bed, staring up at the ceiling. In a halfhearted attempt to amuse myself, I dug out my school library book I hadn't yet cracked.
Two hours later, I was still immersed in The Boxcar Children. It didn't take me long to finish the story, or the next in the series, or the next. I started checking out library books weekly and reading through them in just a couple of days.
One night, my dad peeked into my bedroom and whispered to my mom, "Is Anna in trouble?" My mom, who was in the middle of cooking, shook her head no. "Why do you think that?" My dad threw his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of my bedroom.
"Her TV's off." I wasn't grounded, I was reading. I voluntarily left my television set off and my movies stacked away. I was in the middle of Don't Go Into the Basement and I had to make sure those kids got out!
My parents like to joke that grounding me backfired on them in the long run because I have probably spent hundreds of dollars over the last twelve years, buying books for my collection. However, developing a love for reading has opened many doors for me. It definitely helped me in school because soon after my interest was sparked, my grades shot up and stayed there.
I also started writing my own short stories. Not a day went by that I didn't think of a new character or another "What if?" scenario. In high school, my essays always hit the maximum page allowance and I was a book club member all four years.
The "traumatic, long-lasting" effects of my parent's grounding have even followed me to college. Getting through those textbooks has been made easier and two of my essays were published in the school text. This semester, I am even taking a class in creative fiction writing so that one day, I can write my own fiction novel.
Overall, I haven't been too messed up from my parents deciding to ground me. Taking away my television didn't give me a complex and removing my video games and movies didn't steal away my creativity.
Mom, Dad,
Thank you so much for stepping in and making me step up. My second grade math grade might have gone up a letter, but my entire life has gone up a level because you chose to make me work for it.
Love, Anna
