His Behavior Has Been Impeccable.
After a week without electronics, it was hard to remember why I’d grounded Dylan. I had to keep reminding myself that he’d done this terrible, dishonest thing.
Without Kik and Snapchat and Oovoo monopolizing his time, Dylan rediscovered his brother. He spends hours and hours and hours playing with Shane. They make up games and get creative and build things and invent things and talk and talk and talk. They hang out together.
His behavior has been impeccable. His teachers aren’t complaining. There have been no more suspensions or calls home. He studies and does his homework, and makes sure his work is actually turned in on time. He hasn’t had a new “zero” in weeks.
He is acting a bit like a young adult.
Sometimes he gets frustrated – like when he decided to make an electronic bird caller out of Shane’s Kindle, and was reminded that a Kindle is an electronic device, even if it belongs to Shane, and even if you’re using it to make bird calls.
But for the most part, he’s doing well. We allowed him to go to his church group (which doesn’t seem like un-grounding him, since it’s church). And we took him to see a play at his former middle school, since – long before the grounding – we promised several of his friends that we’d be there. (Those same friends went to see Dylan in his middle school play, too, so I felt justified.)
It’s hard, grounding someone I love so much. It would be much easier if I didn’t care about him at all, if I could just toss him into a corner for a few weeks and ignore him.
But he’s precious and wonderful and brilliant and fun, just like always. And it’s hard to suffocate that in favor of an age-old punishment.
Still, we are sticking to it. Mostly.
Good for you guys. I know the struggles, just last night Joy “forgot” to get Craig to sign a permission slip to go horseback riding with the Girl Scouts and I had to “race” an hour and 15 minutes to make sure the permission was in place for her to participate (she ended up being the last girl to ride). I, like you, felt like she should just suffer the consequences of her inability to be responsible for her own “stuff”, but also realize that the Scout troop paid for her to participate so end up stuck between a rock & a hard place. The kicker was that the Scout Leader had to actually tell my daughter to thank me for bringing her permission slip! That irks me more than the “forgetting” the blatant disregard for the extra effort I go to for her pleasure. It like she just expects it and does not appreciate the fact that I had to drop everything and race to where she was to make sure she could ride. I honestly do not understand how I raised a child that is so ungrateful?!? I guess when you give too much it soon becomes never enough! And she is just turning 12…
I am a HUGE believer in allowing kids to have the consequences of their own behavior – in theory. In reality, it is the hardest thing I have to do as a parent! The day I stopped taking Dylan’s lunchbox to school for him was huge FOR ME. He still forgot it, but much less often. This week he brought home a field trip permission form that was supposed to be submitted by APRIL 21st! It is mid-May. At this point, it’s very last minute – but his teacher said he would be allowed to go if he turned in the form before the trip (next week) so I was stuck, too. He’s going, of course. And he did (after learning it sometime between 12 and 14) say thank you! It must have been those six dozen times I screeched at him for NOT thanking me…. 🙂