Got this random question. I’m from India BTW. Here, if you do something wrong, you’ll be scolded, or in cases getting rarer with time, you’ll be beaten or smacked. I’m sure the same applies to most cultures in Asia.
Whenever I watch content based on American life, the kid does something wrong, the parent says, “you’re grounded”, and the kid seems like their world is shattered or something? I do not understand how this is so effective?
I googled the meaning, it says grounded kids are effectively banned from going out, which honestly doesn’t sound all that bad?
Edit – understood now, thanks y’all!
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It sucks because now you can’t socialize and whatever plans you had are cancelled. And your friends are having fun without you while you’re stuck doing nothing or whatever your parents tell you to do.
My parents never grounded, then again I never acted up. But that’s why it would suck for a kid.
You can’t understand why being isolated from your friends and peers would be difficult for someone?
Grounded typically means more than not going out.
Grounded to your bedroom. No access to electronics. No phone calls. It’s removing your freedom to go places and do things you enjoy.
The idea is that you have nothing else to do other than to think about why you were grounded.
It can be effective. If you doubt it, try staying in your room for 48 hours and not use a computer, mobile phone, etc.
“Grounding” is sort of a catch all term for “being punished” and the context shifts a bit depending on the age of a child. If you’re in say, elementary school, being grounded might mean no fun activities at home (no tv, other electronics, not playing with toys, etc). It could also mean you aren’t allowed to participate in activities you wanted to.
For teenagers, being grounded usually means you can’t go out with friends, maybe your phone gets taken away. American teens tend to do a lot of socializing outside the home. I’d argue it’s part of the “Americans are friendly” idea people have. We learn to mingle with all sorts of people at an early age. Being deprived of that opportunity can be a big deal.
I’d also add that generally, Americans aren’t as keen on corporal punishment with their children. So to a kid who isn’t used to being hit, the punishment of being “grounded” holds more weight in that context. Granted this is coming from someone who is from a large family of Italian-Americans. And my parents *absolutely* used to hit us when they were mad at us.
I didnt have friends so they just took my gameboy away. That shit was bad enough
“Grounded” effectively means to have privileges taken away. It can mean having your phone/devices taken away, having your vehicle taken away, etc. It is not just not being able to go out to socialize.
grounded means you’re staying in your room. you might/probably get electronics taken. you can’t leave your room unless it’s for a meal or bathroom.
that’s the general practice anyway. it’s meant to make them bored out of their minds. and to think about their decision making.
Don’t have kids… But my brother turns their wi-fi off in addition to not going out etc…
His kids are very well behaved.
Bad from the kids perspective. You being grounded just means you’re not allowed to do your leisure activities like go out and see friends, watch TV, play games, etc.
Being grounded is not something seen across every subculture in America though. I’m Black and don’t know any Black or minority family that grounds their children. I’m sure it does happen though but it’s not a common discipline means for all subcultures in the states.
Grounding means you can’t go out and do fun things with your friends. You have to stay home because you’re being punished. When I was grounded as a kid, that also meant no phone.
If a parent beats their children in the U.S., that is considered child abuse, and is a crime. Parents go to prison for beating children.
I got grounded once for hosting a keg party while my parents were away for the entire Jr and Sr class. It was well worth it.
When I was a kid (back in the olden days), punishment usually meant no tv or music. Except for me. My mother use to ban me from reading. I would have to sneak books under my bed.
Years later I mentioned how most parents begged their kids to read and it was pretty odd that my punishment restricted my reading. My mother mother said it was the only way she could get to me.
It makes sense. Although I am constantly streaming things to watch, if you took it away from me I wouldn’t miss it. As an adult I have gone years without a tv in my home (before streaming was a thing). I am pretty good at keeping myself occupied unless it is time to do housework. I never have time to do housework 🙂
Not being allowed to hang out with your friends sucks pretty bad op
They’ll take something away to ensure it’s not fun. Like you can’t go out and you also can’t play video games or something. I think it was innately more punishing back in the pre-Internet days like the 70s or 80s. Going out and hanging out with friends was pretty much the only thing you did.
To clarify here, this is a discipline tactic that only makes sense to use on kids old enough to be somewhat autonomous of their parents and family — around age 12-13 at the earliest.
Saying “You’re grounded” to a primary/elementary school age child, let alone a toddler, is not going to make sense to Americans.
Also — “beaten/smacked”: that is used in the US too.
I was a kid in the 90s so being grounded meant being in your room where there was no tv or anything and hearing your friends call your house on the one landline in the kitchen and your mom going “She can’t come to the phone right now because she’s grounded”. While you fume in your room all by yourself and maybe read a book.
Typically being grounded (or some families say “on restriction”) in my day meant no going out, no TV, no music, no phone calls.
I’m 46, so cellphones weren’t a thing for teens back then. I felt pretty cool for having a phone in my room, but my parents would confiscate it.
Oh, and if one of my friends called, my mom would answer and say I couldn’t come to the phone because I was grounded. She might even list my crime. So embarrassing!
They’d also disconnect every TV except the one in the family room, which I wasn’t allowed to watch. They took my music player.
I could go to school and come straight home.
At home I had to stay in my room unless I was doing chores.
If I was grounded in summer, sometimes Dad took me to his office (he had a small business for a while). The secretary there *loved* when I got grounded lol. Dad would just hand me off, and the secretary would have me collate invoices for hours while all my friends were off having fun.
Usually a grounding was one week, I think the longest was a month (I got busted sneaking out).
One aspect I haven’t seen covered in other comments is that people outside the family tend to notice if you’re grounded. If it happens frequently enough, you can start facing broader social consequences for being known as a bad influence. Or perhaps your friends got away with something but you being grounded brings their parent’s attention to it and they get in trouble after the fact. So it can be more than just limited privileges, stricter rules, etc. Sometimes it has a ripple effect.
They just take certain stuff you really
Enjoy away for a few weeks
Grounded isn’t just staying home.
Grounded is staying in your room. No seeing or talking to friends. No electronics. It’s basically like the kid version of solitary confinement in prison. Just you and your thoughts sitting in a room. This often lasts for a week or even longer.
It also may mean missing things that were already scheduled you wanted to go to like a friend’s party or something.
Short story from when I was a kid. I was grounded once. My mom caught me sleeping the day away in my room.
So she banned me from my room and made me spend my time sitting at the kitchen table. She took everything off of it too. My mom really loves reading so she just read in the living room instead of watching TV so I wouldn’t have anything to listen to either.
Grounding and electronic bans would have no effect on me. “Okay, mummy. You want my electronics and not go out? Theek hai, I’ll just read!”
Unfortunately, my mother then decided to ground me from READING! I’m still upset about that twenty years later.
😒🤣
Edit: I should clarify that I was raised in the US by a Punjabi mother.
Didn’t bother me much as a kid. No big deal if I couldn’t go anywhere for a day, or a week. I just read books in my room.
I got grounded for bad grades. I wasn’t a bad student, I like to believe I was regarded as fairly intelligent among my peers. I raised my hand in class, I was able to follow along in class, sometimes with ease. Scored well on tests.
But I did not want to do homework. Screw that, I’m not doing more school when I’m done with school. So I fairly regularly had poor or even failing grades. So I was sometimes grounded for near entire school years. No going out with friends, no video games, etc.
So as a result, I became very good at lying to my parents. Grounding me was not the solution to get me to do my homework. You just couldn’t make me care about it. I guess I still have a touch of resentment towards my parents for this.
Depends on the kid on how well it worked. I grew up in the 90s-my mom was the only one with a cell phone at the time. One home computer, with dial up that we shared with the land line. Basic TV channels. I was an introvert who loved to stay in my room. Grounding me was just another day in my life. I learned nothing.
Parents stopped effectively punishing their children about 20 years ago, for fear of “child abuse” accusations. Now they just make idle threats. This is the real reason the world has gone to shit. And I am not even joking about that.
It depends on your age, but grounded can mean no video games, no watching TV, no using the computer and no going out and playing with your friends. That’s why a lot of kids don’t like it.
Most kids love playing games and watching movies, so of course you would not want to get grounded.
I was a kid in the 90s, and grounded meant I had to sit in my room. I could only leave for bathroom breaks and meals.
I wasn’t allowed any TV (didn’t have one in my room) or electronics (gameboy was the only option then. No music allowed either).
Basically, I had whatever toys were in my room and books. Imagine spending 12 hours in a box with nothing to do. As close to prison as a kid could get.
What grounded means can differ. When I was a kid it was not being able to go outside and play with friends.
As electrons and stuff became more popular it included not being able to use those.
A guy I used ti work with would ground his kids and it meant they couldn’t stay inside, so kids that grew up using technology it can be a bit painful for them.
I’ve never been grounded in my life, but I was always afraid to be so it kept me in line lol. So in that sense yes it worked
When I was a very young child I overheard grownups talking about a kid being grounded and thought he was literally being buried in the ground so I was scared. I was never grounded though.
Usually grounding means a child might not get to go out to play, see their friends, use tv/computer/game/phone or something recreational they like for a period of time. It might be kind of harsh if it is for a longer period. It is kind of like house arrest- you might go to school but no where else. It is not worse than beating your child. Kids are dramatic though and to them it might seem like the end of the world to be isolated and not have things they like.
Best punishment ever as an introvert.
Grounded means you’ve had privileges revoked.
Almost always it means you are grounded to your home, so no going out with friends or having friends come over to hang out. Sometimes you are also grounded from electronics (no tv, no video games, no computer). Sometimes, it can even mean you are grounded to your room. Always the worst. You must ask permission to leave your room and sometimes any form of entertainment is removed from your room as well.
I hated being grounded more than anything. Being from the south, getting your ass whooped was a very common form of punishment. As an adult I never condone striking a child or any forms or corporal punishment but as a kid I heavily preferred getting spanked to being grounded.
It was over for me in 5 minutes tops. Pain lasted awhile and it was humiliating but damn, being grounded can really fuck with your social life.
When I got grounded, it was from everything l – going out, TV, phone. Anything fun was taken away.
Depends on the child.
Typically, electronics are banned, going out is banned, sometimes club activities are banned, etc.
I was 5 when I stopped getting grounded though 😂. Got grounded and was perfectly happy to just stare out the window for hours, and felt very fancy getting to eat in my bedroom. Royally backfired lol
Those parents are pretty much gonna hone in everything you enjoy and take it away basically. The only way to beat it is to really enjoy doing homework.
Surely people all over the world ground children
I found out at a young age I was an introvert when I was grounded and didn’t notice any change
Back when I was a teen, my best friend was Grounded. No phone (the Internet wasn’t a thing back then) and no bedroom and no books. See my friend was a homebody, she didn’t go out much because she (and none of her friends) had cars and we lived miles apart So she spent 95% of her free time, in her room, reading. So her mother had to get creative to punish her. So she could only use her bedroom for changing clothes or sleeping. And she wasn’t allowed to read at home unless it was a school book.
I often got grounded for a week straight when I was a child, which meant being locked in my room without any electronics or music. Was only allowed to step outside of my room to use the bathroom. That was super strict, I couldn’t open the door for any other reason. Was fed dinner in my room.
Used to be terrible. Worst punishment short of an ass beating. Like others have said kids don’t go outside anymore anyway so it’s nbd.
I was never “grounded” but my neighbor who runs a nearby coffee shop is a parent so I sometimes hear about how he grounds his son. He temporarily cuts his teenage son’s mobile phone and/or internet access when he acts disrespectful to peers, gets in trouble at school etc.
Basically it involves limiting a kid’s activities (especially social) as a disciplinary measure.
Others have spelled out how it works for the most part, wanted to chime in with that it’s a very mental punishment. It’s essentially the ideas of the prison system, punishment through denial of freedoms, usually combined with a strict and restrictive schedule.
That all being said, occasionally kids find themselves in situations where they become ungroundable since the only things that could be taken away would potentially qualify as child abuse. Speaking from personal experience, I worked as a teenager and owned my own (admittedly shitty) car and paid for my own gas and insurance, didn’t care about having my cellphone taken away (just meant my parents couldn’t bother me when I wasn’t around), and had paid for anything worth taking away myself. All this kinda created a situation where I was essentially ungroundable since I had legal ownership of all the stuff grounding would impact. Most teenagers aren’t/weren’t as self sufficient as I was (my situation isn’t one I’d encourage for what it’s worth), but it is possible to essentially find yourself in a situation where the big parent punishment stateside just doesn’t work since there’s no legal leverage and you find yourself in fights that involve you reminding your parents that you’re able to buy your own food/you can just sleep in your car.
For me growing up when i got grounded meant no toys, no TV. Sit on my bed at attention. No falling asleep until bed time either.
Being grounded has a much more profound affect on kids in the 50s-90s where there wasn’t the internet or cellphones.
The bedroom was basically just for sleeping, studying, and storing your shit. You didn’t “live” there like kids do now.
Additionally, a lot of well-off families kinda spoil their kids, so kids had a lot to lose by getting on the bad side of their parents. So there was a lot of sway to be loyal and obey.
It wasn’t uncommon for parents to buy their kids cars, and set them up pretty well for being an adult. So to squander that by being a rebel wasn’t common unless you were poor and weren’t going to get spoiled anyways.
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I think this is a good example of how America having such a strong influence in the media industry that holdbacks from an earlier age still carry weight in the modern era.
I don’t think a lot of younger people truly get how radically different childhood was for kids who were born before the internet era.
The internet (and cellphones) totally revolutionized growing up.
Grounded in my house and my parents house is, “You don’t do anything fun. You sit in an empty room all day except meals and bathroom breaks and chores. Chores are often increased.”
My parents frequently spanked us if we committed a serious offense or had an attitude. I only ever spank my kids for extremely serious offenses like “tried to burn down the house”. Corporal punishment is mildly unpopular in the USA and for good reasons. It’s not especially effective and is actually quite harmful to development.
Grounded means confined to your bedroom normally with removal of any forms of entertainment or hobbies but can also get more creative from there
Ive been grounded for 3 months…… i used to look forward to chirch just to escape the boredom… it worked very well
My sister got grounded but with her it was less about lack of tv and games and more that all her “cool” sneakers were taken away and she was forced to wear an old pair of dirty scuffed up shows in public.
Grounding usually means restrictions or bans. Maybe no going out with friends, or more likely, no electronic devices. I can confirm that being grounded sucked.