Originally published at Am I the Only One Dancing?. Please leave any comments there.

Turkey, despite all rumors to the contrary, is not essential to Thanksgiving, even in the US. Blasphemy, right? Thanksgiving is a harvest festival, and of course the fruits of harvest are important to the festival, but it is more than that. The essential Thanksgiving doesn’t require particular foods or table settings, but these ideals. 

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Originally published at Am I the Only One Dancing?. Please leave any comments there.

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Grounding your child is one of the most common discipline methods of parents in many parts of the world. The concept is pretty simple: Take away freedom of movement or specific privileges from a misbehaving child for a specific amount of time, with the dual purpose of encouraging positive behavior through closer supervision, and reducing negative behavior through reducing opportunity. Unfortunately, many parents ‘break the rules’ of grounding, thereby making it far less efffective.

Here are some basic ‘don’ts’ to keep you on track:

1) Kids who have misbehaved are like abusive spouses in that they are almost immediately apologetic and sweet. For many parents, who feel vaguely guilty for grounding their precious child, this serves as an excuse to serve up an un-grounding. Do not do this. Notice the good behavior, thank him or her, and smile, but don’t relent on the punishment you initially set up. Teenagers learn from this and will only be ‘good’ when they’re grounded and the payoff is high.

2) Despite my joking about Teenager being the Perpetually Grounded Son, it is not a good idea for a grounding to be longer than about a week. If you need to set up structure for your kid for a longer period, make it a rule and not a grounding. For instance, since Teenager does well with a lot of structure this year he is expected to finish his homework (or as much as he can) at the school library before coming home in the afternoon, and is off electronics (computer, video games) on weeknights through the first quarter until we assess how his grades are and adjust. Remember that when your child is grounded, you’re essentially grounded too, so the shortest, most effective time is best.

3) Don’t be afraid to customize groundings for different kids. They will complain about fairness, but it’s not about fairness, it’s about results. Kid A might need to be on total lockdown in her bedroom for a week to prevent a recurrence of bad behavior, while Kid B does well if you take away texting and phone privileges but allow her some TV time.

4) Don’t forget to tell your parenting partner* what the punishment is and why. This goes back to ‘kids are smart’. The parent that isn’t ‘in the know’ is all too likely to automatically approve a request in passing to go to a friend’s house or use the computer, and the parent that set up the consequence for bad behavior is then undermined (sometimes wholly accidentally) – which leads to:

5) Don’t undermine your parenting partner’s consequences. If you don’t agree with them, discuss it privately with him or her and decide between you whether the consequences will be amended or not. Either way, present a united front to the child.

*A parenting partner is anyone who helps raise a child. This can be a parent, stepparent, grandparent, friend or neighbor, ex spouse or partner, grown child, or anyone else who accepts a significant role in the child’s life and helps you with parenting tasks. If you don’t have a romantic partner or ‘natural’ parenting partner, it is often a good idea to develop a friendship with another singleton parent with compatible parenting views to ‘spot’ and support one another, and provide respite fore each other.

And a bonus: Don’t forget that the purpose of grounding isn’t punishment, but helping a child or teen regain control over his or her behavior through limiting choices. Punishment might feel good in the short term, but it rarely helps in the long term.

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