When I first started thinking about what kind of parent I thought I’d be, there were a couple things I never thought I would do. Send my kids to a “time out,” ground them, or reply with, “Hi Thirsty, I’m Dad,” when they told me they were thirsty. I had a pretty good run, but I’ve officially crossed one of those off the list. My kids were finally bad enough that I had to ground them. All three of them. At the same time.
Working from home, while providing an element of freedom, also brings its own set of challenges. Especially in the summer when the kids are home all day. I get that it is hard for them when I’m in a meeting, needing to be quiet and not being able to get any of my attention. But I also know that they really like it when I have longer meetings because they know I’ll let them just watch a movie. Well, a few weeks ago whatever they were watching while I was in a meeting wasn’t holding their attention, so they turned their attention to disrupting me.
Remember back at the start of Covid when there were all those funny videos when a kid would wander through the background of some CEO’s conference call? Well, the “aww how cute” of that has really worn off. Working from home isn’t some kind of odd novelty that we are all making due and getting by with. It is business as normal now. And much like it wouldn’t be very normal if your kid walked into your office and threw a stuffed animal at you in the middle of a presentation to an important client, it is just as not normal for a kid to hurl whatever they could get their mitts on at you while on a Zoom call. So disrespectful story short, my kids were animals while I was in a meeting, and there were consequences and repercussions.
I thought it would be harder, but the decision to ground them came easy. No dessert or TV for the rest of week sprung to mind like it had been waiting there for years, tucked behind “get that out of your mouth” just waiting for its moment to shine. How quickly I abandoned the idea that I’d never be a parent who grounds my kids. I realized it in the moment that I was doing it, compromising the kind of parent I thought I wanted to be. But it didn’t upset me initially, it was what it was. What upset me more was that my kids were now the kids of kids who got grounded.
Unless I have completely repressed the memory, I’m pretty sure I never got grounded when I was kid. Sent to my room, sure. Not given ice cream as a one-off punishment, yeah. But never a sweeping multi-day grounding. Was I just that well-behaved of a child? Or did my parents look past behavior that other parents would have grounded me for? I’m going to go ahead and assume I was exceptionally well-behaved. Or at least slightly above averagely well-behaved. So how was I not able to instill that same kind of behavior in my kids? An almost knee-jerk reaction when my kids misbehave is to say something like “you know better” or “we taught you better than that.” But do they, and did we?
I’m pretty sure I’ve done a good job of teaching them how to behave. Or at least correcting them in teachable moments when they don’t. Well, if I didn’t before I sure did now. My younger two kids also learned an important lesson about not doing something just because your older sister said to.
Yeah, kids will be kids and do stupid stuff. Even if they truly do know better, some thought will pop into their brains and they just don’t have the impulse control or reasoning to stop themselves from acting on it. I assume this is how most Blippy gets watched. But when it is repeated, sustained bad behavior among all three kids simultaneously? More than impulse control, that is mob mentality. I know exactly what happened. My oldest daughter started acting out first, didn’t get the response she wanted, so she convinced her younger brother and sister to come down and try to bother me. Surely I couldn’t get mad and punish all of them, right? Fools.
In the moment I took no pity on them. As soon as my meeting mercifully came to an end I dispatched them to their rooms with great vengeance and furious anger. That temporary detention was not enough, and the decision was made to ground them. Then I did start to feel a bit of pity for my younger two kids. Evie, my six year-old daughter, clearly got it. She knew she was in trouble. She knew how she acted wasn’t right. She came right out and ratted on her older sister that she was the ring leader of it. The punishment was set, I couldn’t go back on it now, and I wasn’t going to let one of them slide. Much like the coach who makes the whole team run laps when one player does something stupid, I needed to handout the punishment across the board. Even if they weren’t all as actively involved, they were all complicit. Is it fair? Maybe not, but teaching your kids that life isn’t fair is important too.Though as the days went by and Evie clearly displayed her contrition, I did sneak her a cookie. I can’t stay mad at that little peanut.
However, as the week went on I found myself staying mad at myself. Well, maybe not mad, but disappointed. On one hand I need to deliver the message to my kids that how they behave toward other people (especially their father) matters. But on the other hand, did I send them a message that my ability to focus on work is more important than focusing on them? This has been someting that I’ve struggled with ever since I started working from home. I wonder what lesson will resonate with them more. That, no, you shouldn’t throw pieces of paper at your dad while he is on a conference call, or that no, dad doesn’t have time to pay attention to you?
Since the grounding, they have not come anywhere close to behaving that badly while I’m working. They have pretty much stayed away, and when I do tell them I have a meeting they get to another part of the house pretty quickly. I guess it worked. Now that they know what it is it, grounding is also a tangable threat to punish future bad behavior, so maybe once will be enough. We’ll have to check back when they are three teenagers.
Would I ground them again if I had to? Yes. But I would definitly make sure to take stock of what I know I’ve taught them before. Something that I’ve at least given one warning about. One thing I’ve learned is that I can’t expect behavior out of my kids because acting that way is common sense. They have no common sense. At all. Unfortunately, sense often comes from struggle. I guess at least the struggle this time was a grounding from a parent and not a harsher situation that the world out there can throw them. I suppose that is parenting in a nutshell, being a little bit of jerk to your kids so they can be prepared for the much, much larger jerk that is the world.
I Think Therefore I Dad 