Parents should not ground kids

For the opinion of parents, preferably those of young adolescents... Ever grounded your kid for doing something, only to find out the kid repeated the action once you ended the "period of 'groundation'"? Well my story focuses on that exact subject. In my case, the grounding did nothing. I saw no point in stopping what I was doing because I was not taught why what I did was wrong, I just knew I was being punished. The fact that I didn't know why I would be punished for doing what I was doing just caused me to be angered when I was punished. Rather than just telling their children they can't do anything because they misbehaved, parents should explain what the right thing to do is, and then concentrate on that, instead of focusing on what the child did wrong. "Daniel, we need to talk." Those words spoken sternly from my father's lips hung in the air, creating an ominous cloud of tense nervous energy between the two of us. I was a slight bit nervous, seeing as usually these "talks" ended with my dad telling me I'm grounded, not like that could happen this time due to the fact I was already grounded. But still, my father had asked, or more demanded I come to him so I had no choice but to see what he wanted. He watched me as I meandered slow and deliberately to the chair across the table. I pulled the chair out and plopped down, purposefully avoiding my father's gaze. I set my elbows on the table and my chin in my hands, then directed my attention to the parent sitting in front of me. "What were you doing on the computer today?" my father asked in a rather accusatory tone, the look on his face no more reassuring than the cold words flowing from his mouth. "Do I need to tell you?" I asked, knowing he had already found out I had gotten on the computer, more specifically the Internet earlier that day. Normally, this would not be an issue; but the difference was that I was grounded from using the computer until about two weeks later. "I'm disappointed that I can't even leave you alone with the computer for an hour" he gave me a look that I think was supposed to make me feel guilty but failed rather miserably. "We need to do something about that." Now he sounds like a freakin' psychiatrist, I thought. I replied to his statement neither agreeing nor disagreeing by saying "Okay." I added a shrug as if prompting him to tell me what he thought should be done. "What do you think it will take?" he asked. What do you think it will take? Quit grounding me and start thinking of real punishments! Of course I didn't verbalize this, I didn't want to cause a fight. But I didn't want to tell him exactly what he wanted to hear either. ‘I don't know.' Was all I said. "Well I guess we'll talk about it later." "I guess we will." The next day, when everyone was gone and I was the only one at home, I sat down at the computer, and logged onto my desktop. I got onto a few sites I frequented, such as yoyogames.com and various media sites. I knew that I would probably get "talked-to" again for using the computer again but I really didn't care since all that would happen is I might get grounded for another week or two but the guidelines for the grounding were never enforced; therefore, there was nothing standing in the way of me and me living my normal life anyways. When I was done I logged off and went about doing homework and chores, waiting for everyone to get home so we could eat dinner. After dinner, around 7:30 my dad walked to stand next to me and spoke to me again, "Daniel, I was checking the net-nanny thing and I noticed you were on the Internet again." I looked at him, but said nothing. "I'm at my wits end and I don't know what to do. It hurts me that you can't respect me and the guidelines I set for you." His voice sounded a little bit angered and quite flustered. He paused, and looked at me like he thought I should say something. No words left my mouth, so he continued talking: "We're going to have to do something." He seemed to say that every time we talked about something I'd done, but we never did anything different, he would just ground me and then get mad when I went against it. ‘I guess,' was all I said. The conversation continued for a minute or two, but of course it just ended in my father saying "We'll come back to this but for now you are grounded for an extra two weeks." Through this experience I realized grounding kids is pointless because no matter what the kid is grounded from, it will not be relevant, this was true in my case when I made some bad choices with how I used certain aspects of the Internet and was restricted from using it at all even for things like homework. This didn't teach me anything because I didn't see any connection between the punishment and the crime, so all that happened is the relationship between me and my parents got tense and hostile. If someone throws a rock at someone else when they are outside do you tell them they can't go outside for a month? Parents should put more effort into finding a punishment that fits the crime and deals with the problem, not one that just creates bitter emotions in the heart of the criminal.