Rebecca Eckler

I recently “grounded” my daughter for the first time. 

Though I should have been grounded many, many times when I lived with my parents, I was actually only grounded once. (When you get straight A’s, I realized pretty early on, you can get away with many other things, like missing curfew, or stealing your parents car and driving to New Orleans.)

The first and only time I was grounded was after I decided to forge a note saying it was a Jewish holiday, sign my mother’s signature, and skip school. Yes, it was stupid and of course I was busted. My parents were called, and my mother grounded me for a week. It wasn’t so much that I skipped school; it was that I forged her signature that was the real offense.

Luckily, or unluckily, the same week I was supposed to be grounded I ended up in the hospital with some odd virus. So, really, I never actually ended up being grounded.

But I had to, I think, ground my six-year-old last week.

“You’re grounded,” I told her. 

“What’s grounded?” my daughter asked, which I couldn’t help but laugh at. My daughter has never done anything “ground-worthy” before, so the word had never been uttered in our house.

After spending thousands of dollars re-decorating and repainting her room, she decided it would be a good idea to write, with pen, on her bedroom wall. 

The truth is, it wasn’t entirely her fault. I was distracted when she asked if she could be like one of the characters on a television show she had seen, who wrote under her bed. 

“Yeah, yeah. If you can fit under your bed, go ahead,” I told her. What I didn’t know is that the same character on television also wrote on her bedroom wall.

“You have to go to your bedroom for six minutes!” I yelled at her, after seeing the entire alphabet written on her wall. I figured, one minute for each year of her life. For her, six minutes is a very long time.

But I had to think about this grounding thing. I mean, sending her to her bedroom, which has an attached playroom, really isn’t a punishment. All her toys, coloring books, video games, are there. But, like, where should I put her? In the laundry room?

But my daughter knew she was in trouble, since it was the first time I had told her to go to her bedroom. Two minutes later, she came down and peaked her head into the kitchen where I was sitting.

“Six minutes is not over,” I told her.

“I have something for you,” she said, handing me a piece of paper.

She had written me a note: “I love you mommy. I am sorry.”

Obviously, I wasn’t sending her back to her room after that. It was the sweetest cutest thing EVER. 

We did have a discussion, which lasted about ten seconds, with me going, “You promise never to write on the wall again?” and her agreeing readily.

Have you ever had to ground your child? If so, what do you do? I don’t think I’m very good at it, so any hints would be helpful.

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