You're Grounded!

My NM gave out groundings like candy on Halloween, beginning probably around the time I was eight or nine. If I were to try and add up durations of all the grounding sentences E-Sis and I ever received, we would probably have still been grounded in our early 20s. The reason for this is simple: NM oscillated between authoritarian parenting style and a neglectful one. In her authoritarian rages she would hand down grounding sentences ranging from four months, to six months, even up to year long for various offenses ranging from making a mess in the bathroom to a dish coming out of the dishwasher dirty. Honestly I don't even remember what all the offenses were, but I'm fairly certain they usually had to do with messes/cleaning, and later "talking back" to her.

There was never a clear contract made of "If you don't do X or if you do Y, you will be grounded from Z". It was more of a "I'm mad you didn't do X! You can no longer do Y and Z!" a lack of an agreement makes that kind of punishment arbitrary and causes resentment because one had absolutely no way of knowing the consequences ahead of time. However, NM was too neglectful too actually keep track of all the groundings she gave out, what they were for, or how long they were supposed to last. And if for some reason she wanted me out of the house and my best friend had invited me somewhere, she would send me off. This of course made groundings a rather meaningless punishment and it wasn't like there was a reinforcement for actually doing something she wanted done. Remember, not being punished is not a reinforcement/reward. NM never actually tried to teach the behaviors she wanted us to do, only punished unwanted behaviors or  the absence of desired ones, as if she expected we could somehow magically learn them on our own with no help from her.

Also for this type of punishment to work, it requires taking away something that actually matters to the person. There was almost nothing that mattered that much to me that she could take away. I had one best friend and my sister, so there wasn't much socialization to take away. In fact, E-Sis and I became close out necessity back then because often she and I only had each other to spend time with due to the groundings and our we were relative inept at making friends. As for my best friend, I would see her at school, or NM would want me gone and let me go spend time with her, or if her parents needed somebody to watch her they would ask NM because our parents had become friends (and vice versa). It was certainly an inconvenience to lose access to the computer for creative writing (my handwriting is terrible), but losing access to the television, telephones (not that I ever called anyone regularly anyway), video games, not being allowed to play outside, etc, wasn't really a big deal. And it wasn't like I couldn't get into or do most of those things without her knowledge once we were old enough to be left unsupervised for a few hours. As you can see by the list of things I had available to lose, my physical/material needs were always well met, possibly even indulged in an attempt to avoid having to deal with any emotional needs.

E-Sis and I could always do things at home together when we were grounded, and I also had my own room full of stuff to do whenever I was sent to my room or didn't want to spend time with E-Sis. It would be too much work to prevent E-Sis and me from interacting for months, just like it would be too much work to take all my toys away, all my books away, prevent me from checking out books at school, and to take all my pen/pencils and paper to keep me from my creative writing. It would be too much work to try and stand over both of us to make sure we didn't do any of those things, either together or by ourselves. Even if NM had ever decided to put that much effort into her punishments, I could simply work on whatever story I was writing in my head like I would do when I (often) couldn't sleep but was of course forbidden from getting up to do anything because I "wasn't allowed" to stay up, regardless of whether or not I could actually sleep. But I digress. In sum, I had no problems sitting in my room quietly playing by myself, reading, writing, or even seemingly doing nothing. I had something she could never take away from me: a magnificent imagination.

NM's punishments, while often inappropriate and/or poorly executed, were never what was so bad about her, though. It was always the rages that accompanied them, whether it was a barely restrained lecture or full on yelling/screaming/crying, that made her so terrifying. More on that next time.