I think it's just a way for parents to avoid having to directly help their children through whatever tough time they're going. Bad parenting, from the way I just worded it.
We're really not all that different from dogs in a sense of training or rats with cheese.
Show your kids that bad choices will reap bad consequences, and they will be disinclined to do so.
Reward your kids when they do something good, and they will be inclined to do so.
Same as training a pet, interestingly.
However, bad consequences through punishment teach almost absolutely nothing if your kid can just sneak out to parties, get on the computer when you're not there, or find the things you took away from them. Get with the program, parents. Your kids will just do it again. If your kid doesn't mind groundings, then you're doing it
wrong.
Grounding's great when it's effective, like in the Cosby Show. Quick to send to the room with no privileges, but also quick to lovingly say "How was your day, sweetie?" when you get home from school with no fun to be had. Lol.
Parents can't be omnipresent, but they can be omniscient. Cliff and Clair Huxtable always had tabs on their kids, what they were doing, and who they were with. They had 5 kids to tell on each other when they messed up, and neighbors and friends and a tight leash to always know what was going on in their family's daily lives. That's why their punishments were effective. That's why their kids were, although normal bratty teenagers, rather well-mannered, knowledgable, and respectable. You can't teach a dog that peeing on the carpet is bad if you only scold it while you're there, and let it pee all over everything while you're at work.
When it's like in Roseanne, however, obviously the punishments don't work.
If parents just plain don't care enough to be thorough with their kids and their lives, obviously their kids will find ways to escape everything and eventually not make their parents a part of their lives anymore..
tl;dr groundings work, most are just doing it wrong.
That sucks. Hard. Just like the Bible.
Oh shut up.
