The fun quote above is from my 13yr old daughter - describing her 14yr old sister to a friend. The rest of this blog is directly from this adorable 14year old...these are her ideas about consequences for poor behavior.

(For background, this cutie was adopted by us almost 1yr ago. She came to our family because of her severe behaviors in her first adoptive family. She has tested. She's not done testing yet. But she sure is doing a lot better than she was!! The girl is no stranger to the "consequence"!)

I could talk about Grounding?
Grounding sucks. You shouldn’t ground anyone. Just kidding!

Certain things need to be grounded for. You shouldn’t go easy on your dang kids.
(What sort of things are you talking about?)
Like when they run off with your cell phone and run up your bill.
Running away.
Lying, stealing, cheating on your homework if you’re homeschooled.
Nah, don’t put the cheating part.
Smoking.
Staying out past curfew.
Those are big things for kids. There are probably different things for little kids. I do think kids should be grounded, but also not for every little thing - just for things that really matter.

(What exactly do you mean by “grounding”?)
Grounding is punishment. Really, it’s just more of a consequence.
Grounding depends on what you did wrong.
(For the reader, what she describes sounds more like “logical consequences”?)

Like, if you run away, then you have to stay by your parents. Obviously, you can’t be trusted to stay safe all by yourself. So, stay by your parents until you can.

With stealing a cell phone, then you shouldn’t be allowed to use electronics for a while.

Staying out past curfew, you get grounded for how long past curfew you were gone. You can’t go out for that time – if you were walking around the neighborhood, then you can’t do that. If you were at a friend’s house, you can’t go to friends’ houses. Whatever you were out late doing, you can’t do that for a while. (At our house, it’s one day for every one minute you were late!)

I don’t know how to ground someone because of smoking. But, parents should figure out something and not let it seem to the kid like they are okay with it.

If you steal from a store, you should have to take it back and write an apology letter. If you steal at home, you should have to pay back double.

Oh, and you should also ground kids for bad grades.

Like, make them study the subject every day. They should have to study it for more time than they did before and also get someone to be sure they are studying right. But, they shouldn’t get to go out for fun things, like football games, until their grades are back up. Kind of like the schools’ “no pass, no play” rule for participating in school sports, only this is at the house.

No one likes grounding, not even parents. But, sometimes it does help. For me, it changes behavior sometimes. I don’t do some things because I don’t want to be grounded. I like having a lot of priveleges instead.