Then why are you having the party in the first place?

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

Well, when I was 13 (just 5 years ago), my peers began experimenting with things like pot and sex acts. Perhaps that would be worth 8 months.

Yeah I was thinking either sex/got a girl pregnant, something else illegal or perhaps he did something that cost his parents a lot of money.

[Megg]

So, does that mean that you never shoplifted again, or that you just got better at it

Haha, I am going to have to plead the fifth on that one ... I was a crazy teenager, what can I say? I am much older and wiser now, though.

If you can get grounded for getting pregnant or getting someone pregnant, you probably shouldn't be having sex. Says the girl who had a baby at 15, but still ...

What? I told you I was a crazy teenager!

[Samaliel]

Well, at least, you're not blaming the deed on anyone else.

I really hated the woman who blamed her three daughters' (aged 10, 12 and 14 respectively) pregnancies on... the British education system. That's right, they're the one responsible for not noticing all your three children were screwing (or rather, being screwed, as a matter of fact) around...

[Bradester]

Her daughter got pregnant at age 10?

[Nephy]

It turns out that their kid decided to do something (sorry, it was never disclosed to my friend) very naughty

Okay, you need to tell your friend to call the family and ask. Have her tell them that the entire internet is dying to know what their son did.

[Samaliel]

Sorry, I've just looked it up and it appears that I mis-remembered that : they were 12, 14 and 16 when they delivered.

I'll open up a thread in the "Check it Out" section if you want to discuss this any further, so as to not hijack the thread.

[RedRoseSpiral]

Ah, groundings, they bring back such good memories. I'm not the least bit surprised parents would ground their kid for that long. There were times when I was grounded for a year at a time. And if you asked anyone, from my best friend to my own mother, I didn't deserve it. Most of the time I was grounded from the computer because like some of you I didn't go out much during high school. There really wasn't anywhere to go. Usually with in two or three months my mom would let me go online when my dad and brother wasn't on.

I am curious on why the kid's parents went so ape shit on him and the OP's friend.

[smileyeagle1021]

Am I one of the few that's never been grounded before? Because I've been punished for numerous things, but never grounded.

My 15- year old brother has been grounded several time for poor grades, and for many things, from having no birthday party to quitting band to not even using the computer/video games. He actually was banned from going on the band's summer trip.

ouch, being forced to quit band... that is cruel (says the band geek).

Nope. Of course, I never left the house anyway, so grounding me wouldn't've been punishment.

oh and ditto what Arctic Chicken said... until I got my drivers license I couldn't leave the house if I wanted to... the nearest bus stop was 5 miles away and only provided rush hour service (ftr, the closest stop to where I grew up now is now only 2 miles away and has service every hour from 4am to 11pm), there wasn't anywhere that I'd really want to go within easy walking or biking distance, and there wasn't even anyone my age in the neighborhood (unless you count Jason, but he was a jackass)... it might have meant more once I got my license (and sense my mom had two cars I was able to drive without too many problems), but even once I had my license my mom had a rule that if I used a car it had to have a full tank before she used it again and granted gas was cheap back then (like $1.50 to $1.75 ) but still I didn't have much money.

[greensinestro]

"That little bastard of ours doesn't deserve having a birthday party with his family mush less all the happy crap you're making us pay for!"


Mongo

OK.....right there, I call this a horrible parent. My kids have at times done things that warranted punishment and left me angry, but I don't know of anything that justifies referring to your kid in this manner. As you asked, what did this kid do to get this punishment of eight months, let alone have his parents refer to him as a bastard in front of total strangers?

[greensinestro]

i dunno. to me it's kinda harsh to pull a kid's birthday party for that. but that's me, and all i have is a cat.. and that cat's with my sister right now.

but i know my nephew had a kinda second birthday party this weekend... traditionally the real one is with the family and then the following weekend he gets to spend it with his 2 best friends... he did something to get in trouble, but... was told that he'd pay for it "tomorrow", instead of punishing him in front of the friends etc.

so i guess that's not a bad idea... instead of punishing them by taking away the birthday, why not use a different punishment?

I worked with a guy who told me about the time his parents canceled Christmas. He told me his parents were so fed up with his behavior as well as his siblings, that they had decided to have December as an ordinary month. They had at first put up decorations, but then took down everything. Not one ornament was up, not one card, no lights, nothing. When I asked him what he did, it was simply his parents were fed up with him and his fighting with his brothers and sisters. They argued about everything, so this was what the parents decided. Seems harsh, but from what he said, they got along much better after that.

[Sheldonrs]

My Mom never grounded me or my sisters. If she was angry with you, she gave you the silent treatment. And that could mean months of not speaking to you. And this did not stop after we grew up.

[kibbles]

Who wants to bet the parents probably "cheaped" out at the last minute and wanted a good "story" to get their money back.

[Imogene]

Only major times I can remember being grounded... I spent a week in... third grade? Where I lied and said I hadn't gotten my name on the board at all, when I'd actually managed to screw up majorly and get at the very least my name on the oard (and sometimes got checks...) Mom took away pool privileges for the rest of the season when the teacher made me call home to tell her. And I had to write an apology letter to the teacher.

The other time, my brother, Dad and I were going to head out to KFC to grab dinner, and I put Dad's truck in reverse (stick shift) and it nearly backed into our station wagon... Dad and Mom were behind the truck trying to stop it... I just wasn't allowed to go to KFC with Dad and bro...

[Polenicus]

The harshest punishment I ever got was this:

My Mom was after me to clean my room, and I was at the point where I was outright ignoring her. I was 8-9 at the time. She warned me that if it wasn't clean by the next day, I wouldn't have all those toys to play with, or the nice sheets to sleep on that I left rumpled.

Naturally, I didn't clean it or make my bed.

The next day? Sheets stripped from my bed, toys confiscated. I wasn't grounded, I just didn't have my stuff. I was convinced she had thrown my toys away, and panicked and started digging through the garbage, until she stopped me and told me I could have all that stuff back in a week.

It was summer, so sleeping on a bare mattress wasn't cruel, but it wasn't comfortable (I'm weird in that I can't sleep unless I have some sort of sheet covering me, no matter how thin). I learned my lesson, and at the end of the week, I got my stuff back. It also served a double purpose, as I still had my bike, and so I had little recourse but to go outside and play.

That was probably the harshest single punishment I ever got, and actually in hindsight I think it was pretty inventive.

[ZeoViolet]

When I was eight years old, I got grounded for a year because I went to a friend's house without telling anyone and...er....it got kinda late. Get my drift?

Thing was, I was a very obedient, good little girl who never did a thing wrong before (at least nothing more than got a simple spanking), and I'd never warranted serious punishment before so my dad decided to make it stick so I'd never be disobedient again. His decree: I was grounded for a year and could not have friends over, or go anywhere on my own except to my grandmother's house or with my mom.

He also threatened to send me to a children's prison if I was ever disobedient again. (He liked to make up torture stories about this.)

I neglected to remind him that I never went anywhere except these two places on a regular basis anyways, so it wasn't much of a punishment to me....but the horror of a children's prison was.

For the next eleven months it was like this....most of the time I forgot I was even being "punished" and he surprised me one day by saying I had been a good little girl and he was letting me off my punishment three weeks early.

I was eighteen before I ever told him that it might have been better if he had just spanked me.

PS I was so blindly obedient growing up though that never again did I do anything to disobey my parents until I was seventeen and managed to get into a massive fight with him after he yelled at my mother too much for my liking. I left the house and he said "don't come back". He came looking for me an hour later.

The day I turned eighteen, he absolved me of all general house rules except a few basic ones for courtesy, such as not stomping into the house at 2AM, until the day I moved out on my own for good.