Is Taking Away Favorite Gadgets an Effective Form of Punishment?

Nothing makes my kids straighten up faster than to tell them there will be no Playstation later. They only get an hour a day, and they have to get all homework and chores finished and have no bad notes from school in order to earn it.

I'm blessed with a child that is not too addicted to gadgets. We all know she will get there soon enough, but it doesn't even phase her to lose her cellular for a few days. The biggest threat to her right now is to restrict her from going to the library or book store.

May parents took away the mouse and powercable as punishment one time.

In a way it was good for me, I learned how to power a computer by making my own cable, and I learned that windows had shortcut keys and about this awesome thing called "DOS."

but it hardly kept me off my computer.

No Doubt It Works! Speaking as a Dad it does the trick every time. Tell 'em no video games and things change fast. I can only imagine how well it's gonna work with the cell phone when that day comes. Heh! Heh! Heh!

We didn't have access to many gadgets while I was growing up, we mostly just had a computer and a television so if we got into enough trouble, taking them away was the best and most effective punishment.

Even now, my roommate uses this method on her kid and it works like a charm.

For girls it has to be the cell phone - especially troublesome when you tell them who was texting and you replied with "grounded lol". Boys have to be the game machine whatever it is. Our parents wished they had these type of tactics - all they had was grounded and belt time. Course if gadgets fail - bedroom door and then curtain removal is in the back of my mind muhahaha - havent had to go that far though. Us parents need all the tricks we can get. Yeah I vote get your kids cool gadgets so you can take em away or at least threaten.

My parents used to take away my keyboard so that I would study before getting to use the PC. Back then you didn't need a computer for homework anyway.

However, this served one purpose - I got creative in ways of using the machine without a keyboard, sneaking a small kb into the house, etc...

My 5 year old son loses "LittleBigPlanet" or "Lego Star Wars" privileges if he has a bad day at school. It's very effective.

fuck parents

When I was in High School I really only used a phone and my computer -- but I used my computer A LOT. The general threat when my grades would go down was that my internet would be taken away. It never worked very well as a punishment -- I would get the internet back the moment I needed it for schoolwork or I would just go reconnect it myself or I would put up with it and just be a meaner child in the meantime.
Even worse I remember that punishment having just the wrong sort of outcome: my grades actually went down. A ton.

My parents tried to take away the computer useing the solftware,

3 out of 4 times I hacked into their account.

The 4th time I guessed their password

As a child who has been a victim of this sort of punishment I will answer you with the CORRECT and HONEST answer you derserve. The answer is no, it's not effective at all.
When my parents take away my computer, it not only makes me extremley pissed off, but encourages me to go in the opposite direction. If your child does respond in a positive away, this behavior is not an honest behavior, they are reacting in a positive way for one thing and one hong only, to get back what you have taken away. By this I mean, they have not been taught any lesson, are still extremley pissed at you, and most likley will repeats what they have done.
So you may ask yourself, "what the f**k do I do then?". You'll be happy to hear I have an answer for you; don't take away anything, but instead, limit it. Now your thinking (or will be thinking), "limit by how much?", well it depends. Start with cutting the usage by 50%, if that's too much try 60% , and so on.

Hope I helped.

-B (15 years old)

Just for really bad thing