Teenagers....

My son recently (last Thursday) got himself grounded for lying about playing on his dad's Xbox. I took his gameboy and T.V. away for five days. I know I was being lenient because I was not exactly sure he was on the Xbox. But I wasn't about to argue with Chris. Let's face it father and son push each other's buttons constantly.
Well.. today he was caught. I get a call at work from Chris telling me that there is definite proof that Jeff once again was on the Xbox. The T.V. and Xbox were hot when Chris got home, a different game was in the Xbox and the battery charger was out. So when we confronted Jeff with this evidence we were ready for him to deny it. He didn't. He couldn't because he knew he was busted.

Now since he is already grounded for the same offense I had to get creative. He is still grounded from his T.V. with dish connection and his gameboy but now he has no cell phone for one month (even though he bought his own cell phone and pays his own bill) and he has to read a book (Eragon) and he has to do an essay for every 12 chapters. Eragon has 59 Chapters Albeit small chapters. Along with that he will have to do a final summary on the book overall and he will be grounded from everything until it is finished. So basically he is in charge of how long he is grounded and since I know he doesn't like to read this is going to take awhile.

I also made him change his voicemail on his cell to the following:

"This is Jeff. I can't answer the phone. Don't leave a message. I won't be able to retrieve it. I am grounded for defiantly disobeying my parents rules, because I am not responsible enough to obey my parents rules, I am not responsible enough to have a cell phone at this time".

Hopefully now he will consider the consequences before doing something else wrong.