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NO DOORS ALLOWED
(lemmings.world)
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this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2025
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I lost my door as a child several times but it was always for slamming it when I was upset.
In hindsight I feel it was reasonable but it's all in how it's done. I'd lose it for a couple days to a week at most and only after being warned.
For me it was also pre-puberty/young adult years, when I was 8-10 years old.
I mean look, there are a lot of parents and kids out there, and I’m sure there are cases where it was neutral or maybe even slightlypositive. But man…that just strikes me as a recipe for utter disaster in the form of shattering trust. I’ve actually spent a fair bit of time looking into studies/insight from the behavioral health world on this matter, and the general consensus seems to be that it’s a profoundly terrible idea.
Your parents did the best they could and probably even did a great job, this is not judgment. But just like when people say “my parents hit me when I was a kid and I turned out fine,“ we need to really dig a little deeper and look at more than anecdotes of people saying “well I turned out fine.“ And to be very clear, I think parents hitting their kids is far worse than removing the door from their room. But I think you understand what I’m driving at here
If "my parents did it to me and I turned out fine" was your takeaway from my comment then I failed to communicate my point or you misunderstood, or both. It was more that context and circumstances also need to be considered. I did turn out ok, I think, but that's because of a lot of work I put in during my adulthood to really work on my growth and reflect on my behavior continuously to learn and grow.
As a difficult child who did not handle their emotions well I would slam my door when I got upset and was warned repeatedly not to or I would lose it. Then when I didn't listen and slammed it anyway I would suffer the consequences of my actions but only for a short period. It was fundamentally no different than having a toy or privilege taken away.
My parents also spanked me but I would never do that if I had children because I know it doesn't work. My parents did make mistakes and they, my mom at least directly, have acknowledged that and voiced their regret.
In OPs example it's out of line to take a door away because they are 16 years old and don't seem to be using it as an appropriate consequence for the child's actions. As an 8-10 year old child who also put their foot through a wall twice in the same spot, threw a ping pong paddle at their brother so hard it put a hole in the wall, and would slam the door so hard it would shake pictures on the wall being warned of the consequence of my continued misbehavior and then facing those consequences was, in my opinion, appropriate. I learned not to slam my door and to control my emotions and express them in a more healthy and less destructive way.
I'm sure there are other, some maybe better, techniques however we all learn from the mistakes of our parents so we can screw our children up in new and unique ways while avoiding what they did.
That is not all I took away from it. I feel like I was actually pretty extensive in my explanation for why I objected to the practice. It has been studied and behavioral health experts advise against it.
I understand why they chose your door, but that doesn’t mean it was a good decision. There are plenty of other things they could take away. There isn’t some rule that you have to specifically take away the thing that is the source of the problem. Are parents supposed to not feed their kid if they keep dropping food on the ground on purpose? No, that would be a terrible idea.
Slam your door? OK, you can’t go out with your friends tonight. Slam it again? Alright no TV for the weekend. These are pretty standard practices. Most parents do not remove doors for this reason, so clearly there are viable alternatives that don’t potentially harm the emotional and mental development of your children in a pretty well understood way. my son really likes Mario kart, so I typically just take away video games when he won’t stop really bad behavior.
Just because it makes sense to you doesn’t mean it’s a sensible idea.
Just because it doesn't make sense to you doesn't mean it's not a sensible idea.
The same behavioral experts I was taken to by my parents? The ones who helped them implement a "family contract" that resulted in one of the most miserable parts of my childhood? The "family contract" that made me resent my parents for many years?
Maybe, just maybe, behavioral health experts are a reflection of the times and their society and because it's fallen out of favor doesn't mean it's bad or doesn't work, just that it's not accepted practice any longer.
Unlike you I didn't make a statement of fact without supporting evidence. I offered up my own, personal, direct experience and how it affected me along with my opinion that context and situation should be a consideration.
I laugh if you think taking away video games or no tv would have worked to stop me from slamming the door. Unsurprisingly, of all the things my parents tried, removing the door so I couldn't slam it was the effective solution.