News, Advice, and Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Tess Chapin is a 15-year-old girl from Queens, New York, who was grounded for five weeks because she missed her curfew by an hour and was drinking at a party. Feeling unfairly punished, Tess has started a Facebook campaign aimed at convincing her parents to end her punishment.

A Jan. 15 article by Susan Dominus of the New York Times featured Chapins story:

A few days after founding the Facebook group  1000 to get tess ungrounded  Tess had nearly reached her stated goal, with 806 members by Friday morning; after this column about her quest was posted on nytimes.com, she surpassed it. &

Her dad wanted to give her three months, said her mother, Jennifer Iselin Chapin, a fund-raiser for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. I wanted a month. This was a compromise.

For the duration, there will be no parties for Tess, no sleepovers, no Sweet 16s, no hanging out at a friends, and certainly no hanging out at a party where there is no parent present and possibly alcohol served, like the one that landed her in this situation in the first place.

Tess, so far, seems to have accepted her fate, albeit with grumbling and the same charming sass that she displays on Facebook, Dominus reported. She does not have any plans, it seems, to skirt the punishment, at least none evident from her Facebook groups page.

Labels: internet, punishment

Posted By: Aspen/CRC