Labor Day Weekend 2015

Labor Day Weekend 2015

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Introducing Time-Out

When did you other mom's do this?

Keller is and has been a relatively easy child to deal with.  Granted, we've had our melt-down moments but in terms of misbehaving I think he's on the lighter side.  However, we have a few issues starting to come to the surface as he gets older, braver, and more determined to explore.

The first of these deals with our dogs food.  He's finally out of the habit of simply going and eating it all the time and seems to be on the tail end of the going and dumping it out all the time issue too.  However, now he goes and grabs one or two little fist fulls...gives me a devilish grin and takes off in the opposite direction of me to go and throw the food somewhere such as in the hall between our bedrooms or even on the rug in his room.  Usually Marvin is close behind ready to eat it when he playfully tosses it all but when I'm constantly trying to pick up the missed pieces it gets to be a lot.

The second deals with biting.  From what I've heard and read it's kind of something we'll just have to deal with and not really discipline.  But they do say to tell the child it's not okay and then to re-direct...well how the heck -do you re-direct a kid who comes in for a giant open mouth kiss and then ends it by biting your lip! (look out all you moms with little girls...I think my son is going to be trouble in 10+ years...which isn't really surprising knowing who his father is! hehe).  It's also hard to figure out since he's never biting out of aggression...it's always when he's playing or going in for kisses and such.

Anyways, I just finished our first attempt at a time-out due to the dog food behavior.  I'm not sure if Keller even realized what we were doing but I had him sit down in a specific spot for about 3 minutes and I sat there next to him keeping his attention on me and explaining that I didn't like it when he threw Marvin's food.  He stayed seated and engaged (most of those 3 minutes) and at the end I had him give me a hug and kiss and told him I loved him.  I also explicitly said that we were doing a time out.  Keller is only 19 months and honestly I know he's a bit behind in terms of language development (heck, we're in speech therapy) so a lot of the time I feel like he understands some but obviously not all of what I try to explain to him, so I don't really know if he caught on to what we did...especially since it was the first try.

I'm hoping to use this little "time-out" technique as consistently as possible, especially in regards to the dog food since it's a behavior I'd really appreciate not having to deal with anymore.

I think the most confusing part for me is that he is so good at responding to me saying no or leave it alone to so many other things.  Like just now, he pulled out the power cord to my computer and was going to put it in his mouth but as soon as I said no he stopped and he easily handed it back to me.  It's probably just his "thing"...this dog food issue, especially since he's been into it since before he could fully crawl.

So anyways, I'll be looking into this more now but seriously curious as to when other mom's of toddlers started the "time-outs" as opposed to the redirecting tactic. Comments appreciated!

Until next time...

1 comment:

  1. i started timeouts with kids i nannied at 18 months. for a minute and a half...a minute for each yr of age. i would give a warning. then timeout if it happened again. but stuff like the dog food, hitting and biting is automatic timeout bc he should know that is a no no :) i didnt talk to them in timeout and at the end i said why they were in timeout and hugs and kisses. one thing i never did was put them in timeout in their room. hope that helps :) he will catch on in a few weeks even if he doesn't understand what you're saying.

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