I've been trying to give my 2 3/4 year old time outs as discipline. Lately he has not been listening to us, especially when told not to do something. He whines and whines, or worse, throws a major tantrum. When I put him in time out (in a chair in the corner of the dining room), I tell him he needs to sit there in silence for 2 mins (I show him on the clock how long 2 min is; and I tell him I'll tell him when his time out is done). He'll stay in the chair, but pretty much the whole time he asks over and over again "I get down now?". I feel like he doesn't get the point of time out, and that by him talking the whole time that the time out isn't what it should be. What do you think? Any suggestions?
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Re: Time out / discipline ideas?
get a digital kitchen timer and tell him he can get up when the timer says beep beep.
consider yourself lucky tho- neither of my kids will stay in TO and I spend the whole time picking them up & putting them back, usually while they're crying/screaming.
Check out the book 1-2-3 Magic. Putting DD on a chair in the corner never worked for us. Her two minute timeout turned into 20 minutes and all of us frustrated. Now we follow 1-2-3 Magic. If she gets to 3 she has to go to her room for 2 minutes to cool down. Most of the time when we go to get her she apologizes right away. We don't harp on what she did and we move on. Normally after those 2 minutes she has forgotten what she was doing anyway.
Now if she hits us in anger that is an automatic 3 and she goes to her room.
Worth a try.
We're more Super Nanny on time-outs. We give a warning or two, and if the behavior continues, we place the child in time out and explain why. ("Andrew, you're in time out for hitting Kevin.") There is no restriction on crying/whining/etc., they just have to stay put. We do not talk to or respond to them during TO at all, totally ignore them except to put them back if they move. If they get up, we silently place them back in time out. When we're done (2 mins of sitting as the boys are 2) we explain why they were in time out and make them say they're sorry and give a big hug. If they don't say sorry they have to do another time out.
We have been using this method since the boys were 18 months and it's awesome. Initially, they tested us - there was a lot of them getting up and trying to leave time out. We were very consistent to the point it was maddening, but we won. They don't really ever get up from time out anymore.
I do believe kids of 2+ "get it" and it works, you just have to hang in there. GL!
This is what we do with our 2 year old. After the "I'm sorry" and a hug, we try to get her interested in another activity. This usually prevents her from repeating the initial problem behavior.