2+ Kids and Leaving

dashofreality · August 2014

TL;DR - Do you leave places when one of your children is misbehaving and the other is being good and having fun?

I'm an only child, siblings are foreign territory for me. My 2 yo is being very challenging and testing right now aka being a 2 yo. There have been 3x in the last 2 weeks that if he was an only child I would have just picked him up and left what we were doing, but I have a 4 yo that is behaving perfectly and I feel bad making her leave. When my 2yo gets upset he will just continue to act out. We were at a play place, a girl took something he was playing with and he pushed her. Put him in timeout. Then he went back after timeout and started chucking things so we left. My DD was good about but I felt bad. At the park he was kicking sand - warning, timeout, back to kicking, timeout, then I didn't want to make my DD leave again so I told him he couldn't go back to the sandbox. Well that was a game of me trying to keep him out of it. I at least got to give my DD a transition warning before leaving, but I feel bad.

Is this just the way it is with siblings? Is there something else I can do? They get along really well, and I don't want this to cause issues. DD has started saying things like 'look mom I listened'.

dashofreality · August 2014

Hmm I've been sticking to the 2 minute timeout, but maybe I just need to keep him with me longer.

Timeout isn't super effective with him, but generally the only logical consequence I can come up with on the spot is to leave.

dashofreality · August 2014

Sundae13 said:

I thought this was going to be some bombshell confession about leaving the two kids or something.

Anyway, I wouldn't leave. He's barely two--timeouts may not be "clicking". I would just pull him out of the situation and keep him with you for a long time, if not the rest of the time.

Sorry, that would have been way more exciting.

dashofreality · August 2014

I will definitely try having him sit with me, I'm not looking forward to fighting with him to do so, but that is a small thing.

It is funny to me how I can't always see the easy answer. I was wrapped up in a minute of timeout for each year so that having him sit with me for 10-20 minutes didn't really occur to me. I appreciate you all pointing it out.

beachcomberbride · August 2014

I do not punish the older ones because of the younger ones behavior. They simply either sit with me in timeout until they decide to adjust their behavior.