The wonderful world of time-out

"My turn?" sweetly.

"MY TURN NOW" not as sweetly.

"MINE!" not very sweet at all.

thud
smack
crash
and scream.

While much of this is age appropriate learning of sharing, respect and kindness . . .she has really gone hog wild with it. She'll even clobber you if the toy she has isn't following her every command. Needless to say, Sedona has been introduced to the wonderful world of time-out. Sadly, though, until last Friday, she went unaffected into and out of time-outs, biding her time until the next battle. She would sit quietly, almost contentedly in time-out until told to get up, informed (again) of the discrepancies between her behavior and acceptable social human behavior, then run full speed to her most recent victim and hug, kiss and soothe them.

Frustrating as the parent hoping to employ time-out as a deterent to such actions as hitting, pushing, screaming and biting to have a child who seems just fine with her time in the penalty box.(Note: she is not actually put in a box, but rather a very pretty striped chair. call off DCFS). What to do? Remove her from that setting. Sure. Take away that toy to make a point about sharing. Sure. All of these are completely reasonable and sometimes very effective. For most kids anyway. Not my kids.

As I learned long long ago, I breed a particularly resistant variety of child. A stubborn, strangely manipulative, smart and painfully adorable, devil-may-care variety of child. Jordan never minded a time out. Never minded a spanking. Wouldn't dare give you (or me as the case may have it) the satisfaction of letting any of it get to him. Now some might say this describes criminal behavior. and well, yes it does. I tried everything with my little Jordan (and have started down that same path with Miss Sedona recently) until one day we stumbled across a goldmine.

"Mom" matter of fact, from an attempted time-out for a naughty mouth "I just absolutely do not like to have time-out with my nose on the wall."

oh, really? Well thanks for that little tidbit, dear.

And from that day forward time-outs in our house have been nose on wall, hands at side.

Which brings me to last Friday when Sedona was in a particularly foul mood, swinging and swatting at everyone and everything that did not comply with her every whim. I decided suddenly that the rules are no different for her (duh) and that nearly 2 is plenty old enough to comply with the time-out statutes of the land. And Sedona found herself standing in the hallyway, nose on the wall, hands at her sides.

And there she stood.
Quiet.
Alarmed? Maybe. Planning her next move? Certainly.

She earned 5 such time-outs in the next hour as she continued to try and hit Miles, push Miles over, slap me, throw toys and so on and so forth. By the next attempted assault, I held her hand and said "Sedona, do want another time-out?"

Eyes wide, mouth pursed as if saying MOOOO, "NOoooo!".

Cease and desist. She left the room, left the toy, left the boy alone. And did not even come close to another infraction until midday Saturday. There may be hope for her yet.


In related news . . .
She really is awfully stinkin cute. And an absolute riot. But so rotten!
So I was talking to my mom one crazy afternoon and said "Was I this bad? Was I really this rotten? Is this payback? But not THIS ornery, right?" and other such inquiries when I met with this reply, that is, after she stopped laughing at me. . . .

"Jana - do you think you've had a compliant day in your life?"

Wow. I guess I asked for it.