READ: Time-outs: we’ve all been doing them wrong!. PDF, EPUB online free reviews.

So the story begins with a 5 year old girl…very beautiful…but just as ugly in attitude as she was beautiful. She had always been the same ever since was little, would yell and kick and scream when she didn’t get her way…except she never grew out of it. And the older she got, the more her behavior escalated! She got kicked out of two daycares for hitting and kicking and saying some truly horrible things. She would throw furniture and hurt anyone who got in her way.

Then she started kindergarten….and immediately continued her behavior. Silly optimistic mom that I am, I had hoped for school to be different. You can watch videos of my frustration here, but you know, don’t. Embarassing! We (her vice principal and I) decided to only let her stay until 10:30 in the morning, because lunchtime was too overwhelming for her, and recess…phew! Out of the question!

Let me tell you, at this point I had tried everything short of boarding school or shipping her off to live with her dad. Or rather, I THOUGHT I had tried everything.

Enter my glorious future mother in law, a brilliant naturopathic doctor with, after a while, some ideas on how to handle this child. When she said time outs were the answer I blew her off the first time, I had already tried that. But as she kept suggesting it and describing how time outs should really be working, I began to consider giving it another go.

When she said time-outs were the answer I blew her off the first time, I had already tried that.

Turns out I had been doing half-assed time-outs, without realizing it.

The new rules of time-out were pretty basic:

Two minutes per year of age
Put them back in time-out when they get up.
Use an egg timer, or another kind of timer that they can watch count-down.
Set up a time out stool that is portable, you have to do this where ever you go, in the moment, whenever they act out. (I avoided going out in public for extended periods of time at first to save me some embarassment, and to save my sanity)
Make a house rules list. Clearly define any behavior you are trying to correct, also list an alternative to their behavior. If yelling is on your list (its on mine!) make sure to list their coping mechanism for anger. For my minion, its ‘squeezing the lemons’. Look up coping mechanisms for small children if you don’t know anything that helps. My minion picked most of hers up at school.
Tell them how many warnings they get. They can get up to five, but with more stubborn children, less is more here. In my house, you get one warning. That’s it. Your behavior continues (even a tiny bit) after a warning and off to timeout you go, just like that!
Do not react to their behavior, good or bad, in any obvious way. Keep your demeanor even, using the same voice, and try to smile as much as you can. This let’s them key in to the fact that they are now unable to get a rise out of you.
If the time-out extends into bedtime, continue the time-out first thing in the morning, do not allow them to manipulate what time they go to bed by getting a timeout.
The person conducting the time out only gets to say the phrase, “You owe me 10 minutes (or how long your child gets) for breaking (insert house rule). The time out starts when you are sitting still, and quiet.”
Reset the time any time they break the time out position, hands in lap, feet on floor, legs together, and quiet. Warn them once that you will reset it, and follow through.
Keep in mind that at first, time outs will be long and arduous. (My first one with her took 4 hrs. Not kidding.) They will try to manipulate the situation and you however they can. Do Not Give In!!!

Basically, you are trying to re-wire the child. Give them a warning. If they don’t comply immediately stop whatever you are doing, no matter where you happen to be, and start a time out. Yes, I realize this is going to make grocery store trips slightly more complicated for you. When we first implemented these, her time outs could stretch from 30 minutes to an hour on a good day and its not practical to have a kiddo out in public screaming bloody murder for that long without someone calling the police.

At first it is recommended to not go out in public with your time out child in training as they tend to scream and throw things trying to get a response. In public you would not be able to help responding, trying to get her to stop so people won’t stare. Just do without the drama and stay in their comfort zone as much as possible! If you can, wait until you can go to the store alone!

But when you do finally rewire them, and it really doesn’t take any time to start seeing a difference in the way they respond to you, it will really amaze you what they are capable of. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I have a child that will just go with the flow, instead of having to control every little aspect of everything, and if it doesn’t go her way just exploding. She now gives me the control, because she knows she can trust me with it. I give her a warning, and she usually just stops the bad behavior, knowing exactly what the consequence will be. That I can’t be bargained with, that I am a wall and she will not get past me and my discipline. I mean, how bad is sitting on a stool really?

Honestly, I feel that in this culture we are not doing enough of this. Moms of my memory tended to be immovable forces of doom that you did not fuck with, no matter what. I see the moms in my generation being all soft and fluffy towards their children, lack luster discipline and meaningless threats abound…how are we supposed to get our children to listen to us if they know we don’t mean any of the threats we are throwing their direction? Now, if I tell my children to clean their room or they won’t get to go to the park, or have that cookie they have been begging for all afternoon, they go clean their rooms as fast as possible. Meaning what I said carried over into all the other aspects of our life, and by god, I wouldn’t be able to do without it! So, all you other mothers, be mean! I know it seems mean, but its good for them to have boundaries!