Monday, December 15, 2008

Time Out, Daddy

Logan tried to give Larry a time out this evening. It was VERY hard not to crack up.

Larry came out of Logan's room after putting him in jammies and Logan came out behind him. He stood in the middle of the living room and said "Daddy, time out Daddy." Larry said, "What did I do?" and Logan just instructed him again to go to "time out." He was dead serious. Logan then marched to his room and closed the gate behind him as if to show Larry what needed to happen, RIGHT NOW. Then, since Logan is now able to open the gate himself, he came back out and re-instructed Larry to go to time out. Larry did not go.

Time outs are a serious business around here. We've been employing them to great effect as instructed in 1-2-3 Magic, which so far has proven to be really good guidance on discipline. A simple count to three followed by a time out in his room (we're supposed to do one minute per year of the child's age, but we actually only do one minute) has helped us get a grip on dangerous and destructive behavior. It's amazing how quickly it has worked.

So we tried not to laugh. But I'm not sure if this is good or bad. Was Logan mocking time out? Or does he understand the importance and genuinely thought Larry deserved it for forcing him into jammies?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jammies are totally optional. My humble opinion.

~tracy

Bethany said...

I'm gonna need to try that 1-2-3 magic thing. Stat.