Where is your time-out spot?

[Sarah1]

For those of you who use "time outs"...I'm wondering where moms of toddlers (especially younger toddlers) put their babes for time-out, and how well it's been working.

I'm reading 1-2-3 Magic and although Audrey is a little young for this yet, I've used one time-out with her where I put her in her crib, and she seemed to get the picture. She's such a good sleeper, though, that I dont' want her to develop any negative association with her crib. Am I worrying over nothing? I know she's safe there.

[AngelaS]

We put fit throwing children on the bottom step to sit and cool off for a few moments. :D

[egoldber]

Like the book suggests, I just use her room. For TO, I put her in her room and shut the door. I usually don't go the full two minutes though, because she's often hysterical and I can't stand to let her go that long.

The book also says not to talk about the infraction after the TO, but I find that DD often WANTS to talk about it. So we talk about it, but I don't say anything like "why did you do that?", I just re-iterate the message: we don't hit, we don't kick, we are nice to the doggie, etc.

HTH,

[atlbaby]

I put Arielle in her room for time outs. She has a saftey knob on the inside of her door so she can't get out, but I doubt she would try anyhow. The first time, she thought it was great fun and would just go play with her toys and not want to come out. Byt after the second time she got the picture that they aren't fun. I ususally wait about 2 minutes. Like Beth, I ususally reiterate what she shouldn't do ("No screaming" or "We have to listen"). I've heard people have a lot of success with putting their kids in their cribs for TOs, but like you I was hesitant to make it a negative place for her so I've never done that. Her room works well, though. I should add that if Daliya is sleeping in there at the time I'll put Arielle in the bathroom--she'd wreck havoc on our bedroom!--and that seems to work fine too.

-Rachel
Mom to Arielle Jill, 10/30/01
and Daliya Samantha, 10/27/03

[JulieL]

Well DS is 25 months old and when he does something wrong I make him sit down (pretty much no matter where we are) hold his hands so he can't hit me (he tries!) and tell him he is in time out and tell him we have to wait until he says sorry. For now this works quite well and then he gets to make the decision on how long the time out is, usually less than 1 minute, a few instances it's more. He hates it and it has seemed effective to us. When he gets older and says sorry immediately I'll just change it to time out then say your sorry to the offender.

[Jeanne]

Well it used to be in her room but since she finds her room so much fun, we've moved T/O downstairs to a corner. Nothing like telling said child that she's going for a T/O in her room and her running up the stairs with a huge smile yelling "okay!". We've have actually had to resort to turning the chair into the corner and barricading her in with the infant carrier or bouncy seat because she just didn't get it. She'd get up, talk, think it was a game, never cry, etc...

And since we haven't had to do that many T/O's with her, the message has been slow to get across. However, we have had better luck with it lately.

[Hallie_D]

We ask Elijah to sit down with his back against the wall in whatever room we are in because when we tried it in his room he had too good of a time playing! We haven't had to do too many, thank goodness. Sometimes he repeats the behavior immediately after the time-out ends, I'm sure as a way to test if he will always get a time out (for hitting or similar). When we send him right back into a time-out, he "gets it."

[Jeanmick]

We use a boring corner of a hallway downstairs. When she was younger and didn't stand still, I used that corner and had her sit in her Fisher Price Infant to Toddler chair (don't know if FP still offers this chair) facing the wall. She didn't like that one bit. Now for time outs she can stand and stay in the corner facing the wall.

I tried her room upstairs in the beginning, but it was a trek to go upstairs to her room. Besides, she really didn't consider going into her room a problem because she has so much fun in there.

HTH!

[brubeck]

Well I use DD's room. Normally this works but this weekend we had some potty regression and she started playing with all her toys! SO I took all of the toys out of her room and locked them up in the playroom and suddenly she realized that purposely 'forgetting' to use the potty was NOT a good idea. Yesterday was accident free and so far today is too! :)

In the past I have also used gated play areas and a high chair for time outs.

[candybomiller]

Sarah,

Thanks for asking this question. We've never used time outs with Matt, but after reading everyone's answers I realize that we need to! I was always wondering about what to do about Matt hitting, now I think I have a better idea.

Do you like 1-2-3 Magic? Does it seem helpful and practical?

[christic]

Another "thank you for asking this" because I'm curious too.

Ideally I'd just use my daughter's room, but I assume your supposed to close the door and we live in an old house with touchy doors and 80 years of paint--and there are two of them into her room, one from the hall and one from our bedroom. Anyway, I think you get the picture...she'd go in one and out the other before I'd get even one of them closed properly. So, I've been using her crib (only a couple times so far though) and share the fear of her getting a negative association from one of her favorite places. At this point though it seems like being in her crib has a calming influence on her when she's stressed out.

I've also tried this little vestibule just inside our front door after reading Burton White's "separation-from-their-favorite-person" or whatever that acronym is. He suggests a gate, you on one side toddler on the other, but again there's not really a good place in our house to do this. The vestibule has a door with glass window panes, but of course the door doesn't really close. For obvious reasons I wouldn't feel comfortable doing a full time-out there but I have used it more Burton White style--just have her there long enough to be upset about not being with me and then back out.

In the end, the only place I'd really feel comfortable if she was in a full tantrum right now is her crib. Not ideal though I think.

[raynjen]

We send her to wherever we're not! DD has had time out in our room, living room, vestibule. Sometimes we use a little chair and move it where we want her to be. Last night DH and I were putting away laundry in her room and we had to send her to the living room, "until she could be nice again". That only took about a minute.

TANGENT - In the last week DD has developed this scream that scares the living daylights out of me. Have you ever read "Little House on the Prarie? I swear this is the war cry that Laura hears the Indians use that make her feel, "as if she were falling; she couldn't hold on to anything; there was nothing solid anywhere." The first time I heard it I literally thought DD had severed a finger or something else equally drastic. It is high pitched, annoying, scary and I HOPE it goes away soon!

Jen in Okinawa
Mom to Noelle (2 1/2)

[luvbeinmama]

Like Jeanette, we use the corner of the hallway (booorrring!), and he has to face the corner. After the TO we make sure he understands why he had a TO. Sometimes he misunderstands, or thinks the minor infraction was what he got the TO for, when he really got it for something major. The hallway sometimes is a problem because DD wants to go down there to comfort him, but we make it work, we don't have too many choices. We decided against the bedroom for the same reason it hasn't been working for some others.... all his toys are in there and we figured he'd just play.

[Sarah1]

I do like 1-2-3 Magic, although I really haven't put it into practice yet (it's geared for kids ages 2-12, so I think DD is still a bit young for it). I can see myself using the strategies, though, definitely.

I was watching Dr. Phil the other day (one of his Parenting 101 shows) and he was saying that sending kids for TO to their rooms isn't always a great idea, because a lot of kids love playing in their rooms. I'm trying to figure out where the best place for us will be, so it's really helpful to hear what everyone else is doing. I think I'll ask my ped at DD's 18-mo checkup about my fear of turning the crib into a "bad place" by using it for TOs, and go from there.

[christic]

I just took a look at 123 Magic again because I was curious about whether the door should be closed if time-out is in their bedroom--the answer is that they need to stay there for the duration so if it takes a closed door to keep them there then the answer's yes.

But while paging through the author also addresses the problem of a child in time-out just having a fun time in their room. He says that's fine, only ground rules are no tv and no friends with them (no phone either but we don't have to worry about that just yet :)). It seems that the main points of the time-out are an interruption of whatever they were doing in the first place and a separation from the parent/rest of the family, etc. It's not necessary that the time-out spot have a negative association, so maybe crib is ok afterall.

In the end it's probably impossible to prevent an imaginative child from entertaining himself wherever he is. Alice has had a grand time in the vestibule with an umbrella. And I keep thinking of that Peanuts cartoon from years and years ago when Lucy was mad at Linus for playing with one of her toys and she takes it away and throws him a rubberband and says "Here, you can play with this." Of course he has even MORE fun stretching the rubberband--so she takes that away too I think.

So in my mind I guess a time-out spot doesn't have to be completely dismal or boring, just a safe spot to take a break. And a time-out spent playing isn't necessarily ineffective.

I'm new at this though so who knows ;)?

Chris

[MartiesMom2B]

We haven't had to use Time Out yet, but I will check out that book for future reference. When I was a toddler I was sent to the bathroom for Time Outs. I can remember going, so I know wasn't too young where drowning would be an issue. I do remember crying into the toilet saying who I loved, my parents weren't among them.

Sonia
Proud Mommy to Martie 4/6/03

[cdlamis]

>I do remember crying into the toilet saying who I loved, my parents
>weren't among them.

Sonia- I laughed out loud at your story! Too funny~

Daniella
Mom to Julia 6-13-02
And baby #2 EDD 12-30-04!!

[Momof3Labs]

So far, our time outs have only been related to food throwing, so I just turn Colin's chair to face the boring curtain on the sliding glass door. It has been so effective though (you mention "time out" when he is toying with his food and he stops and shakes his head NO) that I should probably use it a little more often...

[himom]

Is it weird that I put DS in a playpen for timeouts? I thought a ton of people would mention it, but it sounds like I'm the only one.

We used the bassinet feature on a PNP, then it started just collecting dust for months until he was of "time out" age. Now it gets used a lot!

For those of you who can just park your kids in corners...how do you get them to STAY?

Just when I start to think I know what I'm doing, mommyhood throws another curve.

Jodi
Mommy to Joshua, born February 2003

[Jeanmick]

My DD stands in the corner and for some reason knows that she's supposed to stay there. I don't know how we got to the point where she knows that she's supposed to do that, but right now, she does. Whether she'll do it next time, I don't know. :)

When my DD was younger she used the FP Infant to Toddler Chair that has a belt feature so she wasn't able to get out. I referenced this chair in a posting above. Here's a link showing what the chair looks like:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=2527&item=3193567790&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

I didn't really start my DD's time outs until she was about two to 2 1/2 years old. She was usually in the chair for no more than a minute and a half to two minutes. As she got older, she would then sit without needing me to use the belt feature. For my DS (who is similar to your DS's age), I don't have him sit in a corner yet. I usually just try to distract him or put him in his enclosed play area which is similar to what you do w/ your PNP. I'll probably start a "true" timeout program for him when he's close to two to 2 1/2 years. HTH!

[akc]

Hi -

I have two new suggestions which I picked up from my friends with older kids. Maeve rarely needs this because she is very verbal and can communicate her frustrations pretty clearly, so we first try to ask her to "use her words" when she gets near to screaming or tantruming. Maeve also loves to sleep in her crib, so I am not going to risk negative association and her room is full of toys.

SO, we use:
1) the pack n' play. We set it back up in the corner of the Family Room. She goes in there - with nothing in it - and then I walk out of the room and sit in the next room or go about my biz and ignore her until she calms down.

2) Her old high chair in the corner of the DR. Same routine but snap her in and she can't get down. She really does not like that.

According to all the experts I've read, including Dr. Phil, withdrawal of your attention or affection is the big punishment for them, so anything that supports that until the calm down is a good step. Then you can talk about the issue.

In terms of our routine with it, we put her in by saying, "I think you need "a minute" to calm down and be a good girl INSTEAD of using the phrase "time out." Our friend that did that had better luck b/c time out is so over used AND the "minute" lasts into an older age - actually, I could sometimes use a "minute" to calm down!

To get out of either the PnP or the chair, she has to:
1) ask nicely to come out, "Mommy, ready come out please."
2) We then ask her if she's going to be a "good girl." Must say, "Yes, Mommy." or "Yes, Daddy."
3) Then, we usually have her apologize for her action. If it's a person, that's easy. If it's a thing, we sometimes even have her go back to the scene of the crime and say, "Sorry Maeve threw yogurt." etc.

This sounds like we're psycho militant parents but we're not. She is just very communicative and clever, so she tends to get it once she goes through this for one action or another. Other key is consistency. My husband, our sitter and I all do this routine EXACTLY the same, so she gets it.

We've had terrific luck with this so far, so maybe it will work with someone else!

Alexa

[JElaineB]

I use the Pack N Play too. I don't want him to develop any negative associations with his crib, and it is really the only place I can confine him for a minute or two unless I wanted to physically (with my hands) restrain him, which I don't want to do at the moment. If I did try to hold him for a time out, he would just try to squirm away and get more worked up.

Jennifer
mom to Jacob 9/27/02

[khakismom]

Kathleen's TOs have always been in the chair in the corner of the dining room. She hasn't had many, but in the beginning of us giving them, she loved them and would actually ask for them. Umm, OK. :)

Once she got over the novelty, and would actually cry and scream about going, they worked pretty well. Like Alexa, she has to ask permission to get off the chair and must apologize for whatever she's done. What works better now is counting to 5. She knows that at the end of 5 she will lose a toy for 24 hours. So usually we only have to get to 3 before she stops and behaves.

[Karenn]

So when this thread first started, I didn't have a time out spot- now I do. :) Thanks for all the suggestions. We've been using a Colin sized chair. I have to sit with him so he won't run off but since optimal "time out" time seems to be about a minute that hasn't been a problem. It's worked beautifully so far. (I hope that keeps up!)