No Time Out!

Before Josh and I decided to have Abigail, we had always talked about things we would or would not do as parents. Often we would see people pushing their infant in a stroller at 11:00 P.M. or sit in a restaurant while a child screams and the parents just sit and scream back and vow we would never do that to our child. One day, Josh brought home a book called Whale Done and suggested we both read it. At first I was skeptical since I was not sure what I could use it for since we had no children yet and I wasn't working with college students like Josh. But since it was a rather short book, we read it quickly. It was amazing how you can apply the concepts of this book to everything. To sum it up, you need to catch people doing things right instead of always punishing them when they do something wrong. This can be easily translated to relationships, work, pets and children.


We have been using the techniques, basically (Oreo is useless), since then and it really makes life more enjoyable. I would rather tell someone they are doing a good job instead of constantly telling them they are doing a terrible job. It may sound selfish but it is much more rewarding to me in addition to them. So we decided since we were both on the same parenting page, we could easily do this for our child once she understood timeouts and consequences for actions. There was no way we were going to be able to do this on an infant.

Recently we have had to start time outs for Abigail. These aren't every day or even every week occurrences. Timeouts are for major offences like hitting, throwing toys, doing anything very dangerous or otherwise not listening when being asked to do something after multiple requests and/or warnings. The last one I gave her was because she decided that instead of cleaning up as I asked her, she would throw her toys across the room. Not acceptable. The time out went like this:

Me: "Abby, time to clean up."
Abby: "No."
Me: "Yes. Abigial it is time to clean up so we can go to the car."
Abby: "Get Dolly?"
Me: "No, we have to go. Last warning. You need to clean up. Do you need a time out?"
Abby: "No." Throws toys across room.
Me: "We do not throw! Time out, now."

Time outs:
After her 2 minute confinement on her time out mat by the door, we go over to her, tell her how much we love her and she needs to not do whatever she was put in time out for.

Lately we have gotten to the "Do you need a time out?" question and since she knows that time out is coming, she will start to do what we ask. When she does that request, we applaud and are generally over complementary that she listened. Abby feeds off of the praise and we want her to know that we are happier when she does something good instead of always worried about when she does something bad. Thus leading to her making better choices.

Lately when we are doing our praise, she asks "No, time out?" We always respond with "No time out! You did a great job." It makes me wonder if we put her in time out too much and are not catching her doing well often enough. The final answer came this weekend. We have not had to put her in a time out for a good two weeks. As she was heading up for a bath, I ran over to get a quick kiss. When I asked if I can have a kiss, she said "No kiss." I stuck out my lower lip and started to pout saying "Mommy wants a kiss." Finally she leaned over and gave me a quick peck. I broke into a huge smile and said "Thank you! Mommy loves your kisses!" She smiled, looked at me and asked "No time out?" Of course I am not going to give you a time out for not giving me a kiss. Are you kidding me????

I guess we have to work more on this whole time out thing...or maybe not. I got my kiss!