The Wonder Years

Time outs or not….. we face this question a lot these days.

Jayesh and I cannot get around to doing the timeout thing. we come from 2 completely different backgrounds and still have the same opinion. I had really strict parents and we were punished for doing or not doing something we were told. No questions asked. Jayesh had the exact opposite experience where he would be reprimanded but almost never had a time out.

Of late we hear a lot about not making time out to be a punishment but giving them the down time to understand the outcome of their actions.  This sounds good but we are still not sure how to do this.

For eg: Last week Rohan/Arjun broke a dvd….

Our first reaction was - what did you do ronu and he looks at us like ‘oh  i am not supposed to do this?’

So then we realize that first its our mistake – it cannot be within reach and now what do we do next?

You cant give them a timeout for something they dont know and then we tell them – if you do this then you can’t see Curious George because thats where it comes from . They seem to understand it but i dont think it means it wont happen again.

so now if they break a dvd again, they dont get to see curious george for a couple of days and that seems a good way to get the point across but we will most probably have to find something equally interesting for them to do in the meantime. so we are really paying for their mistake because now instead of letting them watch the episode and get some time to have dinner, we get to find a way to entertain them (most likely read a couple of books) .

 will be interesting to see what others do in this situation, what is the option to a time out?