Suzette's Parenting and Breastfeeding Blog | They never taught me how to do Time-Out

Many people praised that I am a good mother because I breastfeed. Well, actually to tell you the truth, I don’t feel great at all. Breastfeeding is just the beginning of everything, coz it only involves the first stage of the kids.

What follows that is more difficult and challenging. As my children grow, I feel more and more challenging to teach them and to discipline them. I often hate myself whenever I fail in any discipline issues. As usual, if my children misbehave, all blames go to ME. Me Me ME ME, all because of me, my children behave like THIS.

2 of my friends lend me 2 great books from the same author, Dr. Jerry Wyckoff and Barbara Unell. I can’t remember the title of one book as I returned them without finished reading, but I still keep this book: Discipline without Shouting or Spanking.

It starts with an introduction to prepare parents to understand why shouting and spanking are counterproductive, the differences between boys and girls, milestones of developments, etc. This way, we understand why our children behave like this and we know (theoretically) how to react.

Then, the author goes into each and every discipline problem, explaining how to prevent, offering solutions on what to do/what not to do, and an example of case story.

A very good read for all parents as it covers many discipline issues. At different stage of life, a child would bound to give one of these problems. For example, at one point Sibling Rivalry is not an issue, and it comes in after Isabel is mobile. Some examples of the discipline problems include: aggressive behavior, dawdling, interrupting, messiness, not following directions, not sharing, talking back, temper tantrums, etc.

Two solutions that the authors often suggest are:
- grandma’s rule
- time out

Grandma’s rule is very simple - when you have done X, then you may do Y. Time Out is to take a child out of a situation for a set period of time - usually at a corner and tell him he must stay there until the timer rings. If he leaves before the timer rings, rest the timer and tell him he has to stay until the timer rings. Repeat until he stays in for the designated time.

Okay, the above sounds simple to implement, don’t they? NO! It is actually NOT!!

No one told me how to handle the followings…

When using grandma’s rule:
For example, Ian refused to bath. He wanted to play with his computer instead.
I said, “When you finish bathing, then you can play with your computer”
Ian refused to listen at all. He’d do his way: “When I finish playing my computer, then I will bath”. If I give in (which I never would, but MIL does), he would not fulfil his promise. Instead he’d switch to another thing: “When I finish riding my bicycle, then I will bath”. This would go on.

As I never would give in, we always stand there arguing or persuaing each other to do our own way. I often have to end up dragging him to the bathroom with force. “Bad Mama - I Hate You”, Ian must be thinking… well he said that sometimes.

As for Time Out:
Example, when Ian pushed Isabel and hurting her, I aked her to do Time Out.
He’d say: “NO!!!”
And continue playing with his toys and bullying Isabel.

When I insisted that he has Time Out, he’d just ignore me, or yell at me. He just wouldn’t comply! Even if he does, he wouldn’t stay Time Out for the designated time - not even 1 minute, so I have to keep resetting the timer again and again for nearly an hour, and sometimes looks like I was doing Time Out with him for the sake of that!

Why these authors never teach me how to make my children do Time Out and follow Grandma’s rules?

Tell you what? My own solution is really bad. I went back to spanking.

I USED CANE TO MAKE HIM DO TIME OUT!!!!
I think I really fail this one… misserably…

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