A big form of discipline over here at Big Mama’s is the timeout. It seems to be the most effective punishment because Caroline doesn’t like being separated from the action. So when she’s in the middle of a fit or isn’t listening to me for the 85th time that day, I send her to timeout.
She has a little chair in her room that serves as the timeout chair and she’ll go in there and sit. She also likes to spit while she’s in timeout…oh yeah, and yell “Mama, when can I get out of timeout?”, “MAMA!!! I want to be done with timeout!”
So I came up with the idea of buying a kitchen timer to place next to the timeout chair. I set it for however long I think the misdeed warrants, usually 3 minutes because that’s what the SuperNanny says, one minute for each year. True confession, sometimes I set it for five because I need the extra 2 minutes to keep my head from exploding.
Caroline knows that the timer is set and I don’t want to hear ONE WORD from her until that timer goes off. When it does, I go in there and we hug it out. It works for me!