My son was born at the height of summer in the dry heat of West Texas. After twenty hours of labor, nine of which were quite active and painful, my first child was born before the first light of the new day. As I held my precious and tiny baby boy in the next few weeks, the thought of how I was going to discipline him crossed my mind. It was hard to believe that my innocent, helpless child would ever need to be disciplined but the day came sooner than I had anticipated. Soon enough our toddling son was engaging in behaviors that were not acceptable. I knew that we needed to get his poor behavior under control and that we also needed to discipline consistently for said bad behavior. Our son was barely walking when we determined that many of his undesirable actions needed to be addressed with some kind of consequence. I wanted our son to know exactly why his actions were being punished (at least to the degree that a one year old can reason). I wanted him to learn that certain behaviors are not acceptable and that he will be disciplined accordingly.
When our son was around one year old, we instituted a time out when he acted out. First he would receive a verbal warning. The verbal warning consisted of us telling him exactly what he had done that was unacceptable and that if he did it again he would have a time out. Inevitably, the behavior would continue and then he would be put into a time out. Initially his time outs took place where he was standing. We would have him sit on his bottom wherever he happened to be for thirty seconds (or so) and then we would count down from ten. His time out would end with us telling him “all done” and having him stand up …
(To be continued …)