Time out update

Well, we're seeing some interesting results from our institution of "time out" for Tasman. (Not to be confused with "Time out for women". Apparently, they now have "Time out for couples" too, but I digress.) At first the time outs seemed to be pretty good for helping Tas reset and get over her tantrums quicker. But one night, we were upstairs getting ready to put her to bed and she threw a tantrum. We threatened her with time out, but she continued acting out. So we hauled her downstairs, set up the time out box, turned on the timer, and put her in. She lied down, face down, in the middle of the time out box, and cried. When the minute was up, we picked her up out of the box, but she flailed and thrashed around even more, screaming even louder than before, "WAN LIE DOWN TIME OUT!!!" Apparently, she wanted to go back in. Uh, I don't think that makes a very good punishment if she wants to be there.

So we had our concerns about the efficacy of the time out box, but it turns out that that night was an isolated incident. In fact, it's starting to look like the threat of time out might actually be a slight deterrent, which I believe is supposed to be the point of time out anyway. Now when she starts getting whiny—oh, how I hate the whining!—we say, "Do you need a time out?" This is usually enough for her to calm down a bit, stick out her lower lip a bit, and respond, "No." We really haven't needed to use it but once or twice in the last week. So things may be looking up for now.