it's on like donkey kong

It really all started with spaghetti. Our little family was sitting down to dinner, and on Jude's plate for the evening was that fateful spaghetti. It's not that he doesn't like spaghetti, he actually really does. Jude just gets tired around dinner time and can sometimes be....well, spirited.

I had been telling Shawn for a couple of days that I needed to figure out a better discipline method for two primary behavior issues. The first is Jude hitting me (or Shawn...but it's usually me). If I pick Jude up from doing something I told him he couldn't do, he gets angry. He winds back his arm, and I can see straight up defiance in his eyes as he brings his hand forward to hit me. Telling him "no" and putting him down has proven to be ineffective, and something just strikes me as wrong in teaching my son not to hit by slapping his hand. Beyond that, when I did pop him on the hand it just made him more angry and more likely to hit me again. Getting into a hitting fight with my toddler is just not high on my list of things I'd like to accomplish.

The second behavioral issue is Jude throwing his food. If he decides he's finished eating, he apparently wants all of his food to disappear, preferably on the floor. As it turns out, vacuuming crumbs from our floor every three hours also isn't how I'd prefer to spend my time.

So back to spaghetti. Jude was in a funk and had decided that he was done eating. Rather than signing "all done," or even handing us his utensils to signify that he was finished, Jude threw himself into a rage that included some yelling and his tray full of spaghetti being thrown onto the carpet. The beige carpet that we'd just had professionally clean, incidentally. After Shawn sternly told him, "No!" a few times, I could see in his eyes that he was thinking, "Oh buddy, it's ON." Shawn stated, "That's it. Come here." Lifting a full on fit throwing Jude out of his high chair, Shawn set him next to my sewing table and said, "You disobey, you sit in time out." Naturally, Jude screamed more loudly and tried to get up several times. Shawn calmly picked him up and sat him back down saying, "Jude, you're in time out for disobeying. You can sit there until I tell you to get up." Eventually Jude got the point and sat in his newly discovered time out spot - crying off an on - for a full minute.

Once a minute had passed (and the spaghetti had been picked up), Shawn crouched down to Jude and said, "I love you buddy. Daddy put you in time out because you disobeyed me. You're all done now. Can I have a hug?" Shawn scooped a much more calm Jude up in his arms and hugged him for a minute, after which Jude was content to wriggle down and play calmly while Shawn and I finished with a peaceful dinner.

Since that incident, Shawn or I have needed to put Jude in time out about once a day on average - and it's always for either hitting or purposefully disobeying. I give Jude one warning, "If you hit Mommy, you're going to time out." If the behavior continues, I sit him in his time out spot (next to my sewing table in the living room and on a chair in his bedroom) and count to 60 in my head. He usually cries for the first twenty seconds, and then sits pretty calmly the rest of the time. Since his first time out, he's actually never tried to get up until we tell him he's all done. Once 60 seconds have passed, I get on his level and 1)Tell him that I love him and 2)Explain why he was in time out. Then I give him a hug and we go on about our day. So far, one incident of time out has resulted in a much more obedient and calm Jude throughout the rest of the day.

I'm so grateful that Shawn set the first precedent for time out. I have a feeling his sternness helped Jude to realize that this is serious business, and is probably the reason Jude doesn't try to get up until we tell him. I'm also not sure I could've handled Jude's despondent little face for a full 60 seconds had I not seen Shawn do it and Jude survive.

While putting Jude in time out definitely gives me a minute to become less frustrated, I actually think it benefits Jude the most. He has a chance to be removed from the situation and step outside of his cycle of anger and misbehaving. I'm also grateful to have a discipline method that works to not only stop the behavior, but to calm down all parties involved. That seems like a win-win to me!