Timeouts helped my daughter to stop throwing fits

by Kelly
(Milan, Indiana, USA)

My daughter Arianna, who is five years old, is very polite and well-mannered, but she has not always been that way.

When she turned two, she started into her terrible twos.

She started throwing fits when she did not get her way.

If she asked me to do something, and I told her no, she would throw herself onto the ground and proceed to have a huge fit, thrashing her arms and legs around and screaming at the top of her lungs.

This was the most embarrassing thing for me, especially in a public place.

I knew something had to be done about this.

Being a firm believer that you should not hit your kids, I came up with a different approach.

My husband and I started counting down from five. If we reached one, we put our daughter into timeout on the wall.

We made sure that it was a place that she could not see outside of any windows, no toys were in reach that she could play with, and there was no way that she could watch the television.

The first time we put our daughter into timeout, she screamed and hit the wall with her head.

I told her that by doing that she was only going to have to stay on the wall longer.

After about fifteen minutes, she started to realize that the only way she was going to get out of timeout was to stop having her fit, stop crying, and apologize to mommy and daddy.

Once we started to do this, the fits became fewer and less frequent.

We also had to tell the babysitter (her grandpa) our new rule because she really did not have any rules with grandpa, but he respected our wishes and started putting her in timeout as well.

I wanted to make sure that the same rules applied no matter where she was and who was watching her.

Now she rarely has a fit.

If she is told no to something, she says O.K. in a sad voice and just walks away.

It makes things so less stressful.

It has also set some really great boundaries on what she can and cannot get away with.

It has also given me a great lesson and discipline for the next children to come.