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THREE Toddlers. THREE!

The tattling, whining, jealousy, crying, hitting, stealing toys and general societal breakdown reached a fever pitch this past week. Too much Easter candy? Too many cooped up rainy days? Too much focus on my part of being hyper-fair and distributing attention constantly setting up a lose-lose scenario where everyone demands more, more, more and nobody is satisfied?

Yeah, I'm betting on the last one, but who knows, whatever the reason it was ridiculous.

So, today I went old school and instituted my grandmother's One Minute Think It Over Face-Off. My mother tells me she and her sister had to do this all the time. It works like this:
  • if children fight, whine, tattle or generally annoy the adult,
  • place children in room facing each other with no toys or distractions,
  • announce they're going to sit for one minute while they think about how to play nicely,
  • release whenever the hell you want to (they can't tell time and I aint gonna bother with a timer all day long)
After about 3 rounds each the kids are seriously reconsidering whether the fussing and tattling is worth it.

Theo was in the kitchen making his lunch about an hour after I started it. I barked, "One Minute Think It Over!" at the two offenders and they immediately dropped what they were doing, sat in their spots, and went silent. About 40 seconds later I asked if they were ready to play nicely (they always say yes) and told them to go play. He was duly impressed with the speed of compliance.

(It helps that I'm a firm disciplinarian to begin with so there was no fighting the system itself. Because I said it, it was going to happen...we've already established that over the past few months.)

But I think the reason it really works is because it puts the decision-making in the kid's hands. They can decide if the situation is worth fussing over, etc. And, because an offender does have to serve some time it provides justice for the tattler if they really want it. But, with the caveat that the tattler will have to serve the same time--so, is it worth it?

It also satisfies my own sense of justice because I cannot always sort out who really started it. The tattler may have set up the tattled upon unfairly. So, if I punish both then I'm addressing that behavior, too.

I altered the system slightly for the 2 yr old who is more likely to throw a tantrum about what I say rather than what the others do. She protested when I wouldn't let her pester me while I was working. I put her in another room where she couldn't see me and told her she could get up as soon as she stopped crying.

She sat on the floor in the kitchen and wailed in protest for a good 3 minutes, then wound down for another 1 minute and finally went silent before announcing, "Mommy, all done crying!" I said okay and told her to go play.

One more repetition of that whole scenario about 10 minutes later and she'd gotten the message and hasn't tantrumed again even when I had to correct the same initial behavior (pestering me while I worked) a third time.


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