"Whatchoo talkin' 'bout Willis?"

Ever watch Supernanny?

Inevitably, in every single episode, the parent will learn how to put the unruly child in the “naughty chair” and then a war of attrition ensues where the parent puts the child in the chair, the child gets up and runs away, the parent puts the child in the chair again, the child runs away, and so on and so forth, yada, yada, yada until the child eventually stays on the damned “naughty chair”.

Well guess what we did tonight?

In our house, the “naughty chair” or the “time-out zone” is the tile flooring in front of the front door.  We put Jack on the tile and tell him to stay on it until time is up.  He’ll usually jump off a couple of times, which restarts the 2 minute clock, but he usually stays there.  Sometimes he even looks at it as a game and when you ask if he wants to go to “time-out” he says “Yeah!”

Not tonight!

Jack was literally a boomerang.  We’d set him down and off he’d go.  Over and over and over again.  We imagined Nanny Jo walking through the front door ready to show us the video of our utter failure to parent properly.  We finally got him to stay, but we did break the rules a bit.

The idea behind the “time-out” is the kiddo stays in a designated spot and Mom and Dad go back to doing what they were doing.  The little rugrat stays there for a set amount of time then gets set free, only after being told exactly why he was in “time-out” for and having to apologize for his behavior.

We didn’t exactly go back to hanging out.  We stood there, a few feet away from the tiles, waiting for the next jailbreak.  Apparently Master Jack got the idea.  His two minutes expired and he was allowed to return to polite society.  He even got to watch an episode of Dora The Explorer before bed.

This was, by far, the worst display we’ve seen.  Jack’s behavior was flippant, truculent, disrespectful, and just down right RUDE!  We were beside ourselves trying to figure out what brought this on.  Nonetheless, we survived it.  Next time, whether we have to put him back on “the tiles” 25, 50 or 100 times, we will return to business as usual and he will stay there without us hovering over him, waiting to pounce on his first false move.

We’re putting together some tricks of the trade for “time-out” and you can get at them on our Examiner page.  Stay tuned.

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