About a month ago we began giving Evie “time out” as a punishment.  This was usually only for things that she does to intentionally push boundaries, like when you tell her not to throw something and she looks at you with a twinkle in her eye (like so)

picks up the object, slowly raises it above her head and says, “No throwing!” before throwing it.  

So, when she does something like that, we put her in a certain location in the hallway and make her sit there until we count to 10.  At first this seemed like such a small penalty that we kind of thought it would be pointless.  Not so!  The first couple of times she would try to get up, but after she realized it restarted the countdown, she usually just sat and cried.  After maybe 3 times of doing it, just saying, “Evie, do you want a time out?” was usually enough to make her cease and desist immediately and sometimes even make her run to the other parent for “protection”.

So we were kind of surprised and pleased at how effective it was.  Was being the operative word.

The other day she had a time out for opening the stove door after she was told not to.  After sitting and smiling through the 20 count (we upped it from 10) she asked for “more time out” and “again time out”.  When Sara refused to give her another time out she tried just going back and sitting in the time out area.  That wasn’t authentic enough though, so she came and got Sara and started tugging on her hand to pull her back to the time out area.  Finally, when that didn’t work, she intentionally opened the stove again and then marched back to time out and sat down.  Needless to say, this is not going as planned.

This morning she gave herself a time out after doing something naughty.  Afterwards, Sara asked her if she had learned her lesson.  I think it is safe to say no.