time out

Words used correctly, and those that aren’t

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Evie, “I daresay I have a stuffed animal chickie at home.”
Sara, “Could you repeat that?”
Evie, “I daresay they have real chickies at the museum.”

Even though I know Evie said it, I still hear a dusty British accent when I read that. I’ve read it 100 times, and it still cracks me up every time. Not only did she learn and correctly use the word “daresay”, but the juxtaposition of “daresay” and the very kid-like “chickies” is just too much.

Evie: “Daddy, do you want to play with the duplos?”
::dumping them out on the floor::
Evie: “Let’s rock and roll!”

It’s always a guessing game, trying to figure out where she learned these phrases from.

Me: “The Packers are playing today.”
Evie: “The Packers are done with their time out?”

This prompted a lengthy discussion about how time-outs for sports are different than time-outs for being naughty. I remember watching the tail end of a previous game on stat tracker and telling Evie that the Packers were currently on time out. She really took it to heart I guess. I can only imagine what scene she had in mind, in which an entire team of beefy football players have to stand on the X (for a week, no less!)

Time Out

/ Shane / 1 Comment

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.