{"id":103,"date":"2005-11-30T12:54:13","date_gmt":"2005-11-30T12:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2005\/11\/30\/time-out-for-mommy\/"},"modified":"2005-11-30T12:54:13","modified_gmt":"2005-11-30T12:54:13","slug":"time-out-for-mommy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2005\/11\/30\/time-out-for-mommy\/","title":{"rendered":"Time Out for Mommy"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Note for the non-parents out there: These days, "time-out" is pretty much the tool of choice for parenting. When given a time-out, the misbehaving child is sent to a corner where he or she must sit quietly for a period of time. After the time-out, you discuss why the child was in time-out and then everyone goes on with their life.]<\/font><\/em><\/p>\n

As some of you may remember, C has always tried to push the limits of time-out<\/a>. Even though he understands them<\/a>, he still doesn’t like them. When sitting in time-out, he tries to rebel by yelling, grumbling or kicking the wall.<\/p>\n

Mama don’t play that.<\/p>\n

So they worked out a system. When he goes to time-out, we set a timer for three minutes. At the end of three minutes, the time-out is done. If he misbehaves during the time-out, the timer gets some time added to it and we let him know that he’s gotten himself more time in time-out.<\/p>\n

The system works pretty well, most of the time.<\/p>\n

Last night, I came home from work to find J working in the kitchen, N playing by her feet, and C sitting in time-out. It was a real mother-son battle. I took over playing with N and watched the cycle of C yelling, J increasing the timer, C quieting down.<\/p>\n

After a while, C’s time finally was up. I called him out of time-out to come talk with his mother.<\/p>\n

She turned around to watch him walk over, and then looked at me round-eyed, and whispered "I don’t remember…"<\/p>\n

I couldn’t help myself, I started to chuckle.<\/p>\n

As her wayward child walked up to her, J recovered her composure, and put on her stern Momma face: "So. Why were you in time-out?"<\/p>\n

C looked at her for a minute with a blank look, and then "Ummm…..I yelled? No, no, no… I ummm…. I’m sorry… Umm…" He looked at me for help, but all I could do was try not to laugh.<\/p>\n

The time-out had gone on so long that neither one of them remembered what had started it.<\/p>\n

J tried to recover with a general warning: "Well, you just remember that you have to be nice. Can you remember that?"<\/p>\n

C nodded, but I don’t think he was fooled. He gave me a big old grin and ran off to the den.<\/p>\n

The great part about this? It happened to J first!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Note for the non-parents out there: These days, "time-out" is pretty much the tool of choice for parenting. When given a time-out, the misbehaving child is sent to a corner where he or she must sit quietly for a period of time. After the time-out, you discuss why the child was in time-out and then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[118,120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-embarassing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-1F","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}