Time Out! Too Soon?

I gave Alex his first Time Out today. It was only about 40-60 seconds. I delivered it after warning him away from the gate around the fireplace three times. I could tell he understood that I didn't want him to go there.

I expected that he wouldn't really understand the nature of what went on. I just figured I would start these kinds of corrections now instead of waiting and possibly passing a point when he was able to get it and then just slamming it down on him suddenly.

But after it went on, Alex was looking at me and acting in such a way that indicated that he understood what just happened.  So it seems that a 16 month old can understand the negative consequence of a Time Out.

I know that many months ago, I got Alex to stop standing in the tub too, but I did it with "earning yays". I would sit him back down and say "That's a yay". It took only about 2 or 3 days before he was sitting himself back down and clapping and saying "Yay" and looking up at me. He kept remembering the sit down thing until we moved to showers. I thought maybe that the concept of positive consequence was easier to understand, since for them almost everything they decide to do at all is done out of a desire for positive consequence.

This time, I used his play yard to contain him. It has a gate that can lock closed and he knows it's been constantly open since he showed that he could walk well on his own. So, now, he knows that I only used the closed play yard if I had to because there was danger going on in the rooms he has free rein in or, in this first case, a Time Out. He cried for about 10-15 seconds into it, but then stopped. Dan thinks that he started complying with the idea when he realized that I wasn't comforting him while he was crying, but instead just talking to him from the other side of the play yard.
Who knew they could understand the concept of negative consequence at this age? Wow. Interesting.

August 15, 2008