When Justin reached the Terrible Twos stage, I found myself always raising my voice and hyperventilating because he was quite a handful then. My son is now 3 years, 3 months and 3 weeks old; he has officially entered the Troublesome Threes stage. He now knows what he wants and always wants to get what he wants. The more that we tell him to stop doing something, the more that he does it, perhaps to show us that he’s a big boy now and that he can do whatever he pleases. In short, he almost always gets on our nerves.

We used to spank him as a form of discipline, but when we learned about timeouts, we started using that tool instead. Parents can use timeouts to help their children regain control when they are angry or frustrated or when their children exhibit an extremely disruptive behavior. Parents can assign a place or a corner in the house where their children can stay for timeouts. In our case, we make Justin stand by our main door for 3 minutes. The 3 minutes here corresponds to his age.

When we put Justin into timeouts, however, we realize that he’s crying all the more, and he won’t stop unless we rescue him and take him away from his timeout place. To make his wailing stop, we put an abrupt end to his timeout. The next thing we knew he doesn’t take timeouts seriously anymore. Nowadays, when he would misbehave and won’t listen to Mommy, I will simply call his Daddy. I think he listens more to his Daddy because he knows his Daddy will never relent, unlike Mommy who easily gives in to his wishes.

How about you? How do you discipline your kids?