So we’ve had some, urm, issues with Little AG lately. In all of her 18 month old glory she has started biting people. Usually me, actually. For a while I felt completely helpless. I knew she was doing it out of frustration based on the actual moments when it happened, but I knew there was no way to reason with her being that her ability to reason is a ZERO on a scale of one to ten — you know, what with her being a baby and all.

We talked to a friend of ours who works in Child Development and she suggested that we start a quick 2 minute time out system for Little AG that would teach her that the behavior is not acceptable. We follow each time out with a positive activity, like reading a book, dancing, or singing a song so that she learns (hopefully) that we are able to deal with issues but move on.

She has quickly learned that she needs to sit still for the duration of the 2 minutes, but we are having trouble establishing a place for her in our house that doesn’t come with distractions. That is why I think that this Time Out Pad by Keen Distribution is an awesome idea.

The Time Out Pad is pressurized — so it knows when the child gets up and pauses the countdown as well as sounding a little alarm and flashing a red light so both the child and caregiver realize that the timeout is not yet complete. When the child sits back down the Time Out resumes until it is completed. Most experts recommend one minute for each year of the child’s life (so I guess we should REALLY be doing a minute and a half then), and the child can see the time being counted down on the pad itself.

We have only been doing these timeouts for a week, but her behavior has dramatically improved and we’ve only had to do 3 timeouts, so my outlook is rather positive about her behavior. However, timeouts seem like a good parenting option to me, so I think that the Time Out Pad is something we would benefit from.

The Time Out Pad is still a work in progress but will be available soon. I’ll keep you updated here but you can also check out Keen Distribution’s website for details.

What do you think? Do you use timeouts with your children? Is the Time Out Pad something you would use?