A Mutual Mess

Time outs have always seemed easy for me. A fan of Phelan's 1,2,3 Magic, my girls knew the method so well that by the time they were Max's age, all I had to do was raise my eyebrows and a finger for each number. They never got past 2.

And now Max. I try to be equally strict which is relatively easy since he is such a good natured boy most of the time. Overall, he exhibits much less drama than the girls, just like everyone says. So when he does something wrong, it is usually because his sisters have provoked him. I still try to be strict if he hits or throws something, but I probably end up calling it a mutual mess between siblings at least half the time and focus primarily on separating the children or redirecting Max.

Despite getting a cheap plastic glow in the dark alarm clock from CVS and telling Max that this clock's alarm is what tells us when his patch goes on and comes off, he is starting to get angry with me. We call the clock his "Fire Clock" because he so desperately wants to be a fire-fighter and he thought it looked like the clock in a fire station.

But this morning, when I was trying to put on his "eye bam-bam" as he calls it, he hit me. It was purposeful, with a lot of anger behind it. He hit me solidly in the face. And I started to cry. Then he started to cry and said "Sorry, Mama! Sorry, Mama!" between sobs about a million times.

Do I give him a time out for hitting me? Does he have to be punished? I feel like putting the "eye bam-bam" on every day is a form of punishment itself. If a mother came to me in the clinic with this story, I would say try to keep it  fun, lighthearted. Don't let him know that you feel like this is punishment. So I will try to take my own advice, but it is not as easy as it sounds. And I still worry if about the stress on his heart when he screams. And I still don't want him to suffer one more minute than his medical problems already demand.

But I did give him a time out. And then I picked him up and tickled him silly.