The Staege Family: The Time-Out Chair

David has continued to do a wonderful job adjusting to our family. He is getting even more affectionate with us (I probably get 30 kisses a day) and more friendly and out-going with others as he feels more safe and secure here. I can tell I have another natural extrovert on my hands! He does have a tendency to put on a show for attention or to get out of doing what he doesn't want. If I ask him to come to me, he'll shake his head no, then give me a huge squishy-face smile as if that is going to get him off the hook. Adorable, but not usually effective. He is also I think planning a career as a soccer player because he can take a fake fall like no one I have ever seen. Elijah will raise his hand as if to push David over, and David will immediately throw himself on the ground and start wailing as if Elijah had just decked him. We are working on this. We are also working on helping David to use words to communicate what he wants instead of "UH UH UH". He can use words because he will repeat them when we ask, but he is used to just grunting urgently and someone will come run and fetch whatever he is pointing at. Or if another child is doing something he doesn't like, he shrieks instead of talks. Now when he wants something we require him to use his words and ask for it. And if he shrieks unless he's actually in pain he gets a time out and has to go back and talk to whoever he shrieked at. We're starting to see some results.

I'd say though, that 70% of our energy has gone to helping Elijah in his adjustment. He has an unfortunate combination of being 2 and having a new brother. The result is his feeling the need to test every boundary known to man and push every button that his brother has. It didn't help that in the middle of it all he had a cold and a sore in his mouth that made it so he couldn't suck his pacifier at night. Prior to David's arrival, we had never used time-out as a discipline method. But Elijah was so constantly getting into trouble that our traditional methods were no longer appropriate for every instance. So we created the time-out chair, and I don't even want to add up the number of days of his life that Elijah has spent in that chair over the last 2 weeks (all in 2 minute increments). And of course, even with the chair, he has to test all of the boundaries of what he can get away with while being in the chair. Can he sit sideways? Dangle his butt off the edge? Stick his head through the hole in the back? Stand up? Stand on his head? Slide his legs down so his toes dangle a mere centimeter from the floor but don't actually touch it? Lay on his back? His stomach? You name it, that kid has tried it. I eventually became so entertained by his creativity that I tried to take pictures of the different poses. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get some of my favorites because as soon as he sees that I'm looking at him he immediately goes back to sitting the way he knows he's supposed to. But for your entertainment, here are a few of his many different time-out chair poses. :)