Disciplining other people's children

[kaffkooks]

I was looking after my 18month old son, my friend's 2.5 year old and another friend's 3.5 year old for an hour the other day. 2.5 year old and 3.5 year old were winding each other up so I was doing the best I could to keep everyone occupied with books and duplo. I was finding it particularly difficult to keep 2.5 year old under control as he just was not listening to me. He is the youngest of 3 so is fairly robust. I know his parents use "timeout" to discipline him but he wouldn't listen to me when I tried to make him do a timeout. It didn't help that I was trying to comfort my son who was yelling having just been hit by flying duplo and 3.5 year old was pointing out that 2.5 year old was being "bad"!! What strategies could I use the next time I'm in this situation to try and get 2.5 year old to behave? This sort of thing must come up all the time for childminders or people with more than one young child. I think the problem is that my son is my first and is fairly bidable so I haven't yet had to do much on the discipline front.

[BertieBotts]

Take the child out of the situation, away from the others - the others will just distract them and/or you and undermine your authority. Then calmly state what the problem is, what you expect (want him to do differently) and sometimes it helps to back it up with giving him a little job to do or something.

But possibly it's just that you're used to 18 month olds? They get quite a bit more rambunctuous and I don't think most 2-3 year olds would be particularly interested in books and duplo especially when they're in a group, as they hype each other up. I'd have got them outside if at all possible or get them to play some kind of appropriate/safe "pretend" game.