What age for the naughty step/time out?

[BornToFolk]

DS is 2.4 and in general, is well-behaved and lovely. He doesn't often have tantrums but I think I need a strategy for when he does.

When he does meltdown, he does this rampage thing where he just runs around and throws things. I end up chasing him, picking up the things that he's thrown and trying to race him to the next thing. I realise this is not the best way of dealing with it as it winds both of us up and gives him loads of attention. Ignoring is hard as a) he's hell-bent on destruction and b) he follows me around.

I feel like I need some way of containing him when he's like this so he can calm down without damaging anything and to stop the tantrum escalating. The only place to do this in our house is the hallway. However, shutting him in the hallway feels a bit wrong to me. I'm also not convinced that he's old enough to understand the concept of sitting on the naughty step for x amount of time and will just hammer on the door which will just make things worse....of course I haven't tried it yet so I might be wrong!

In addition to this, he's started to role-play "time-out" with his teddies. So one of his teddies will hit me or him, DS will say "teddy hit me. I sit him out!" and go and put teddy somewhere then go and get him back and ask him to say sorry. I think he must have picked this up at nursery. I'm fairly sure that he's never been in time out himself at nursery as his keyworker would have told me but he's probably seen other children being "sat out". When he does this role play, I play along, emphasize that hitting is naughty and we don't it but give teddy a big cuddle when he says sorry and quickly move on.

Sorry, this has turned into a big old ramble! I really feel a bit clueless about the whole discipline thing, mainly because DS is generally so good, I haven't developed any strategies! Would really appreciate some advice.

Your rambling is exactly how I'm feeling this morning! My daughter is very strong willed and not always well behaved but she is lovely. We have tried lots of different tactics with her when she melts down and then she finds another way of expressing and my husband and I are left scrambling to find other ways of coping. It's hard!

The main tactics we've learned is to be calm, consistent and firm in the face of a tantrum/meltdown. The old say what you are going to do and then follow through. My husband and I also found this book to be useful when we were starting the whole discipline process.

In the end, you know your son best, it just sounds as though you need to find some strategies that are most effective for you. You are already finding that the "chasing" doesn't work - it probably feeds into the situation. Also, you may need to forget about picking things up as he is throwing them...at that moment anyway. The main concern for us is physical safety. If my daughter is wailing and kicking on the floor for example, and there is no risk of her harming herself, we usually just tell her, "ok, you do that for a while" and then leave her to it. She usually calms down after a while when she realizes we're not buying into the drama.

Anyway, I wish you luck! We are still trying to crack the tantrum code too!

Thanks Greyclay! I'll look out for that book - it looks very helpful.

In general, I find the praising the good, ignoring the bad/distraction strategy works quite well.

At the moment, I'm just trying to keep calm and patient and not shout. Not that I do it often but when I do shout, it doesn't work anyway so am trying not to do it at all...if that makes sense! You're totally right, calm consistency works wonders, it can just be hard to maintain in the face of a tantrum.