CM CLUB........Time out advice please

[HenniPenni]

Hello, I have recently started to mind a two year old who is lovely except for the throwing.

Minee will throw toys at other children, or just throw them anyway, it's not an isolated incident, it happens several times a day.

My problem is that I've never had to deal with a "thrower" before and I'm a little stumped as to how to handle it.I do time out for two mins but mindee will just laugh at me, have done time out in pushchair away from the other children but mindee then plays up when it's time to get out, I just can't get through to mindee that throwing is not very nice etc, have tried to reason but nothing gets through. Has already had time out three times this morning and has only been here two hours. Any ideas would be gratefull.

One of the children started chucking stuff about during my inspection yesterday. I took the toy away, showed child (also 2)how to put it down gently and passed toy back for her to try. We practiced several times, passing back & forth. I was lucky, I got giggles and she got the hang of this quite quickly.

If it keeps happening, I would put the toy in time out, on a high shelf instead.

I had one very similar, from about 18 months old - I suspect that at home he was not given much attention. Anyway I worked really hard with him being really patient and trying to work on his speech etc with lots of rhymes and stories thinking this might help, but never found out if it would have worked cos after about 6 months we had a bit of an incident - he kept climbing on a low table and throwing things over and over again, and after a while of keep getting him down I put him in the buggy but not separated from the other children. After a couple of minutes his mum happened to arrive and I explained what had happened, but she phoned me up that night and said they would not bring him again cos of "what you have done". I felt really upset. So that was the end of that, but I was relieved not to have him. On an NCMA course recently they said you could use time out if it was constructive, i.e. you take them out of a situation and talk to them, but not to use the word 'naughty step' etc or to isolate the child. So, to protect yourself, probably better not to use the buggy.

Thanks Amphion - have just realised why I shouldn't use the buggy,
Alot of what you say rings a bell with my mindee- speach isn't too good - we are working rteally hard on speach- I hope and think that maybe the mindee gets frustrated and then starts throwing,

Ayla-I have tried handing the toy back and getting mindee to put it where they want it properly but honestly would spend all day doing that!!, will carry on reinforcing the good behaviour and see what happens. If I was to put all the toys out of reach that the mindee throws I would have a very empty room!!.

Any other ideas welcome.

why not have a word with mum - ask her what child is like at home and if they throw- what does she do about it and does it work? Probably best to let her know your concerns anyway!

Have already spoken to mum, she asked me what to do! they just say no but it obviously doesn't work.

I'm afraid I can't help, my own ds used to be like this (still can be but not as bad) and nothing has worked for him. What I found stopped him doing it so much was when I started to ignore it (VERY hard to do with mindees around!), having said that, ds didn't really throw hard items. I think ds was doing it to get my attention and of course he was getting it until I started to ignore him!

Sorry, absolutely no help but I do sympathise with you.

Looneytune, thanks for that, I must admit that I'm wondering about ignoring it unless one of my other mindees, own children or animals are the target, I sometimes think that all I say to the parents on collection is XX has had a good day, lots of sharing and playing nicely etc but has spoilt it by throwing!!