how do you do the "naughty step" thing?

[fruitful]

Dd is 3. If can tell her she's got to sit on the stair for 2 minutes cos she has done something naughty. I can be calm about it, tell her what she has done wrong, tell her she has to sit still and be quiet until the kitchen timer pings, and I go in the kitchen next door.

Then she runs up and down the stairs, goes back to her toys, or tries lying upside down on the stairs or whatever. If I keep taking her back to the stairs, thats great entertainment. If I send her to her room instead, then we have the same thing with her running out of her room. Or she stays in her room and plays happily with her toys for half an hour...

How do you make it work? How do you make them stay there without them turning it into a game?

There is a stair gate on our stairs which is shut so he cant go upstairs.
I close the doors from the kitchen and living room so he is cut off from us.
Ive just started it so up to now its working.

Also ive started to give him a sticker every few days so that he can associate them as a nice thing, so that i can start sticker charts with him when he is older.
Have you tried them (sticker/star chart) or the pasta jar theory posted on here is an absolute hit with every one.

We do praise, we do telling other people how good she's been (phoning Grandma etc), we do parental delight/disapointment, we do rewards. We're ok with the reward/praise half of it. I need a sanction that works now!

Ahhh.....have you looked at the "blatant defiance" thread? I'm afraid the naughty step and the pasta jar don't work for absolutely everyone. We never did manage the naughty step and DD is now 5. Let me know if you come up with anything!

We did this at home and it worked because it was coupled with me looking very cross.
At nursery they tried it and told me DD just laughed at everyone - so I suggested they turned her to face the wall for 2 mins. This did the trick - because DD likes attention, so it was taking away the good attention that she didn't like.
Now she is 5, the worst "punishment" we can offer is no bedtime story which devastates her. What we do now is start the day with 2 or 3 stories - she will "lose" a story for bad behaviour, but also has the opportunity to "win" a story for good behaviour - this means we are not always threatening / doing something bad and that there can be a positive in there ie if you stop doing that, and start doing this then you will have an extra story tonight.
I think it's a case of finding out the thing your child really likes/values and working something out around that. No point sending them to their room if they love playing there on their own.
Hope that helps.