Do you put toys in time out?

[ChristyMarie]

So we have found that if a toy cannot be played with properly, it has to go in time out for a while. This works VERY well for us.

I was just on the phone as my son swung a play broom over his head, colliding with stuff. I told him if he didn't stop it would go in time out.

My rather mainstream friend was like, "did you just say IT would go in time out?"

I tried explaining that putting a toy on a shelf is a heck of a lot easier than getting a kid to sit in time out. She insisted you just put the child back in time out and she thought it was the silliest thing ever.

I'm not the weird one here, am I?

[organicpapayamama]

well i must say that is the first time ive ever heard of that but honestly do what works for you and your lo. If you find it effective, stick to it. I personally would attribute the inappropriate use of the toy to the child and not the toy and would place my ds in time out... but that just happens to work for me and my ds.

[bebebradford]

Originally Posted by ChristyMarie

So we have found that if a toy cannot be played with properly, it has to go in time out for a while. This works VERY well for us.

I was just on the phone as my son swung a play broom over his head, colliding with stuff. I told him if he didn't stop it would go in time out.

My rather mainstream friend was like, "did you just say IT would go in time out?"

I tried explaining that putting a toy on a shelf is a heck of a lot easier than getting a kid to sit in time out. She insisted you just put the child back in time out and she thought it was the silliest thing ever.

I'm not the weird one here, am I?

If it works.. it works. Every child and parent is different.. if it helps in your situation, by all means keep doing it!

[Anastasiya]

Well, I do both. Toys go in time out when kids refuse to take care of them or pick them up, and kids go in time out when they willfully disobey.

Both time outs work wonderfully.

(And just for the record, I don't like to parent by choosing which is the "easier" option. Maybe that's what your friend was surprised by....)

[kiwiva]

I don't call it time out but if DD cannot use a toy safely then I will explain that we need to put it away until she can do so. There's no arbitrary time limit for it. If she wants it back and will use it safely, she gets it back. I don't use time out for her.

[cparkly]

21-month old DS received a battery-operated "talking" parrot from his grandparents (Pete the Repeat Parrot). He loves it.

While DS is typically friendly and sweet-natured, he gets very aggressive when the parrot is around. He growls, yells "NOOOO!!", bangs on things and throws things. I am happy that he has an outlet for his frustration, but it can get out of control. So, I often have to put the parrot to sleep by turning the switch off, asking DS to sing a little lullaby with me and covering with it a playsilk).

So, I can completely understand the need to put certain toys in "time out". I try to regularly rotate toys and books so that they are fresh and "new" and there are not so many out that they are overwhelming.

[nextcommercial]

I have been using "Toy time out" for years.

If you don't use it correctly, you lose the privelage of using it at all.

My child is 17 years old, and I will gladly put her truck in "truck timeout" if she misuses her truck. Her phone can go in phone timeout too, if I need it to. So, it still works, even when they are almost adults.

[heartmama]

I tried it a few times when ds was 2 and hit me with toys. It made no difference for him--he didn't really connect it with what happened. He might have been too young to understand. So, I think it can be a useful measure to avoid breakage or to diffuse a moment that is out of control, but it probably does not do much to address the underlying problem (if you are dealing with a chronic situation).

[LynnS6]

Yep, quite a bit when they were in the 2-3-4 age range. Mostly toys went into time out when the kids were fighting so much over them that I was going insane.

Actually, I did it last night, though I didn't call it a toy time out. I just took the toy from dd (magnetix) that she'd been using wrong (putting in her mouth - kids have died from swallowing those toys) and said "that's so dangerous I can't let you have that toy right now". I think I'm going to toss those.

I didn't view it as a long term discipline strategy -- it simply breaks the cycle.

[tbone_kneegrabber]

Yeah of course. Especially if more than one kid is fighting over it. (I watch ds bff sometimes). We call it a "conflict item." As in "if that stroller is becoming a conflict item I will put it away until later"

I talked about "toy time out" at ds's preschool just in passing (pretty much the example above) and I think his teachers started using it, they had never heard of it/thought of it. (they don't do *kid* time outs at his school at all)

I guess my mom must have done it when I was a kid, because it was the first thing I thought of whenever a toy was used dangerously or causing conflict.

[Letitia]

We've done it. Has worked much better for DD (now just 3), especially when she was around 2, 2-1/2, but also still some now, than it has for DS, now 20 months.

I don't see anything odd about it. Seems to me it aligns with the idea of natural consequences, which I do like but which are sometimes not practical, much more easily than putting the child in time-out.

I probably would have done the same thing with unsafe broom play. If you can't play with the broom safely, you can't play with the broom. I think one thing calling it a "time-out" does is introduce the idea that you might be able to try again later at some point.

[ChristyMarie]

Originally Posted by Letitia

I think one thing calling it a "time-out" does is introduce the idea that you might be able to try again later at some point.

Oh he totally gets the offending toy back later. Usually when he asks for it because we'll both forget about it for a while. But if he then uses it wrong again it is in time out until the next day.

It just makes more sense, and works better for us, than a traditional time out. He gets to keep playing but the momentum of "swing this over my head as hard as I can" is interrupted.