TIME OUT! My Toddler Flooded The Living Room!

You know how they say that "I was frozen in place and couldn't say or do anything until it was too late" ? I just had that moment. Luckily it wasn't a safety issue.

My mother in law (MIL) gave all of the grandsons (4 of them) these squeeze bottles for drinks. Since we were walking there today (don't even get me started on how we walked 30 min there and 30 min back on the hottest day of the summer lol stupid) I decided to let him take his squeeze bottle & filled it with (thank God) water. He drank a good bit of it between being there and on the way home.

We're home & I'm reorganizing the diaper bag and putting things away when I hear this trickling noise. I turn around and he is dumping the entire bottle of water all over his table in the living room! After I picked my mouth up off the floor I said NO about 15 seconds too late. For the most part it stayed on him and the table.

As I changed his clothes I told him it was very bad what he did, explained why.. etc. Then got an idea.

Why not try time out? We used to put him in the crib and tell him he was in time out and make him stay in there for 2 minutes (since he's two) but he had his lovie and some stuffed animals in there, so to me thats not really a time out. He's successfully sat on the steps for time out twice at my MIL's... so why not try it here???

I took his little chair from his room and put it in the living room facing a blank wall and turned off the TV. I explained this was his time out chair and I told him he had to sit there until I cleaned up the water and the toys that were wet. He got up once because I took a few toys out of the living room to dry so he got an extra few minutes. I had to leave the vicinity to throw some things out and get him another (safer) drink. When I came back he was still in the chair so I let him out early. He sat as his table with his new drink & snack and said "I'm sorry, Mommy".

What a good boy ;) Can't believe it worked and it was SO easy!

My son will be 3 in October.