Cinderella, time outs and more. . Part II

For the more dedicated readers of the blog, you may remember a previous post about my attempts at discipline written back when Zoe was just a wee one, when her only transgression was her migration toward the dog food. A refresher from a year ago:

"Yes, the word discipline is put in quotes to illustrate just how loosely I am meaning it. Frankly, it has become a game and I am the only one playing; so the question you need to ask yourself is if I am the only one playing, how can I be losing?"

It seems Zoe has joined the game but she has joined the varsity team while I have lingered back on the JV squad wondering when I will be good enough to leave the bench. Like any good mother of a toddler I have joined the wonderful world of timeouts. It seems like a right of passage for both myself and Zoe and at first I welcomed the challenge. I started dolling them out for only the most egregious of behaviors, hitting and the like. The first few timeouts she was upset but I did feel a strange motherly superpower of sorts when she actually stayed in the corner. I mean, I was an amateur and surely would have caved if she decided to look at me like I was crazy and simply got up and walked away. But she didn't, she stayed there and cried just enough to tell me that I was getting my point across, once again give me a false sense of confidence in my mothering skills (when will I learn).

The other day, this changed. She was opening the dishwasher for about the 467th time that day. My response, "if you do that again, you'll go into a timeout." An idol threat made by a frustrated mom to be sure. But Zoe didn't continue to play with dishwasher. She didn't throw a tantrum to illustrate her defiance. She stopped, looked at me matter-of-factly, and moved on to varsity. She walked away from the dishwasher straight to her time out corner (yes, there is a dedicated portion of the house and no we do not use this as a selling point) and just sat down. No tears, no getting up; she just sat there. I was admittedly a little dumbfounded. At first I was patting myself on the back. "Look how much respect I command!" I said to myself. "After my next blog post, the world needs my philosophy on discipline so I will begin a book and a subsequent tour!" And then slowly it dawned on me, the same way it had dawned on me that she was a biter; Zoe doesn't mind timeouts and if she doesn't mind the only discipline tool I have in my proverbial child-rearing toolbox, my life is about to get just a little more interesting.

You, as readers, are in the stands, Vegas odds are not in my favor, the whistle has blown, and the game has just begun. Wish me luck.