FRIENEMY = AWESOME.

Madi + Leigh = Madileigh. 

Friend + Enemy = Frienemy. 

There is great relation here.

He'll be terrified of his walker at this rate!! 

When I looked around the Internet for the “official” definition of this new word, I found so many different interpretations, but there is no doubt that it is a word, better yet a world, between love and hate.  This is exactly how I feel about discipline.

Me: "Say cheese Madi", Her: "No Mom. I dot my PHONE."

For months Madileigh has been acting like a little bully and will not listen to me. She literally ignores me most of the time and she is pretty darn good at just strait pretending she doesn’t hear me. I don’t like one single bit the way she steals Easton’s toys and then when I catch her she pretends she was just wiping it off for him so he could put it in his mouth. Or sometimes she gets the nerve to take food on my carpet and when I catch her I’ll say “Madi get that food right back to your table right now…..1…….2…..” and amazingly somehow, right before I get to 3, she stuffs her face and tries to talk telling me that “She don’t got no more.”

My sweet happy baby! =) God please don't give him attitude!

Really? So because I do not find this behavior cute and the apparent counting and spankings are suddenly not affective, I started instituting time-outs. Today, or just for the morning rather. One or two minutes to calm down, reflect, and stop whatever she was doing.  Okay, maybe not reflect, but enough time for her to calm down and stop the bad behavior.

Problem is, that I have already brought it up to our pediatrician and he quickly dismissed the idea. He told me that she didn’t have the cognitive ability to fully understand and modify accordingly. He said that he did think that timeouts may work for a while but that it would be more her learning a routine, sort of the way it was with counting, and that eventually she would dismiss that too. He suggested that I not start the timeouts until about 3 years so that they would be more affective and not short lived. I agreed and the matter was tabled.  Time-outs did not occur at home.

Dance-A-Lot-Robot! =) Easton thinks she dances like her Mommy! 

Now I am at a stand still. She really only does this behavior on certain days and it is usually on my first day off when she is demanding my attention which must be shared. Sometimes I want to cut her a break because for 2 whole years it was just her, and me, every morning, every evening and I know that she needs that one on one time. This hitting, kicking, and biting might be a part of the terrible twos, but they aren’t acceptable.  I have to do something.  Fast.  The dog and Easton are depending on me and my sanity is dwindling.

So, 6 months after that doctor’s visit, I changed my mind. Enter, the time-out.  If Super Nanny can do it, so can I, right?  I quickly found a place in our house to perform this ritual – the old chair I had once painted for my dorm room.  It wasn’t long until I got a chance to use it either.  Today just happens to be my first day off. I sat Madileigh on the chair and explained what was happening.  Easton looked on in horror as I blocked Madileigh (the flailing, crying, screeching mess she had become) from leaving time-out.  Unfortunately, there may not be a lot of time-outs this weekend, or even today.

"I say cheese now Mom."

I feel that it’s important to interject here how much I utterly abhor giving Madileigh time-outs or spankings for that matter.  I am away from her all day long when I’m at work, the last thing I want to do when I get home is discipline her.  That is our time to have fun.  I would rather go on a walk with her, read books, sit at the bar and attempt a conversation about her day, or just watch a movie with her.  I hate that so much of my day has already been dedicated to the count down before giving a time-out/spanking.  I feel that I have repeated, “1-2-3″ more than we have even talked today. But in fairness, she isn’t really all that receptive to talking when she is behaving this way.

Go big boy Go!

I hate to say this, but time-outs don’t work for us.  No denying it.  After a time-out I can’t even get Madileigh calm down enough to listen.  From there I can’t get the desired behavior or an apology for the inappropriate behavior.  So I sat her down and tried to have a heart to heart. We painted together because that always seems to mellow us both out and I looked up a book on the Internet about loving and taking care of your siblings. During Easton’s naptime, we read it together and she loved it! And since then, and I’m sure only for the remainder of the day, we don’t even get to the discipline part; she has adjusted her behavior after I hit the number 2 in my 1-2-3 count down and she has been apologizing… Even to Easton.  It really is astonishing.  I really just think the good ole count down to a spanking is more effective in our house. I wish it weren’t true, because that would allow me to say, “Oh, they just don’t work for her” and I wouldn’t have to go through the agony of doing them in our house.  I truly loathe them and love them at the same time.

She has got the headband idea all wrong! =)

But in the end I guess it has been a super eventful day thus far. Good thing my whole house was up before 7! But a learning day is a good day in my book! And I know something truly positive will come of this because as I am finishing my writing, Madileigh is putting Easton in time-out for putting Ariel’s hair in his mouth. Grose. She said and I quote: “No Eeson. Dat my UURIAL and you make her wet. Yuck. Mommy said you time out. 1…2…3…ok” and then she proceeded to roll him to the corner! Also, I would like to establish now that I am not going to time-out and I will laugh hysterically the day she tries to put Johnny and her grandparents in time-out.

Goodmorning sunshine!

I’m just hoping that we don’t start going backwards in a couple of hours when her grandparents get here to spoil her! =)