free "is time-out a waste of time?" webinar

i have mentioned Rookie Moms, a favourite blog of mine, a few times on my blog. they are hosting a free, online, one-hour class by a parenting expert, Amy McCready that will answer the question, "is time-out a waste of time?" it's for parents of children ages 2 - 15yrs and like i said, it's FREE! i've never done a webinar before but you don't need a webcam - you just watch and there's a chat feature so that you can ask your questions to Amy. read Rookie Moms' experience taking her class here and then follow the links to sign up. then you and i can discuss later! it's set up for an afternoon session and evening session on Aug. 30 and it's EST so it happens here on the westcoast at 6pm...hopefully we can drop ben off with the grandparents that night so tim and i can both watch it without disruptions.

we'd tried doing time outs with ben before he was 2 where we'd put him in his crib and leave him for a minute or so. when i'd come back in to get him, i'd say, "you're in time out because ____. can you say, "sorry" to mommy for ________." and he'd do the sign for sorry. this wasn't all that effective though.

then i tried doing logical and immediate consequences for misbehaviour. misbehaviour was usually having a tantrum and throwing something all over the floor. logical consequence: sit next to the stuff you threw and you can't leave until you've picked it up. this worked pretty well until misbehaviour was no longer as easy as this to come with the consequence.

i tried having a spot in the kitchen (in front of the pantry door) where he had to sit and wait for the timer to beep. we did this about 3 times and then ben would do something "bad" on purpose and then run to the time out spot and say, "beep, beep, beep". hmm... we immediately stopped doing that.

this past week, we've had a couple run-ins with ben over throwing sand/bark mulch at the park. we say, "stop", and he keeps going. we try to put him in a time out until he's willing to say sorry and he's all like, "bye-bye mommy. bye-bye." grr... the problem with having to say sorry is that pretty soon sorry means nothing and he knows he can just say it glibly and finish his time out. we don't want to have this happen so the other night, tim and i brainstormed as to what would be a better punishment. we decided we'd try to come back around to logical consequences again. if he's throwing bark mulch at the park, give him a warning that if he throws again, we're leaving the park. then actually LEAVE the park when he does it again. etc etc. sounds good in theory but i'm interested to see how it works.

so when i read about this webinar, i thought, "perfect!" - i'd love to get some tools and strategies that we can use right away! comment here if you're planning to register so that i know who i can chat with about it afterwards!