I swear I am at my wit's end with my toddler (he will be 2 in 3 weeks). Anyway.....I ready 1-2-3 Magic and try to follow it. He is getting time outs left & right lately for things he does...mainly jumping on the couch and hitting his brother or sister. It doesnt phase him. He obviously knows he is doing something wrong...he looks at me with the devil grin and laughs and then does it. I punish him and he laughs. When he gets out of time out, he does it all over again.
What am I doing wrong?

Karri, I wish I had advice for you, but Cameron is the same exact way. He laughs at me when I punish him, timeouts don't bother him at all. And he just repeats whatever behavior he was doing.

Thanks Bretta. I will MAKE time to read if it will help! :lol:

Yes..we do have a time out chair.

You're not being nosy :lol: yeah...its in the corner of the dining room where he cant see anything

I'm butting in, and I'm sorry..but I've having the same issues with my 2 year old. Question: How does everyone deal with it in public?

Jumping in here to see the responses - Julian is 19 months old and not real responsive to what I tell him until I've repeated myself about 20 times (and gotten very frustrated in the process). He's also been known to laugh at me and go right on doing what I've just told him not to do, and it's wearing me out.

Bretta, I will definitely check that book out!

At what age would it be worthwhile to start trying time outs? (Right now I'm afraid "time out" would consist of a minute, or two, or whatever time period is appropriate, of Julian jumping out of his chair and me constantly putting him back in - would he get anything from that?)

Julian is about 18 months, right? What we did at that point was not sitting Caroline in a separate chair, because she'd certainly get right back up. Instead we'd sit her on our lap on the couch, hold her tightly so she couldn't escape. Just the "restriction" and time to calm down is quite often enough to help! Once she got the idea of being punished by sitting still, then we moved timeouts to sitting on the steps that lead to the second floor. She has never attempted to get up from there!

Anne, Julian is 19 months. I'll have to give that a try - Lord knows he hates to be restrained in any way, even holding him still for diaper changes is a battle! :lol: The question is, am I strong enough to *hold* him still? He hates it and fights like mad, so I'll have to try it and see if holding him gives him time to calm down or just gets him more wound up. Thanks for the suggestion!