Crime and Punishment

Next month the daycare is moving Alex and his friend, Sam, from the "Baby" room to the "Toddler" room. To get them ready for the change, they are starting to implement the routines and rules of the next group. That means they can go to the playground, timeouts are used, they are down to one nap a day, can't use binkies, feed themselves entirely and they don't use bibs. I really don't get the idea of not using bibs and Alex hasn't yet mastered silverware, so we'll see how it goes. It should be interesting to see how many changes of clothes he'll go through in a day. Tuesday Alex had his first timeout. Ok, ok, he had two. The first offense was for running and yelling in between the pack-n-plays of sleeping children after being told repeatedly to stop. The second was for throwing toys with his partner in crime, Sam. Since they're 1, the timeout is only for a minute. Sam sits and laughs through the punishment, he's had a few before, but Alex cried. Wednesday he had 2 more timeouts, one for being in between the pack-n-plays again and the other for scratching Lori's, the daycare provider, hand when she moved him away from the pack-n-plays. When I picked him up on Thursday, I was told he had a "ton" of timeouts and had spit via raspberries on Lori. (The raspberries are our fault!)
While I understand the need to keep order, I think the daycare is overdoing the timeouts a bit. I feel they should be saved for instances where the child is hurting someone, themselves or as a last resort for repeated bad behavior. Alex is now laughing through his punishments too. The day care has moved all of the pack-n-plays to one side of the room and behind a gate, so Friday was a much better day with only 2 timeouts and we are working on not allowing raspberries. I am having a hard time with this as Alex and I often have raspberry offs in the car.