Once, a long, long, long, time ago, I had this sweet baby. She was a compliant, generally happy, easygoing child. I mean, she just hung out there and babbled. I cooed, she babbled, all was good.
Then one day, she turned on me. She turned into a toddler. And suddenly she was looking at me defiantly and telling me "No", flinging objects on the floor out of anger, flailing herself on the floor melodramatically at the lost of "her" t.v. and instructing ME to sit down/don't talk/get up and play. Now don't get me wrong, for the most part, Julia is actually quite the gentle, sweet beast - I couldn't have asked for a better child, but, oh, when she's pissed - watch out! And really, when it comes right down to it, the last thing I want to deal with after a long day of dealing with children acting up all day is dealing with MY child acting up. So one of the first things I resorted to was Time Outs and this started as early as potty training. For every screaming and throwing infraction, she was sent to the corner for a set period of time (they say a minute for every year). And at the end of it, as long as she was calm, she was asked to return, identify what she did wrong, identify her "emotion" and why she engaged in the behavior, apologize and seal the whole deal with a hug and a kiss.
Supernanny, my ass! This whole episode has turned into covering her face and fake crying, while intermittently looking at me to "release" her from her Time Out and automatically coming up to me and saying "I'm sorry, Mommy, I didn't mean to throw the phone. I'm sorry, give me a hug." In other words, rather than reducing this evil behavior (and saving my phone from any further damage!), she has instead learned to chain these things together - throw Mommy's phone, go Time Out, return and apologize insincerely, and get a hug at the end. Done!
Truthfully, I knew this was not a good fix, if a fix at all for that matter. Why this didn't work for her was a multitude of reasons - her behavior being more attention seeking than just not getting her way, the time out not being aversive enough, not teaching her what she could do when she's pissed in the moment....etc. But the last thing I'm doing at 6 or 7 in the evening after a long day of work, is thinking. I am on autopilot at this time and all I'm doing is what needs to be done to end the day and get to bed. The Time Out is for ME, with the tiny hope that it was aversive enough to stop her from flipping out, but to really give me a couple of minutes away from her and her misbehavior instead of feeling like I have to reach out and slap her!! It's a nice little disruption to my "breaking point" when I'm overtired, overwhelmed and really, feel like I might lose it and do something I'm going to regret later. So Time Outs are still, ultimately, a "treatment" of choice for me right now and what I have often recommended to others as well (of course there's a lot more thought and recommendations when I tell this to others though - I just don't listen to my own advice).
But because the Time Out is not aversive enough for Julia, I found myself upping the ante one day after an exhausting Time Out, which resulted in me threatening to trash all her Snow White paraphernalia. "If you throw things again, Julia, I am going to throw out your Snow White doll. If you do it again, then it's your DVD, then your book and your Heigh-Hos (what she calls the 7 Dwarfs)". But the moment I said it, I knew I was wrong and I even knew that I was definitely not going to follow through on this one. But when she looked at me, quizzically, and said "But I want my Snow White doll and DVD and book and Heigh-Hos...", I had a slight glimmer of hope that that was going to be the final end to that. I don't really think it will be until I teach her how to appropriately express her anger, stop providing her so much damn attention to her when she flips out, tolerate when I say she can't have something and keep consistent with teaching her how to follow her activity schedule for the day so her world is not so unpredictable. But until then, I just have to continue to learn like the rest of the mommies in the world.
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