Time Out

Eden has recently started going to the bathroom in her toy room. Not accidents. It's been more of an, "oh, I need to pee. I know! I'll go in the toy room!" type of thing. She's done this on more than one occassion and this is the only potty issue that I'm dealing with by punishing. Accidents happen, but being caught in the toy room...standing in a straddle...announcing, "I'm peeing!" is not ok.

Last night when we found the pee spot I told her that if it happened again her toy room was going to be in time out. We do toy time out often so the idea isn't foriegn to her. We explained that the door was going to be shut and she wasn't going to be able to play in there anymore. Well, tonight she pee'd in her toy room and was caught red handed {see the explaination above with her anouncement.}

After being caught she had to put her toys into the toy room and I had her close the door. She cried. She did not want the toy room to be in time out. I didn't want the toy room to go into time out either! After the toy room was closed up and in time out I asked Eden to tell me why the room was in time out. Every time I asked her she broke down! She didn't just get sad, she lost it! She wasn't able to talk about it. She did answer yes/no questions about toy room time out correctly. I asked, "is it because you colored on the chair?" and she answered no. I asked if it was because she wasn't shaing and she said no. I asked if it was because she pee'd in the toy room and she said yes.

I'm hoping that with the response to the punishment that she will understand that I mean business. I also tried to let hr know that I undersand that accidents happen, but doing what she did was not ok. It's hard to know how much she understands. She hasn't really had to grasp the concept of an accident v. on purpose so I hope this doesn't totally backfire on me! I want her to know she wasn't in trouble for the accident {which it wasn't} but that she was in trouble for being distructive in a very unsanitary/nasty/gross/disgusting way. Why didn't anyone tell me parenting was going to be so hard sometimes?! Haha!