One morning, as I strapped Alice into her carseat to head off to school, I noticed some marker drawings around the zipper on her coat. This was not a stray mark accidentally made; it was a very intentional, large drawing. She had been told on multiple occasions (with sessions of time out for reinforcement) to not color on her clothes. Not able to deal with it at the moment, I made an ominous promise that we'd figure out the punishment later, then sent her on her way.
That evening, we decided to send a strong message and rather than just sending her to timeout, we banned her from videos for the evening bed time snack. I knew the punishment was a good one when she immediately burst into tears.
Later that night, she had to sit at the table and eat while only Simon could see the videos. The problem was, without a video to keep her glued in place, she kept getting up and wandering around, occasionally in site of the video. I gave her several warnings and then made a specific threat: if she didn't accept her punishment, she would not be able to watch videos the next night either.
At some point I left the room, but Zac was still there, and sure enough she ended up in front of the video. So we had to follow through, and ban her again.
The next night, she was resolved to accept her punishment. She did not come close to watching the video even once. Just to test her, we set up a phone camera to spy on her and we both simultaneously left the room briefly on two separate occasion. Still, she did not go near the laptop screen.
The next day, we inadvertently discovered that she had taken a blue rock from Grandma Cam's house, even though, according to her own account, Grandma Cam had said no. Once Alice realized this confession had gotten her in trouble again, she immediately became obsessed with whether or not she would be able to watch videos that night. Although the punishment was effective, we didn't want to overuse it, so we just sent her to timeout for 10 minutes straight, with lots of lecturing before and after. She still cried (the sign of an effective punishment), so we felt we had done our due diligence.
In the days that have followed, whenever she makes a bad choice, she immediately starts asking what the punishment is going to be and if she can still watch videos. Mostly we still use timeout, but I'm starting to realize the open punishment can be useful.
For example, tonight, right after I reprimanded Simon for poking me in the face with his wand and telling him he would go to timeout if he poked me one more time, I overheard Alice whispering in his ear, "Simon, go poke mommy." Luckily, Simon just looked at Alice like she was crazy and went on his merry way. He knows what time out means.
For that little bit of treachery, Alice had to clean up the entire living room all by herself before bedtime snack, and it was a very messy living room. To her credit, she did it with alacrity. Anything is better than missing those videos!
Alice wants to be good, and it must be hard to be a slightly devious four year old when so many temptations abound, but we hope that by laying down the law early, we'll avoid more problems later on. Time will tell.
