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Monday, March 9, 2009

Eyes and doors = ouch

So three eye injuries in a month, each to a different person of the household.
First it was Lucy, Matthew attempted to colour her in, unsuccessfully. Second was me and my scratched cornea, funnily enough that one was down to Matthew as well.
Yesterday Matthew managed to injure himself, luckily not too badly but enough to notice that he was on the losing side of a battle with a door. We are trying time-outs as demonstrated by various child rearing gurus. This dictates that you have a place where the child goes when they have committed an act so heinous that they must be separated from the rest of the family. We cannot use the stairs as both the older children find it hilarious to race off of them and Lucy attempts to climb them to get to the older children.
We felt that the safest place for them was therefore to sit on their beds in their bedrooms, but it has transpired that the children had other ideas. Rather than sit out their time with the door open they find it more productive to escape. WE decided to shut the doors but this has resulted in us have to hold on to the door as they try to rip it from its hinges. The reason being that time-out is an effective punishment in that they hate being made to leave the rest of the family. Yesterday though we had to consider whether it really is worth the fuss as Matthew in his desire to open the door was sent flying by the door he was yanking taking the full force of it in his face. After we calmed him down he was back to his normal self racing around the house, making odd noises.
I wish I could say we had learnt anything but if today is anything to go by, Matthew is still playing with doors and we will probably still try time out although maybe we will to search for another location - again!