If Connor had his way, he would play outside all day long. When we lived on the first floor, I would let him play outside alone while I watched him from the kitchen. It was great, almost like our own backyard. Now that we are on the second floor, I don’t feel comfortable letting him run around the courtyard alone, even though I can still see the whole courtyard from our window. I guess just because if he fell I would be like 15 seconds away instead of 5. Anyway, as a compromise, I let him play right outside our front door, but not dowstairs. He’ll sit there and color with chalk and drive his cars. But then he discovered another fun game: dropping his chalk off the ledge and watching it hit the ground below. Yesterday I decided to end that game. I sent him out and told him if he dropped his chalk downstairs he had to come inside for timeout. After a few minutes, I noticed him just staring at me through the screen door with a sheepish look on his face. I asked if he dropped his chalk and he said yes. He’s testing me, and I’m not going to fail. I picked him up and took him back to his room for time out. After a few minutes of wailing, I went back to release him from the prison of the rocking chair. It was then that I noticed, clutched in his tiny hand, a nubbin of orange chalk. He had in fact NOT dropped his chalk and I had just made him endure a time out for doing absolutely nothing wrong. I apologized, gave him lots of hugs, and sent him back outside to color, all the while feeling so bad for my mistake.
He hasn’t dropped any chalk since.
Well, it happens to all of us. If that is the worst mistake you ever make, you’ll be lucky. We just struggle along and do the best we can, but being human, we make mistakes.
Just wait until you have two fighting with each other. I probably punished the wrong kid lots of times!