Another Laugh

Sunday, brought on another parenting incident with DH that made us laugh hard. We were playing UNO and DD3 insisted on messing up the card piles. After two warnings it was off to time out for her. DH had to put her there since I couldn't.

This is how I run time outs:
1. They stay there one minute for each year they are. In this case 3. You also tell them why they are there, e.g. "It isn't appropriate to mess up the cards while people are playing. That is why you are in time out."
2. When the time is up you ask, "Why are you in time out?" They must answer.
3. You say, "That's right, you are in time out because you messed up the cards. That is inappropriate."
4. This is the biggie. You tell them what they CAN do instead. For instance, "If you want to play cards, you can ask daddy if you can play with him." or something like that. So important that the sentence include the word CAN.
5. They apologize to the offended party.

So back to DD3. I had to help coach DH through these steps because it has been so long since he has done a full blown time out. He did steps 1-3 pretty well, then when I told him about step four he couldn't think of an alternative so he said, "Next time don't mess up the cards. Now go apologize to mom."

DDs 1, 2, and I erupted in laughter. Even the DDs could see the mistake he made in step 4 and thought it was hilarious. DH was laughing and said, "I couldn't think of anything."

It is becoming more clear to me that our roles are becoming very specialized. I am starting to think more seriously about this Daddy Training Camp for him....