Stating the Obvious

This morning, because of a behavior issue, I put one of my son's toys in "time out." Yes, depending on the situation, sometimes the kiddo goes into time out and sometimes a toy goes into time out, which means the toy is placed on top of the refrigerator for some period of time (as long as 24 hours, although usually much shorter than that). This time, the toy was in time out for one hour. Oh, you never heard such wailing and crying. The kiddo was mad! Then he was sad! Then he was mad again! I started to think he hated me. Nevertheless, I was adamant. I set a little timer and put it on the coffee table so the kiddo would know when he could have his toy back. Then a funny thing happened: The kiddo got into counting down the minutes, and at the end of the time out, he was all lovey (instead of resentful) toward me. In fact, the rest of the day was a lovefest. This has happened before (often when the kiddo returns from a long weekend at his dad's house and is cranky), but it never fails to blow my mind a little bit. I love it when this stuff works.