Question
Our daughter is almost 4. She is quite often defiant and we're about to start the ticket system, targeting the defiance. She has never been the least bit cooperative with timeouts, and every time we have confined her to her room for any reason, she throws an epic tantrum, including hitting and kicking the door. Other than constantly opening the door to tell her that the timer doesn't start until she's quiet, what can we do? We do not want to allow her to kick the door! Also, we both work and she is in daycare until 6 pm every day. We then come home, have dinner, and usually put her to bed quite promptly - by the time dinner is over, it is verging on 7:30, and we aim for bedtime around 8. So, what would be an appropriate consequence for loss of all tickets? It seems that confining her to her room or putting her to bed right after dinner is basically what we're doing anyway, so that's not much of a punishment. Finally, at least some of her defiance seems to be out of habit, or seems to occur when she gets sort of stuck in a defiance rut. I'm sure the ticket system will ultimately correct the poor behavior, but is there anything else we can do to help her be more thoughtful and less impulsive? Or is that just the wrong mindset? (Just finished reading TWBC, so I'm still working on being the New Sheriff!)
