when your children are acting up...

my son is 1 and is going through a terrible 2 stage early!!! so no matter where we go he is all over the place and he gets into everything and i have to chase him around everywhere. So after a while to get his attention i'll tap him on the butt or raise my voice to get to him.

ive never spanked my son and would be very mad if i ever found out anyone else did! anyways.. when my son acts up i ask him what the problem is and tell him to talk to my calmly.. usually he doesnt though and just continues his fussing, so i tell him to stop fussing or he can go into time out! sometimes that works other times he ends up in time out.. i do yell from time to time.. usually only his name.. he knows hes going to be in trouble when i yell if he doesnt stop doing things he knows he shouldnt! so usually the yelling doesnt go very far :)

I try to talk to my children too and find out what or who is causing the problem. I'm a really big fan of time outs, and if that fails they get grounded for misbehaving. There is usually a reason they are acting up and more often than not, it's because they are overtired. On these occasions I try very hard to keep my cool and just end up putting them to bed early that night.

My children are very little. They are 1 1/2 and 2 1/2. When they act up, which is about 20 times a day :), I usually give them a warning and then I put them in timeout. I've found this to be the most affective for both of them. They don't like to be left out of anything so they don't like timeout. I try not to yell because it doesn't work at all. I also try not to spank because it's not affective and it's only a "at the moment" resolution. I would only spank if they did something like run in front of a car but even then I try to get down and talk to them.