For a while in our household we’ve been trying to determine what our child actually understands in order to be able to effectively punish him if he is doing something dangerous or intentionally disobeying his parents time and time again. It is not something we look forward to or enjoy. Our son is infallible in our eyes (at least he was before he started disobeying) and the empathy we feel for him is strong. At the same time we don’t want to create a monster. We’d rather have a child who, at the very least, knows that if he disobeys us after we’ve made something clear that there will be a consequence. In the past months our son has reached the stage where is aware that he can do something we don’t want him to do. He also understands that we’ve told him not to do it.
A while ago he accidentally broke a wine bottle. It shattered all over the floor and he started crying because he was scared and he didn’t know what to do. This was before the new stage of knowledge. Back then we were only concerned about him calming down and understanding that we loved him. Recently he’s been pulling my wireless keyboard off of my desk (with increasing frequency) and he understands that I don’t want him to do this. Same with his mother’s laptop. Same with electrical sockets. Same with dirty silverware from the dishwasher. He needed to learn.
At the moment we are having him sit down on the ground at the scene of the crime. We sit near him and let him know that this is time out. He senses it, I think, in part because we’ve disallowed him (physically) from the wrong thing he was doing (a laptop, a socket, the dishwasher) and this gives us the opportunity to point to things he may not have words for and express our displeasure (again, as he doesn’t get punished the first couple of times in a row). I’m sure the strategy will change in the future. For now — we hope it’s working.