Our daughter will turn 12 years old next month. When she makes mistakes, we find that although time outs still work, it’s the taking away of a privilege or the use of a favorite gadget like her mobile phone, iPod or laptop that gets to her.

We only resort to time outs or taking away her privileges after we have given several verbal warnings to her. After each offense and once she has apologized, we do sit down and talk to her about what she did. We ask her if she knows why we got upset. We always have a ‘debrief’ …read more