A time for time-out

All life is the good life.

just two boys trying to figure out the world.

First things first, none of this is researched. I consume basically none of the (huge market of) parenting self-help material. I read Erin Ryan’s parenting blog. That’s about it. My wife, of course, reads all the books. She listens to all the podcasts. She sends me links to peer-reviewed articles on parenting. I skim the first two paragraphs.

So I’m going at this thing blind. My parenting pedagogy is just management-of-chaos. An unconvincing balancing act. Consider the first-time waiter carrying a tray of filled-to-the-brim cocktails across a crowded bar. I have no qualifications. But then again, neither do most parenting “influencers” and they’re recognized as prophets.

But anyway, the point is that our two-year-old is going through a biting phase. Not like a serious biting thing. He’s not, you know, biting strangers in the produce aisle. It’s not criminal. Just that he’s nuts and he bites Katie and I sometimes. No blood, just a pinch when he’s wound up.

I’ve told him again and again that biting is not okay. And yet the behavior continued (this is the part where the parenting professors would have a long lecture for me). So what to do? You can’t spank him. This is 2024.¹ So I put him in time-out.

Which, strangely, has been effective. But it’s a little absurd, the act of it. Time-out only works if we all make a big deal of it. Like, we have to sell it. It’s serious improv. Because apparently Nietzsche was right, morality is a learned construct. We have to build up time-out as this horrendous thing. And that’s tough because it feels so inauthentic; and yet we live in a society, you can’t just go around biting people.²

And so I put him in time-out and, that first time, it felt time-stoppingly real. One of those moments that strike you. Not to get too vibey, but this is an experience. His first steps. His first word. His first time in time-out. This is parenthood and it’s happening. I always knew it happened but, by some bizarre twist of fate, I’m on this side of it.

Again, I’m entirely uneducated. I am picking this up as I go. Which is getting more difficult because now I’m having to explain the world. I put him in time-out and so he sits there, open-mouthed in half-comprehension, as I explain that he lives under the law of causality. And it’s not just time-out.

My son asked what an Israeli flag is for yesterday. That’s a tough one. And we’re from the south. There’s an old slave quarters (just few brick walls gone to rubble and clay smooth with age) across the street from my grandmother’s house. How do you explain that this world, while beautiful at times, comes with huge flaws built in? Original sin ties the whole thing together pretty neatly but as a doomed cradle Catholic myself, I’m hesitant to pass on the guilt.

Thankfully, it’s not all bad. Though it is all improv. I’ll close with an example. Here’s a child-rearing theory I have: Between the age of two and three, Half of our conversations are like those interactions you read about ancient Zen teachers having with their students. Like this:

Are you ready to go to the store?

No.

Why?

Don’t say why!

Why not?

Don’t say why not!

Are you ready to go to the store?

*ignores*

Are you ready to go to the store?

No.

Why?

Don’t say why!

1. The other obvious suggestion — and one that I considered — is to take away his toys. But we’re dealing with the Principle of Sufficient Reason here — those things don’t really go together. If he throws a toy at me, I can take it away. Because that specific outcome follows that specific action; but biting is unrelated to toys.

2. Time-out is one of those parenting instances where you’re kind of like, obviously this happens but still, it’s weird when you’re doing it.