So my daughter is pushing 15 months. She LOVES getting behind the TV with all the wiring. She knows she isn’t allowed back there. The problem is she gets all cute and thinks its a game when I come to remove her. So I’ve been giving her timeouts in her crib, but I am afraid that it will bring her to associate the crib with punishment and mess up naptime. It’s also hard to discipline her when she has a huge grin on her face. She’s just too freakin’ adorable.
Oh. I know this one.
You have to master “The Danger Face”, for toddlers who are too young to really understand the reason for “don’t touch”. I read about it somewhere ages ago. Works like a charm, I used it on all three of mine at least once in their adventurous little lives.
To make the Danger Face, you grimace in exaggerated horror and terror. It’s not an open-mouth horror thing, it’s a pulled-back grimace of terror. Practice in the mirror a couple times.
Then the next time she touches something dangerous, while you’re yelling at her, “NO!! DANGER!” you simultaneously uncork the Danger Face. Flash it at her: You’re horrified! That she’s TOUCHING IT! OMG!
Understand, you don’t hold the pose, because then the shock wears off, and it turns into just a funny face that Mommy/Daddy is making. It’s the shock and awe, seeing Mommy/Daddy so completely momentarily horrified and terrified by whatever she’s touching, that will cause her to instinctively flinch away from it.
And also understand that this is something you really have to reserve for genuine danger, because otherwise, as mentioned, you lose the shock value.
14 months is young for a time out. She probably doesn’t have the language acquisition to understand why dad is mad. Is there any way you could just block the area off, like with a baby gate or even a sheet of cardboard or something?
Is this the wrong place to admit that when my daughter was going through the same thing, I literally used a can of pennies, left over from training the cat? She hated the sound, so I just operant conditioned the heck out of her! 
I hear you, though. It’s so hard to stay calm and firm when they’re so cute. Either makes you want to laugh at 'em or to shake 'em. (Neither is recommended as a parenting technique, last I checked.)
I agree, that is too young for a time out. She just would not understand.
I second WhyNot’s idea to use a baby gate or something to block off that area - or even two big pieces of cardboard - just something to block her view of it and make it less tempting and accessible.
The responsibility is YOURS, not your child’s. Meaning, you need to make all areas safe for her, not rely solely on training her to only play with certain things.
Personally, we found distraction worked wonders when my little one was that age - if she did something we didn’t want her to, we would just say “Leave the TV alone!” (I tried never to use negative statements with her) and then give her something that was REALLY fun - usually a tower of blocks for her to knock over! We would give her a BIG FUN reaction for something like that, and a neutral, boring reaction for the “forbidden” activity.
Yeah, I came to the same conclusion that she’s too young for a time out. She just ended up playing in her crib and was very excited when i came to get her, all bubbly and giggly. I guess a gate is a plausible answer, but the reality is that it’s more about her recent climbing ability. If it weren’t there she’d climb somewhere else. And she does understand that I don’t want her there. If I catch her in transit and say, “No don’t even think about it.”, she stops in her tracks. It’s when she gets there while I am not looking that it turns into a game. It’s also not the wires she’s after, it’s the DVDs that she wants to throw all over the floor. She is an insanely good climber, and I just don’t know how we would change the living room in such a way as to remove all potential dangers. Generally my biggest worry about her is falling while climbing. It’s not like I can eliminate the highest things in the room, like the backs of chairs and sofas. I just want her to learn that I hate having to pick up the damn DVDs. 
Welcome to what my mother called The Duration. It’s worth it to baby-proof the heck out of the place, esp. if she’s getting a little sibling any time soon. For the duration, pack everything away you possibly can. You can’t teach her not to be a toddler, and you probably wouldn’t want to if you could.
I don’t know that that’s necessarily too young for a timeout. The rule of thumb is a minute for every year of their life, and they can learn very quickly to stay there for one minute.
Definitely do NOT use the crib for the timeout though. For my own kids and my daycare kids, it was a small backless wooden stool. I had it in a corner of the room. They had to face toward the corner. One thing they didn’t realize is that a shelf full of books was an arm’s reach away. None of them ever took advantage.
To address the cute factor, what I would do when they were that small was pick them up from behind so I couldn’t see their faces. The old arm-around-the-waist thing, then tote them to their timeout. I am not saying sneak up behind them though.
Now that it’s summertime, maybe take her outside as much as possible to help her burn off some of that climbing energy?
And bracket everything like bookshelves, entertainment units, etc to the walls to keep them from falling on her if she uses them as jungle gyms.
Really, baby-proof as much as you can, and instead of saying “DON’T … blah blah blah …” try using positive statements like “Leave that alone” or “Stay away from behind the TV” - seriously, it has worked wonders here.
I understand the danger thing, but what if you find a way to keep the DVDs from coming out? Can you put some kind of tape in front of them or something, to take some of the fun out of it for her? Maybe tack an elastic strip across the front? What happens with a good loud NO! and then distraction?
Can you teach her that it’s fun to put the DVDs away? I know she’s young, but if she can get stuff out, she should be able to sort of stack it up on a shelf. It won’t look as nice as you might like, but it’s probably not a bad idea to get her used to the idea of being a helper. Then when she does put at least some of them away, you have something to praise her for.
Take this with a grain of salt - I don’t have kids, just dogs. And they aren’t very good about putting stuff away.
StG
Children should be raised in a Skinner Box until capable of understanding and obeying verbal commands.
I also feel that kids this age are too young for time outs - we only just started giving them to my son three or four months ago - he’s 25 months now.
Anyway, I’m not a big person for babyproofing. We did the obvious - capped electrical outlets and put up a baby gate at the top of the stairs, put the knives and solvents away, etc., but other than that, we just kept a close eye on our son and eventually he stopped being interested in those things he wasn’t supposed to touch, like the wiring behind the TV. It became second nature for the wires to be off limits, so he just doesn’t touch them anymore. It worked really well for us, but every kid is different. Plus, some days it’s hard to have the patience to calmly say, “Don’t touch the wires” 100 times without cracking.
I third (fourth? fifth?) the notion that the crib isn’t the best place for a timeout regardless of the kid’s age. When they’re tiny, they could potentially associate the crib with negative feelings and can’t associate why they’re away from you with what they did. Alternatively, once they’re old enough to get it, if they have toys in there (even something that attaches to the crib), it’s not much of a punishment sometimes. We have a small chair placed where we can see it from the kitchen and living room. It’s well away from the area with all the toys and he can’t wander off without one of us noticing.
Maybe more advice than you need, but time-outs for my kids were for when they were out of control or pitching a fit or suchlike.
What I used in situations like what you describe was distraction - spot her heading for trouble and head her off at the pass with something else. You gotta be consistent. If that failed, I used a technique called “yelling”.
Methinks you have to decide if you really don’t want her back there. Are you afraid she is going to get a shock? Or just that she will mess up the TV?
Regards,
Shodan
I tell my 11-month old “no” when he starts playing with the one thing we are unable to baby-proof. He understands perfectly well.
At first he would poke out his bottom lip & cry, now he looks at me for a few seconds before moving on to something else.
I have kids and no dogs. 
I’m a big believer in, “if it can’t hurt them, and they can’t break it - let em play.” As long as she can’t open the cases and scratch the dvds, just teach her to put them back on the shelf. Just put your favorite DVDs and the ones with scary or objectionable covers some other place for the duration.
This activity could keep her occupied for quite awhile.
My oldest daughter had a thing for taking all the cassette tapes, CD’s and VHS tapes off of the TV stand when she was about your daughter’s age. She was such an organizer when she was little, very interested in putting things in the right place. Trips to the grocery store were kinda frustrating but funny because she’d spend so much time straightening up the candy racks.
A quick word about time outs as a discipline or redirect option–I think the efficacy also depends on the child’s personality as much as age. So you will probably want to think through that as your daughter approaches an age where time outs work for her.
My older son loved time outs in his room, but that’s because he loved to play quietly in his room alone anyway. So his time outs were on the living room couch, right out with the rest of us but with no way to distract himself.
My younger son was very different. He absolutely detested having a time out in his room. We learned that unless we told him the door had to be shut and he had to be quiet, he would put his toes right at the edge of the room. grab the door jab and lean out into the hall to holler at us that he was still in his room.
Absolutely. I wasn’t trying to be absolutist with the age comment, I should have phrased that differently. More like: From what you’re saying about her reactions, it sounds like she’s not old enough to grok a time out yet. Some kids her age might be, but it has to be the semi-public chair in the corner type of time out, not a stick her in her crib and walk away time out.
That’s actually very good advice. Generally speaking, the natural consequence of an action is the best teacher. Kids can be weird, sometimes, though. We went through a stage for a while where WhyBaby was intentionally making messes because she thought it was so much fun to clean up. (This was at 2.5 years or so.) Of course, her idea of “cleaning up” still left a lot of work for me. One day she decided, remarkably quickly, to smear vegetable soup all over the dining room wall, the floor, her table, herself and her eating mate. When I went in, armed with book learnin’ and good intentions, and told her she had to clean it up, you would’ve thought I’d handed her the key to an ice cream shop!
I made an about face in disciplinary technique, and gave her a “soldier timeout” (which I made up on the spot). She was required to stand at attention (or at least stand still and watch) while I cleaned up the mess. It took about 20 minutes, she didn’t get to do any fun cleaning at all, and she had to stand still in the middle of the room - no leaning on walls, no tapping the floor, no spinning in circles - for the whole time! Quite challenging and Not Fun for a 2 year old.
Who could have guessed that, for her at that particular stage of development, watching Mama clean would be a more effective teaching tool than cleaning up her own mess? Sometimes you have to pitch the standard and do what works for your kid.
WhyNot - I remember the day swhen my niece was a toddler. She’s take a babywipe and scrub the fireplace hearth. Somewhere she lost that cleaning urge and now at 17 her bedroom’s a wreck! Sometimes I think giving a baby a wipe and having her “help” is a great diversion.
Does anyone else get furious at the TV commercials that show kids gleefully spewing soda, throwing food, banging on pots while the mom says she can’t cook. All the moms have this beatific smile on their faces while the kids run wild. My mother would have our hands smacked and sitting in a corner before we could turn around!
StG
What annoys me most of all about those commercials is when the moms give that “Isn’t-he-cute/kids-will-be-kids” shrug and clean it up themselves! Grrr…
I’ve got no problem with my son yelling, running or using pots and pans as drums in the house (sometimes it’s useful to get rid of the pre-bedtime mania that makes it hard for him to sleep), but he knows that deliberately throwing food or drink is inexcusable.
Heh, my method is more or less of the overlyverbose/shodan/labrador deceiver school. What I am most worried about is her messing up the TV. The only cords she really goes for are the cord to my laptop, cell phone charges, USB cables, or the X-Box remote charger. Basically the cords that are out in the open and see action regularly.
We’re moving in August and have made the plan to update our Entertainment center and get a big wall unit bookshelf, to put things away so it’ll be easier to keep out of reach.