So I just put my toddler away for a time out for being really annoying. All she wants is attention, but like fucking constantly. She got upset that I wouldn’t let her wake her Mommy up from her nap so I put her in her room and now she is screaming her head off. I feel a little bit guilty for being selfish, but not much.
That’s kind of sad.
Good summary of toddlers.
Keep putting her in time-out just for normal kid behavior, and you’re not going to have anything left when you actually need to enforce discipline. Next time play catch with her or draw a picture with her or something. There’s also this thing called a “TV” that some of us sometimes use to entertain our kids when we’re feeling completely tapped out but don’t want to shut our kids in our rooms while they scream their fool heads off.
To me time-out isn’t a punishment, it is taken quite literally, it’s a ‘time-out’. A time for everyone to calm down. In all fairness she started screaming when I wouldn’t let her wake her Mommy up.
In some families, the punishment for wanting to wake Mommy up would be to let her wake Mommy up and face the consequences. 
My wife’s a pushover and is pregnant, has had incredibly bad morning sickness, is only feeling a little better over the past couple of days and is the one who actually got up at 7 AM with the baby, so…she deserves to sleep.
Fair enough. But yeah, I’d say try to find something to distract her so the punishment stuff doesn’t get played out or escalated sooner than it needs to be (ideally, “Go to your room!” should stop working as an effective punishment around when the kid starts paying off their own college loans.)
Oh, I gotcha. Yeah, that’s different. Toddlers: Can’t live with 'em, can’t sell 'em on eBay.
I do find in general that the more positive attention you give to kids, the more smoothly things tend to go, but there’s just no avoiding tantrums sometimes.
When she’s at home we spend a whole lot of time with her. She’s sitting in my lap singing ‘Old McDonald’ right now, which basically means she is screaming Eyayoh, because that’s the only line she knows. 
Here’s my take on it. If both mommy and daddy are home, and mommy is trying to catch up on sleep, toddler should either accept daddy as entertainment and leave mommy to nap or toddler learns a lesson in boundaries and goes to time out. It’s never too early to teach a kid the meaning of “NO” and when to respect boundaries.
If mommy is home alone with toddler then mommy needs to get up with said toddler. Bored, unsupervised toddlers put keys in electric outlets.
Unfortunately for you and for toddlers, it is a punishment. The currency of of exchange in your relationship is attention (both good and bad) at this stage and I think that withdrawing it will likely prove a punishment for your daughter regardlesss of your intentions.
Sorry to nit-pick your parenting, but you had to share…
Fair enough. Then it was a lesson in Mommy and Daddy’s personal space.
Yeah, but only once.
And then they get the Big Time Out.
We like to call it “Having Time-Out With Jesus.”
I find time-outs rarely work for my toddler son. They seem much more effective with my older son who’s seven. He takes time outs so seriously, like he’s being put in prison.
Of course, the fact that we put him the broom closet with no lights on may give him that impression.
But seriously, I feel the OP. My son Jacob the Beast has recently taking on a “whine about everything” approach to anything he wants, and we’re nipping that shit in the bud right now, generally by making him wait and rephrase his rants into the form of a pleasant request.
“Gimme a drink!”
“Jacob, how do ask for something like a big boy?”
“Gimme a drink!”
“Jacob…please?”
“Please?”
“Please what?”
“Please gimme a drink!”
<<sighs>>
Marge: Maggie isn’t scared of bunnies.
Homer: She will be.
IMO, leaning to be quiet when people around you are feeling bad is a life lesson. Having your daughter sit quietly away by herself to teach her that is totally acceptable. Screaming her head off is her way of challanging this notion. Give her an activity and stick to your guns.
It’s an unfortunate reality that when a child wants to scream, there is essentially nothing that can stop them.
In my experience (two kids and a sister sixteen years younger) time-outs will have VASTLY different impacts depending on he kid. Nonetheless, I generally feel they’re better than any form of corporal punishment.
In our home we have a rule called ‘five minutes of silence’. It means, in kid terms, that they’re being to damn noisy-pushy-whiny and they should shut the fuck up for a few to let mommy and daddy think. It seems to work once you get the message through. It might piss them off but they both abide by it (usually).
Oh, and we have the ‘don’t be a jerk rule’. That’s the first rule and breaking it leads to punishment. You don’t get it for being a kid but for pushing someone else’s buttons on purpose or for being manipulative or otherwise jerkish. The very FIRST way to get out of that punishment is to say to the family ‘I’m sorry I was a jerk’.
Hey, wonder where we got that one?
So, how many of your children have you BANNED?
I have a more efficient way for you to do this. The first couple of times, model the request for him:
“Gimme a drink!”
“Jacob, say, 'Please can I have a drink.”
“Please can I have a drink.”
Then, the next time, set the expectation:
“Gimme a drink!”
“Try again/Ask nicely/Try better asking.”
He’ll get the hint and say: “Please can I have a drink.”
As far as timeouts for a toddler screaming her head off, I don’t really have a problem with it, but there some proactive strategies you can use to prevent her from getting to the screaming part. For one, the weakness of a timeout as punishment for a toddler is that it doesn’t teach the toddler the appropriate behavior in that situation. If she wants Mommy’s attention, but Mommy is not available, the first thing to do is to offer her a choice of activities she can do by herself, such as coloring, a flashy cause and effect toy, music, or hey, even a little T.V.
(Sidenote: Yes, a timeout IS a punishment, a punishment being defined as a consequence that reduces inappropriate behavior.)