PEARL 34

The Room: Keeping the Kid in It

The relationship between kids and their room is a curious thing. As

parents of teenagers know, sometimes the hardest thing in the world is to
get them out of their room. For them it is a secret, private place, far
removed from the turmoil of adolescent life. But when kids are little, the
problem is different: They won’t stay in their room.
Kim summed up her problem with little Noah: “When Noah is a
nuisance to my ears, I follow the Love and Logic plan. I decide what’s
best for both of us. And if I can’t change his behavior, I change the
location. I pick him up and haul him to his room. But as soon as I set him
down and walk down the stairs, there he is, following me.”
Once we’ve sent our kids to their room, how do we make them stay
there? Kim did one thing that we should avoid: physically carrying the
child to his or her room. Except when our kids are very small, when we
can put them in a crib, they should go to their room under their own
power.
When the child is around age two, a statement — “I want you to go to
your room, and I want you to go now” — spoken firmly and with index
finger pointing toward the room will usually get results. If the child
toddles back out, we should offer, “Would you like to stay in your room
with the door open or shut?” If this fails, we can follow with, “Would you
like to stay in your room with the door unlocked or locked?” Then, if we
are forced to lock the door to keep him in, we need to stay right by it and,
once the child has calmed down, open it to again offer him a chance to
stay in the room with the door unlocked for five more minutes to practice