Creative Parenting: Time Out on the run

Yesterday while out and about with the family we decided to stop for lunch. We headed to a fairly large, family friendly (aka plenty loud anyway) type of place. While waiting for our food we noticed several other families with toddlers all around us. One family caught our attention when their little girl, who was sitting in a high chair, was having some sort of issue and was crying and generally carrying on the way toddlers do. Then the Dad did something that had never occurred to us. He stood up and turned the highchair around with his daughter in it so her back was to the table and she was looking out onto the whole restaurant while crying her little eyes out; sort of a time-out at the table. Several of the other customers with little ones looked to see what was going on and in an “aha!” moment we all started laughing. We thought this was brilliant because as her entire family ignored her and the rest of the restaurant was amused by this scene the little girl decided she really didn’t need to keep crying. In no time she let her family know she was done and they turned her around, hugged her and went on with their meal. The hubby and I thought this was really creative parenting and in fact I think hubby wanted to go shake his hand and buy him a beer for his creativity. He also mentioned he sure wished he’d thought of this himself a couple years ago.