Is 10AM Too Early For Wine?

Slow down, I did not drink any wine at 10am - I am simply curious, you know, for future reference.

We had a challenging start to our morning. Almost every evening we try to clean up the kitchen, ABA/playroom (what most people call a dining room), and the living room, which is actually more of a family room, considering there is a tv in there. It's a goal. It does not mean it always get accomplished. Like last night - the nightly cleanup ritual did not take place last night. Nor did it this evening, but we will deal with that tomorrow morning.

Milla's task this morning was to clean up the zillion pieces of dollhouse furniture she pulled out last night and did not put away.

ABA has taught us a lot about discipline and we sometimes have to switch things up. Our current system uses X's and then a timeout after a certain number of X's received. Milla gets three X's and then gets a timeout. Because Reiss is a big boy and should be more responsible for his actions (and because when he was still receiving three X's he was getting to a point where the system was ineffective and he was asking how many X's he had), he now gets two X's and then a timeout.

An X is given if either child responds inappropriately to a request or refuses to do something asked of him or her. For example, Milla was asked to put away the dollhouse furniture. She sat in the midst of the mess on the floor picking at her toes. Because she did not begin putting away the toys, she received an X. She was asked again, and again, was given an X when she did not begin putting away the toys. This went on several times. Three X's. Timeout. Three X's. Timeout. Finally, after the third or fourth timeout, Milla apparently figured out I was not going to budge and that she might as well put up the dollhouse furniture. And that's exactly what she did. Very quickly, I might add.

After she received her several timeouts and decided to get everything all cleaned up and tidy, I was nearly at the point of taking a bottle of wine and sitting in the corner for a stimming session of my own. However, Milla walked away from the situation with a smile on her face and very compliant from then on. We had a fairly pleasant day and no wine corks were popped.

As I sit here, I see several toys lying on the floor. So who knows, perhaps tomorrow we will have a repeat of this morning and I will end up in that corner. I welcome any input, as it is definitely best to know in advance whether or not wine in the morning is acceptable.