A toddler’s idealized timeout

john -- July 4th, 2009

Finally working through some older pictures, and came across this from 9 months ago:

Apparently, Maia’s dolls were being naughty.

A toddler’s life is so tough — the whole world to learn about and interact with, yet, so little that they are actually allowed to control. So, she turns to her toys to show them who’s boss.  Naughty dolls get timeouts, just like naughty Maia’s do.

If you look close (click the picture to get a higher-res version), you’ll see that in Maia’s idealized world, timeout includes toys.  She’s brought a wind-up toy train to one of them. You know, so the dollies don’t get bored while being disciplined.

I’m going overlook why one of the dolls is naked. It’s a fairly normal for state for her dolls. But the fact that she brought the doll’s clothes to it — is that to play with, or is that part of the discipline?