"Can you help me?"

The standard timeout for things like hitting or not listening is a five minute timeout. And whenever we send them to time out we have to tell them what they did wrong specifically, so can have them tell us what it was they did wrong after the time out.

We've dubbed those little Q and A sessions "Exit interviews".

Now you see, Marcus is an enterprising individual, and we don't catch everything he does. This becomes blatantly obvious in the exit interviews.

"Marcus, can you tell me why you are in timeout?"

"Because I hit Katelyn."

"What? When? No, thats not why you are in timeout."

"Because I said 'fuckers'."

Everytime he does this I have to surpress a laugh.

"No Marcus, try to remember why you were in timeout."

At this point usually I'm sitting across from the time out chair, and he'll do something like randomly kiss my nose. But I don't break that easy.

"Come on Marcus, what did you do RIGHT before you were in time out."

"I don't know, can you help me?"

The Girlfriend always about dies at that one. He says it all very innocently.

"Did you climb on the back of the couch?"

"Yeah, I climbed on the back of the couch..."

And this process is repeated at a bare minimum of four times a day when I'm home.