I tried using a sign language video that I watched with him and did the signs when my son was 6 months - 13 months. After that he kind of lost interest in the younger baby movies and wanted to watch preschool tv shows. He does know the sign for hurt, but I'm not sure if he understands what it means. He also has his own sign for give me that. He is doing really well with his verbal skills already though. He knows and speaks a lot of the words that were on the sign language video. Maybe there are some words on the video that could be useful.

I just started him a few days ago with timeouts. He was watching a show that was talking about it and I realized that it's not really supposed to be about punishment, it's more about calming down. I thought it was a good technique to teach him. I know that if I was upset I would want to take a timeout to calm down. So I've done this a few times already. I set him in a chair and I softly count to 60 or 90 if he's still not calm by then and I pat his stomach with every number. It's starting to help and I actually feel better too. I hope that he'll start to learn it himself and do this whenever he gets upset in the future. I thought the show was good too, because they were saying when you feel too mad, it's never okay to hit, you have to calm down and use your words. I thought that was a good thing for parents to hear as well, and I'm really glad they made this show.

I just have to mention that the other day my son started telling me thank you. He's said thank you for months, but I don't think he understood what it meant. For instance, we were taking the dog out for a walk and it was getting dark. My son was in his stroller and he threw his ball out into the dark. I wasn't going to get it, because it was too dark to see, but he started crying for it. Normally, I wouldn't get something for him while he was throwing a fit like that, because I don't want to encourage him to throw fits. But I went and got the ball and gave it to him and he said "thank you"! It was so sweet and it made me feel like I really am doing a good job and disciplining him the right way.