Is it Illegal to lock your young children in their bedroom?

children's lunch boxes bags image

Dee

My sister and i have a HUGE problem. In the middle of the night almost every night or during nap time her children ages 2 & 5 will to the strangest most unheard of thing. The go out of their bedroom and into the living room pull the chairs from the dining room table to the kitchen and stand on them to get the snacks out the cabinet and pantry and if there are no snacks then they will get things out the fridge. At first it was just the snacks and they would only take a little but now it has escalated to anything they can get their hands on like the mayonnaise bread pepper peanut butter and they will either eat it all or make a huge mess with it all over the floor. They once poured an entire box of cereal on the floor then poured syrup on top of it and ate it.

This has been going on for about a year and a half now and we have tried EVERYTHING! We have tried putting the plastic child lock things on their doorknob but the oldest learned how to break them off the knobs and hide them, we tried punishing them by making the stand in the corner or even spanking but that has failed, we tried putting the food up higher but they started using chairs standing on each other backs and scaling the counters and pantry shelves, we recently even tried giving them their on cabinet so that they will stay out of the others but they would eat all there snacks at once then when they were all gone they started to get into the other cabinets again.

We are seriously at a loss about what to do! This is not only dangerous for them but it is really hurting us financially. We are too single females with 2 young children living in a two bedroom apartment on a fixed income and they eat over half of all the food we buy at the beginning of the month bye the end of the week! We once left the groceries on the floor since we were so tired from shopping and the kids went to take a nap we fell asleep and woke up and they had eaten ALL of their valentines candy, 2 big bags of chips for their lunch, and opened 7 bottles of water and 6 packs of hot coco mix trying to make hot chocolate! Its not like we starve them since they eat like grown men so what are we to do. Since we are at the end of our ropes with this i thought of the idea of switching their bedroom doorknob around so that it locks from the outside so that during nap time and bed time they can't get out. Inside there room they have a bathroom so they are both potty trained and can use it when they need it so i didn't think it would be a bad idea. If you know the answer to my question or have any suggestions about what we can do about our problem please let me know! Answers and suggestions are greatly appreciated. BTW we live in the state of florida city or Tallahassee.

We are not beating the kids we are spanking them which is perfectly legal and i'm a psychology student and here to tell you that a good spanking never did anything to damage a child's mental state as long as they were being terrible and deserved it. I would like to meet the child that wasn't ever hit and grew up without being a spoiled, rude, selfish, and disrespectful brat. Of course if the child is a goodie two shoes then they wouldn't have been hit. So please no comments on how spanking is wrong and all that other junk because if you seriously believe that then your children are either angels are hell spawns.


Believe me hitting them hard or enough is not the problem we give them spanking around the clock at least 4 a day if not more for all the crazy stuff they do. And when i say stand in the corner i mean they stand in the corner for hours holding huge books and balancing on 1 foot. Punishment is not the issue. Also as i said before them being full is not the issue the eat more than enough all day at daycare and at home.
@ first comment. Those suggestions would be fine if they had anything in this world the cared enough to lose if we take away every toy and outside activity they will just play with a piece of paper they found on the floor or a pencil or even sometimes batteries whatever they can get their hands on even if it means taking off their clothes and making a fort with them. Her kids have a amazing imagination and can entertain themselves with anything. Also about the no Junk food thing the kids have passed that level and have now moved on to whatever food they can find like just this passed night when i went to bed after asking for help i woke up to find the kids in the kitchen drinking the syrup out the bottle and eating the cheese out of the box mac n cheese. They know what they are doing is wrong because when they get caught they cry or try to hide what they did. And they are wide awake i assure you. We did progress to more serious punishments because we thought they would help but alas th
@ first comment. Those suggestions would be fine if they had anything in this world the cared enough to lose if we take away every toy and outside activity they will just play with a piece of paper they found on the floor or a pencil or even sometimes batteries whatever they can get their hands on even if it means taking off their clothes and making a fort with them. Her kids have a amazing imagination and can entertain themselves with anything. Also about the no Junk food thing the kids have passed that level and have now moved on to whatever food they can find like just this passed night when i went to bed after asking for help i woke up to find the kids in the kitchen drinking the syrup out the bottle and eating the cheese out of the box mac n cheese. They know what they are doing is wrong because when they get caught they cry or try to hide what they did. And they are wide awake i assure you. We did progress to more serious punishments because we thought they would help but it didn

Answer
I have seen a child do this before. She was the child of a woman I use to be friends with. If I was ever at her house for the night, my child would get up with her child and do the same thing.

One, or both, of these children have issues with food, this could be because of a medical reason. Are either of these children on medication? There are some medications from what I understand that can actually cause a child to be very hungry and they will do this type of thing. This could also be a mental health thing. The child I knew had been taking medication and was very thirsty and hungry from it and this was a type of side effect.

The first thing I would do is get locks for all the cabinets, and for the refrigerator. These things work sometimes, and sometimes they do not. If you have tried things like this in the past and they did not work then get an alarm. They sell these most places. Instead of locking their door...which is not a good idea and you could actually get into serious trouble for doing...get an alarm to put on the outside of their door. Shut their door at night and set the alarm. When they wake up in the night and open their door, it will go off. It will wake you up and will scare the crap out of them. You guys get up and tell them they are to go back to bed and they are not to mess with the food. Reset the alarm and then wait. They will most likely try again. Repeat the steps until they know that once that alarm goes off you are going to wake up and stop them, eventually they will stop. This is the only thing that worked for the child I know that did this. That, and switching medications.

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