When two of my grandsons were about 3 and 6, they picked at each other and fought constantly. Timeouts and other punishments didn’t change their behavior.
It drove us nuts.
The boys were staying with us, and fighting (as usual) while I made a pizza. Pizzas always set the kitchen smoke alarm off, burnt food is not required when I make pizza, so of course, the smoke alarm started blaring and the boys stopped fighting.
Grandpa is good at making things up and told the boys the noise was from the bad boy detector. He told them if it went off again, they couldn’t watch TV after supper.
They were (almost) angels the rest of the evening, out of fear they’d set off the bad boy detector. We looked at each other and thought “Wow, we gotta use this more often.”
Our smoke detectors are linked – when a detector on one floor goes off, it sets the other detectors off – so it was easy to trigger without the kids noticing. When the boys misbehave, one of us would sneak upstairs and hit the Test button to trigger the alarm.
Unfortunately, kids grow up and just as they learn the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and Santa Claus aren’t real, they eventually figured out the bad boy detector was a smoke alarm. 🙁
Oh well, it was great while it lasted.