Around this house, my kids get away with nothing—and everything—at the same time.

I wish I could say the “nothing” part is due to my shrewd detective skills.  But let’s give credit where credit is due: children’s innate oblivion to incriminating evidence.  And as far as my trio is concerned, the middle child is most oblivious.

Case in point:  the miniature footprints all over the freshly planted lawn, which the kids were instructed to stay off for three weeks.

“Which one of you went on the lawn?” Doug barked at our three innocents.

“I think I saw Tyler do it,” Eva postulated, hay still clinging to her feet.

Or when she dipped into the only chocolate cupcakes I’ve ever made in my life, leaving me three short for her classroom birthday celebration.

“The Bean did it,” she charged, front teeth blacked out like she’d just walked face-first into a wrecking ball..

So when I came home and found purple handprints all over my leather jacket and she pointed a purple finger at her sister, I’d had about enough.

“But I am telling you the truth,” she insisted.

“Eva, I can handle all the naughty things you do,” I scolded in the most disappointed voice in my bank of mom voices. “But I can’t handle the lying!”

Between you and me, it wasn’t the dishonesty I found most offensive.  It was the sloppiness of her cover-up.

That, and the fact that her string of misdeeds was sapping me of every waning drop of energy.  So far she’d painted her sister’s hair with glue, entwined the cat’s legs with a roll of dental floss, filled every tea cup with the muddy residue from her water table (“But it has pollywogs in it, Mama! Don’t you like frogs?”), and made a handprint on the dining room floor with a bottle of nail polish.  All I wanted was to lie on the couch, close my eyes and wish everyone under three feet tall would go far, far away.

And at that moment, the feeling was mutual.  Eva did not take kindly to being accused, even with the most rightful of accusations.  She balled her hands into fists and glared at me in full-pout mode.

“Mama, I am furious about you!” she yelled.  “Now LOOK what you did to my feelings!”

That’s when the claws came out.  And I mean that in the most literal sense.

When Eva gets mad, she curls her fingers like a set of eagle talons and scratches me from as high as she can reach right down to my ankles.  It doesn’t hurt, because she bites all her nails right down to the quick.  But the intent was there.  And to me, intent makes a person guilty whether they successfully execute the crime or not.

I don’t care how much I’ve read about the ill effects of corporal punishment.  The way I see it, it’s a hand for a hand.  If you raise your hand to hit, scratch, or otherwise inflict pain on man or beast, you get your hand slapped.  And when I’m done, you thank me if it’s still attached to your wrist.

She screamed.  Screamed until her face was as purple as the paint all over her hands.

“Mama!  You…don’t…ever…EVER…HIT…MY…HAND!”

“I’m sorry.  Did you not just use that very hand to scratch me?”

She screamed some more.  She screamed until my eardrums prayed they would explode just so they’d stop working.  Soon enough, Tyler, who’s had sensory issues since the day he was born, was huddled in fetal position with every throw pillow in the living room piled over his head.  The cats ran for cover.  I imagined every neighbor within one hundred feet calling 911 to report a homicide in progress.

It used to be, during her tantrums, that I would try the most traditional route, that being a time-out.  Time-out was strategically placed on the stairs leading to the mancave, where Doug’s peace and tranquility would be shattered by our banshee-in-training.  But an irritated father didn’t make much of a difference to Eva.  She screamed until Anna joined in to see who could scream the loudest.  The two of them screamed until Doug screamed at them for screaming.  Soon the voices in my head were screaming right along with them.

Plan B was my best attempt to match the crime with the punishment.  If she was going to behave like a wild animal, I reasoned, then she could stand outside and scream with the rest of the wild animal kingdom.

“Go stand outside and scream with the mad elephants and lions and hyenas,” I instructed, hoping she hadn’t studied up on biogeography.  “You can come back in when you decide to act human again!”  Then I plunked her on the porch, wild-haired with skinny little legs poking out of her nightgown—and promptly crouched beneath the window and peered from behind the curtains, just in case a random lion or hyena or mad elephant did manage to venture its way across the Atlantic.

The problem with Plan B was that it terrified me more than it did the four-year-old perpetrator.  From beneath that window I imagined her screams would summon a wolfpack, who would lure her off the porch and raise her as one of their own.  And all the while I stood there praying for her silence, my little girl was fearless.  Despite my orders to stay put, she ran from that porch under cover of the darkness and lay in wait until I dashed out with my flashlight.  And by the time I discovered her, I was so relieved to find her in one piece that I’d forgotten why she’d had the time-out in the first place.

And that’s when I finally gave into Plan C.  It was a last resort I’d been avoiding since the onset of motherhood—one that I promised myself I would never, never inflict upon my children.

I sent her to her room.

There’s a reason I shudder at the thought of it.  I spent half my childhood in my room.  Whenever I was out of line, one or more parent, at their wits’ end, would toss me in, stand at the other side of the door and hold it shut.  I can still hear myself pounding on it with my fists until it nearly came off its hinges.  I hated the sound of all the fun on the other side of the door while I was sentenced to isolation.  It wasn’t until I was old enough to shun all interaction with my family and seek refuge from them in my room that my parents stopped ordering me there altogether.

Now that I’m on the other side of that door, I hate it for different reasons.  I hate the idea of punishing my kids the same way my parents punished me.  Everyone who procreates, whether they want to admit it or not, feels the nagging need to do a better job raising their kids than their parents did, even if they were raised by Dr. Spock Himself.  I feel like with all the research and new wave parenting that’s taken place since I was a kid, I should be far more creative.

But most of all, I hate the idea of confining children in an enclosed space, even if that space filled with books and toys and windows bursting with sunlight.  I know my kids, and none of them have the ability to stay put, particularly if they were ordered to do so—and so not only would I have to close the door, but I’d have to latch it from the outside.  I imagined them growing up traumatized, or worse yet, denying me my God-given right to spoil my grandchildren by cluttering their houses with toys they don’t need and wrecking their dinner with homemade tooth-decaying chocolate cupcakes, which by then I’ll have down to a science.  I would never send my kids to their rooms, I swore, unless I was at the end of my rope.

And today I found myself clinging to the frail end of that fraying rope, which was stretched to the bare threads and ready to snap.  My brain was fried like a vat of chicken.  And out came the words I never thought I’d hear myself say.

“Young lady, get to your room!”

“No,” she said, still clutching her hand like I’d just amputated it with a meat cleaver.  “I will NOT go to my room!”

“Yes, you will,” I insisted.  “Either you’ll walk up there like a big girl or you’ll make me carry you.  And if you make me carry you, I’m going to lock you in.”

“Mama,” she shrieked, fists clenched and eyes burning with rage, “If you put me in my room, I’m going to hide from you.  And you will never, EVER find me again!”

By the time I’d carried her up the stairs, trying to dodge her flailing arms and legs with every step, I was huffing and puffing like I’d just sprinted the Tour de France on foot.

I returned to the kitchen and flicked on the baby monitor, which I still keep around for spying purposes.  And I stood there washing dishes, listening to her screaming on a monitor from her bedroom, where I banished her in so I didn’t have to listen to her screaming.  Doug came into the kitchen and stared at the monitor.  Then he stared at me.  Then he shook his head and retreated to the mancave.

Before long, the screaming subsided.  Once it was quiet, I set the timer on for five minutes.  (A minute per year will fix ’em, or so they say, and she’ll be five in August.)  Time out had begun.

When the timer went off, I trudged back upstairs to get her, feeling myself age about ten years with each step.

When I unlatched and opened her door, at first I couldn’t find her, and for a brief moment I panicked that she’d made good on her promise.  I looked under her bed, in her closet, beneath a mountain of sleeping bags and stuffed animals.  Then I lifted a pillow and found her, wedged between her two dressers, sitting perfectly still.

Within five minutes of her final blood-curdling scream, she was so worn out from wearing me out that she’d fallen fast asleep.

I stood there and stared at her, bags under my eyes and vision blurred with exhaustion, and I watched her sleeping so peacefully, eyelids fluttering in dreamland, chest rising and falling with each long, restful breath.

When I said my kids get away with nothing and everything, this is where the “everything” comes in.  What I wouldn’t do for a time-out.  Five minutes would be a little slice of bliss.  A minute per year would be ecstasy.

All I can hope for is more satellite TV, outdoor recreation, college courses and exercise facilities in our prisons.  It all makes the justice system in my own home seem like it’s actually working.