Time outs are a popular way of handling misbehavior – the child does something wrong, so he is sent to his room. One popular guideline for how long to keep him in his room is one minute for every year of his age; is, a four year old would stay in his room four minutes, etc.

What’s my position? We don’t do time outs – in my opinion, they are pointless since they don’t teach a child anything. I think they are popular because it makes parents feel they are responding in a concrete way, and most parents feel helpless to deal with misbehavior, so they grab onto this concept. But how many kids care about being in time out? Especially since time out is a puny amount of time in most cases. Why should they care? – it’s more rewarding to do what they want and get to stay in their rooms for four or five minutes. It simply doesn’t help a child understand clearly that his behavior is wrong. Not only that, it often breeds a feeling of resentment in the child as they wait in their room, feeling misunderstood and mistreated by their parents. So not only does a child not feel repentant, he often comes back into the room with his position more firmly established in his own mind.

We used to do them and now I am strongly against them. (Interestingly, when we were talking about this a while back, my oldest ds said his perception when he was younger was that we always were angry and punishing him by putting him in his room for something. What made this so interesting is that I was sooo gentle and loving; like the poster parent for how to effectively use this technique. And now, my expectations of my kids are much higher, but my kids perceive me as being much more relaxed…)

I do not bribe my kids. Never. I don’t threaten. If I say something needs to happen, it needs to happen. I don’t repeatedly warn them – “if you do this, I will do x; did you hear me? I will do x”.  If it’s something that I have addressed before, I don’t find it necessary to warn them each time what the consequences will be, because they have seen from the past what I will do. I try (I’m not a hundred percent in this, but I try!) to be reasonable in my expectations and consistent in my follow through – my kids know when I say something I mean it. I will take immediate action to show I mean it – and I stay calm and unflustered because I don’t wait until I’m frustrated about being ignored to start dealing with it.

I can’t say I never raise my voice, but I don’t do it often. My kids don’t need to wait for me to get irritated, angry, or yell for them to know that it’s time to respond. Kids MUST learn to respect a mother’s authority, and it’s much easier to teach while they are young. Bribes, timeouts, reverse psych, threats, and similar strategies don’t address the deeper issue, that the child doesn’t think he needs to respect what his parent says, and can get around it. The parent plays the game on the child’s turf and thereby turns over their parental power to the child.

Avivah