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Of
all the parenting techniques and interventions touted by the "experts"
in the past few years, few have met with such mixed reviews as
the one known as time out. The reason for this is that the term
is used in the literature to describe two very different interventions
that are used very differently and designed to accomplish very
different outcomes.
The initial concept called time out
was designed for use with toddlers and young children whose behavior
was clearly unacceptable (yelling, hitting, etc). The idea was
to tell the child that what he had done was unacceptable, and
to have him sit in an area, alone. This was to be seen as punishment
for the negative behavior. The amount of time that the child had
to sit alone was announced and he was expected to "serve
the sentence" in full. Sometimes children were actually held
down in their seats until they literally served their time.
Does This Kind Of Time Out Work?
Practitioners who advised it soon
discovered one of the pitfalls of this method. Parents would often
insist on an amount of time that was developmentally not feasible.
This would, in turn cause more outbursts, create a full-blown
power struggle, and defeat the initial intent of the entire exercise.
Very often, exasperated parents would put the child in time out
without identifying the offending behavior.
The original paradigm of the above
method was based on behavioral psychology, which is based on the
idea that a person will not engage in behaviors that are always
followed by adverse and onerous consequences. According to this
thinking, though, the child would have to memorize all situations
that were not accepted by the parents.
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| The best
way to assist a child with his venture into time out is to
model it. |
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Nonetheless, if the goal was to simply
follow the parents' orders, the method worked rather well. Except
that the child never learned to assess a situation (for danger
or appropriateness, for example), never learned to problem-solve,
and never learned to draw conclusions based on similarities of
situations.
Using The Right Kind Of Time Out
Except for cases of dangerous behavior
by a very young child, more is to be gained, in my opinion, by
using a different kind of time out procedure.
In this interpretation, time out
literally means to take time away from a situation which is causing
too much stress or anxiety and which is resulting in a loss of
control. It serves not only to prevent unwanted behavior, but
also helps a person calm down and think about the situation in
a more rational, goal-oriented way. It is wonderful training for
children as they grow older and are interacting more and more
with peers and adults outside the family.
During the time out break, the youngster
doesn't just sit there; she is asked to think of how to better
attain her goal or to reassess that goal. Problem solving and
remembering past experiences and consequences are needed here.
In fact, rather than have the parent be the warden who oversees
the time out sentence in stony silence, in this model, the parent
is the coach who helps with the thinking and solution process.
Parents Also Need Time Outs
The best way to assist a child with
his venture into time out is to model it. That is, when a parent
or other adult is feeling overly stressed, he can tell the child,
"This is getting to me; I need some time out," then
proceed to another room for a while. When returning, if appropriate,
the adult can review his thinking while taking a break, thus demonstrating
how he averted a blow-up and solved a problematic situation.
One of the seldom-mentioned benefits
of the second time out method is that it presents pressure as
a universal phenomenon, which the child can master. It prevents
the child from thinking of himself as bad in comparison with all
the good, disappointed grownups in his life. All people feel pressure,
but there are ways of dealing with it.
In my experience in private practice,
as well as in my own child-rearing, I have found that the second
time out method has a wonderful double benefit: It not only is
more successful in teaching children to behave; it does the same
for their parents!
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