Is ‘Time Out’ Time Well Spent?

“Time out!” my two year old declares, wagging her tiny finger at her big brother, “You go on time out!”

It is hard not to giggle when a 26-month old demands a “time out” for whomever happens to be bothering her. She has tried to put everyone from me to Elmo on time out.

But the sobering fact is that my two-year old has obviously watched me send her seven-year old brother, Jackson, on far too many time outs.

As an often frustrated mother of an energetic, strong-willed son, I have relied on time outs—often ineffectively—since Jackson was two-years old.

My time out method means sending Jackson to a location, such as chair or his room, and setting a timer for one minute per year of his age.

But as I work on my parenting strategies, trying to move from punitive to positive discipline with my children, I have noticed problems with how I have been using and administering time out. Instead of being a positive tool that empowers my son to calm down and learn from the situation, time outs have become negative punishments that don’t fix the problems.

In fact, often when my son is in a fit of rage, he refuses to go on time out. Then, I am in an even bigger mess. I can’t pick up a 4’8”, 80 pound boy and carry him to his room!

In her incredible book, Kids Are Worth It!, Barbara Coloroso gave me the solution to my problem:

“A really strong-willed child might declare that she is not moving and you can’t make her. Wisdom just went out the window, and all you have left is wit, so use it: ‘That’s a good place to calm down, too. I hadn’t thought of that one.’ What have you lost? If your goal was to make her go to the bedroom, you’ve lost in spades. If your goal was to get her to calm down so she can move to the next step, then it doesn’t matter whether she calms down in her room or planted squarely where the incident happened.”

Brilliant! The goal is not to get in a power struggle and try to “win” with an emotional, angry child. No parent will win that battle! The goal is to help your child to learn to calm down and make better decisions.

Sometimes, we parents are just as angry—if not angrier—than our children are. If we are honest with ourselves, we are plain mad and we want to punish them for how we feel!

But when we remember to calm down ourselves and look at what we really want to accomplish as parents, we realize that instead of punishing our children and creating hurt and resentment, we want to empower and teach our children how to cope with a challenging world.