Talk:Time-out (parenting)

Parent time-out
The actual idea behind time-out is to get the parent to cool-off.
 * Actually the original idea was time-out from reinforcement. The typical time-out procedure involves the parent relocating the child, and there have been cases of abuse and injury while an angry parent was trying to physically relocate a non-cooperative child - therefore the parent needs be calm in the first place if relocation is part of the procedure.

They are the real problem in a confrontation. It's rare that children need to "cool off".

The theory behind adult time-outs is that you deprive the child of your attention. Of course, in our electronic gadget society where children hardly ever see their parents anyways, that accomplishes nothing. So as a replacement for spending time with one's child and paying attention to them most of the time, someone invented the "child time-out" as a form of punishment instead. This is not an acceptable trade-off and that's why child time-outs are bad. They're still better than physical abuse of course. -- Ark

-- Ed Poor, Tuesday, June 11, 2002
 * 1) Getting the parent to cool off, as when they're angry enough to administer a brutal spanking, is a desireable side-effect of the approach. The object is, as practioners of the time-out technique believe, to teach the children good behavior. I concede, of course, that for abusive parents the technique (of putting either oneself or one's child in time-out) provieds valuable cooling-off time for the parent. Thus an excellent rule-of-thumb for a violent person is: if you feel like hitting a kid, put him in time-out immediately.
 * 2) My experience using time-out as a Sunday-school teacher, babysitter, and father of two: whatever I put them in time out for, occurs less and less to the point of extinction. I took over a class of a dozen unruly kids, which took nearly half the time of two grown women to control. Within 5 weeks of Sundays, I had those kids "eating out of my hand" (as one parent remarked). I was inspired by watching Kindergarten Cop to be unfailing strict in discipline, but I used only time-out. Aside from disobeying the teacher, the 3 main no-no's were: hitting (someone), grabbing (something from someone), or teasing. I included talking to or about a student in time-out, as "teasing." My class eventually grew so big that my friend Phillip suggested splitting it in half (he took the older kids). By that time, about 5 or 6 dozen kids in my church from the NYC metro area were calling me Uncle Ed. And it all came from being strict with time-out.

Consistency is of paramount importance, of course, and I much prefer that word to "strict".

There are many things which parents do which are abusive. There are many seemingly innocuous lines of justification they give for their actions which are anything but. I recall a parent who bemoaned their child's getting her church clothes dirty. The justification for punishing the child was that she had to "learn" to keep her clothes clean. This was very suspect because the parent was acting out of selfish motives; to not be embarrassed in public.

I consider kindergarten, nurseries and other such mass child care to be faintly wrong. If you used child time-out to get through the experience with a minimum of harm to the children, then this justifies your use of the technicque. But it doesn't justify the technique itself. I have ethical and moral misgivings to any parenting technique with the connotations of "training". -- Ark


 * Thank you for your thoughtful and thought-provoking comments. I'm going to print out this page and read it on the train home tonight. See ya. -- Ed Poor, Tuesday, June 11, 2002

Well, Ark, we certainly have identified where we disagree. That is an excellent starting point for an article on child rearing (or child care perhaps).

You describe child time-out as a technique that enabled me to get through my experience, but which is only justified to the extent that it inflicted minimum harm on the children. Am I restating your view correctly?

I found I had 3 alternatives:
 * 1) Let the two ladies run the class, frequently yelling at the children to maintain order, or
 * 2) Take over the class and yell at the children myself, or
 * 3) Put the unruly children in time-out.

No doubt you can suggest other alternatives, but these were the ones that I considered at the time (over ten years ago).

The result of my consistently applying the time-out technique was that my class became very orderly. The children did not:
 * get hit, kicked, pushed, knocked down, etc., by anyone
 * did not have their seats, turns, belongings or resources grabbed from them by anyone
 * did not get teased by anyone

That is to say, the unruly behaviors diminished to the point of near-extinction. More than once, an entire 2-hour class would go by without my placing a single child in time-out. They had, I believed, internalized the rules.

I applied these rules to myself as well, and a couple of times I (rather dramatically) placed myself in time-out for an infraction. I've often wondered whether making the rules universal (i.e., applying to the rule-giver as well as to the ruled) gave me an edge.

Anyway, I found to my surprise and delight that, despite being then a bachelor with hardly any experience with kids, I could handle over a dozen children at once. Moreover, they themselves seemed to enjoy my classes.

Have I hit on something useful and valuable, or was I deluding myself while creating an evil empire like the Pied Piper of Hamelin? I look forward to more discussion on these points, especially if it provides material for more Wikipedia articles!

Ed Poor, Friday, June 14, 2002

Here's an interesting bit about the effects of inconsistent parenting. From EurekAlert:

The study, published in the journal's June issue, found that 60 percent of people lied at least once during a 10-minute conversation and told an average of two to three lies.

...

The lies the students told varied considerably, according to Feldman. Some were relatively minor, such as agreeing with the person with whom they were speaking that they liked someone when they really did not. Others were more extreme, such as falsely claiming to be the star of a rock band.

"It's so easy to lie," Feldman said. "We teach our children that honesty is the best policy, but we also tell them it's polite to pretend they like a birthday gift they've been given. Kids get a very mixed message regarding the practical aspects of lying, and it has an impact on how they behave as adults."

''Santa is a lie. So is "little Billy went away to this magical place called Heaven". I hate it when people lie to children. I especially hate it when they feel justified about it.''

This article sucks. It provides a how-to for an inhuman way to treat your loved ones. I´m sorry I´m not good enough in english to change it to the better. It seems like the people who invented this method and the authors of the article see children as property of the parents and not as human beeings with their own rights. Applying this technique against a grown-up wold be illegal in most countries. In sweden the crime is called "olaga frihetsberövande", no matter the age of the victim.

Response to Poor Ed: Thus an excellent rule-of-thumb for a violent person is: if you feel like hitting a kid, put him yourself in time-out immediately, and then go see a psyciatrist. Maybe you can get some kind om medication to help prevent your violent tendencies. If you do not get better, avoid beeing close to children. 83.183.64.115 (talk) 04:44, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Applying the technique. I couldn't stop smiling
Is this an encyclopedia topic or a do it yourself article? cuz the applying the technique seems to spring out as a naive way of teaching punishments. Not that i'm for or against its inclusion, just found it funny on reading it.--Idleguy 09:47, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

Americanism
Can someone please clarify on the page that this is an American practice (similar things may be done in other parts of the world or indeed the Anglosphere, but I don't believe they traditionally involve the same degree of regimentation or the use of such incredibly cringe-worthy terminology).

If I said "Take 5" to my child I would (quite rightly) be laughed at for sounding like a sports coach from some American television sitcom. --Breadandcheese 16:54, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Rename to "time-out (child)"?
I think this page should maybe be moved to time-out (child), with additional redirects set from time-out (parenting) and time-out (education), because:


 * It allows editors to use the implicit piping of  with an empty pipe resolving to "time-out" without the parenthetical content -- rather than having to type
 * It is the standard Wikipedia naming scheme, in part because of the above point, and thus easier to remember

-- 62.147.37.94 17:48, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. BeakerK44 00:15, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Merger in of Naughty Chair
Although some would say that time out is not the same as the "Naughty Chair", surely this is the best place for this discussion rather than supernanny? Edgepedia (talk) 09:02, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

As a Wikipediaist and a parent I concur with Edgepedia. I second the merger to Child time-out. TriniMuñoz (talk) 04:39, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

What actually is time-out?
This page doesn't seem to say what "time-out" actually *is*. Everything on the page seems to assume you already know what it is. The quotes from Staats at the start of the third paragraph give examples, but don't really help me understand what a time-out is. I suspect (as someone mentioned above) that it's an American concept, and I've not really heard of it being mentioned or used here in the UK. I can kind-of guess what it is from context, from the name, and from the examples, but I think an encyclopaedia entry really ought to actually *say* what it is. Pippin (talk) 15:07, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Scandinavian Controversy and Standing in the Corner
I was interested in learning why Scandinavians find time-outs controversial and checked the reference, which led to: http://www.folkeskolen.dk/ObjectShow.aspx?ObjectId=31046. I translated it from the Danish using Google, and though it clearly wasn't a perfect translation, I got the impression that the controversy the article examined was standing in the corner, which I think has some differences from time-out. For one, at least when corner standing was practiced on me, there was a huge shame component involved whereas a properly done time-out, I think, doesn't have that, or at least far less of it. I think, therefore, the statement and the reference should be removed for now.

While writing this, I also tried looking up standing in the corner in wikipedia to see if it could shed light on this subject, but surprisingly, the article doesn't exist as far as I can tell.--RemiCogan (talk) 23:54, 9 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Going further, I translated the linked Swedish article. Again, google did just an okay job, but it sure looks like the article cites people claiming time-outs are essentially being put in the corner with a light veneer of legitimacy.  So the claim that time-outs are controversial in Scandinavia may hold weight, but the linked reference is inappropriate.  I don't know what the standard is on linking to an article in wikipedia in a different language, but I'm going to give it my best shot--RemiCogan (talk) 00:15, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: page moved. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:49, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Child time-out → Time-out (Parenting) — This seems like a much better title, reflecting that people call it "Time-out" and never "Child time-out" and meets Wikipedia standard for disambiguating titles. Please comment on use of hyphens and capitals. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me  02:53, 2 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Support per nom except "parenting" should not be capitalized. What this subject is usually called is just time-out, and that's what the title should reflect.  That said, it needs disambiguation, and, so "parenting" seems most appropriate.   --Born2cycle (talk) 07:53, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Support move to Time-out (parenting) per above. Mhiji (talk) 18:48, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Support move, but it is correct that "Parenting" should not be capitalized. [&#124;Retro00064&#124;&#9742;talk&#124;&#x270D;contribs&#124;] 08:09, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Support move to Time-out (parenting) or to Time-out (punishment). – ukexpat (talk) 18:31, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Support move to Time-out (parenting). (I think Time-out (punishment) would be a bit too strong.) --vgmddg (look &#124; talk &#124; do) 00:43, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Narrow
This article only explains chair time-outs. Time-out can also refer to the sending of the child to his bedroom, the bathroom, the car, or other room for isolation. Is this called by a different name? Ticklewickleukulele (talk) 19:11, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * That would be a good addition, if someone knows.
 * I checked to see if it was considered the same as what would be used with Dennis the Menace (U.S. comics), and given it is said to be invented in 1958 it can't be, since Dennis began in 1950. While it may have evolved into timeout as the culture changed, it was not at first.
 * The way Dennis is disciplined is more along the ways of punishment in the first few decades of the comic strip. In our family the room is used as punishment, and it was always "go to your room," not "timeout." In other families, it probably could be considered the timeout place. (Since we're in the funnies, I'll lead into my conclusion with this reference - once in Family Circus the 3-year-old, Jeffy, asks once, "How come you say go to your room, and other mommies call it timeout?")
 * What's the difference? Minutes per age looks like the key to calling it timeout. Can timeout *be* in a room? Probably. (Definitely in a car when out.) However, in our family "go to your room" is more like punishment, just like kids who get the corner chair as such, it started out as 3 minutes, then 5, then 7, then 10. 15 is about the most, and it doesn't go by age but instead by whether it's working. We've never had to go above 15 and usually not above 10, but every kid is a bit different as far as how well they'll behave.
 * Sorry, I got off track. Anyway, I think thekey here is the minutes per age and the cooling down idea.99.109.55.140 (talk) 19:36, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Figure of college student
The photo of a barefoot college student in a corner of a classroom for "cheating on a quiz" does not, in my personal experience, represent a typical time-out in the context of parenting. Would be nice to get a better figure. Bert303 (talk) 05:22, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Seconded. I'm a lecturer at a state university in the US and students aren't sent to a corner for cheating on quizzes. The student would be either spoken to after they turned in the quiz at a later date or quietly asked by the professor to speak with them in the hallway. Then the matter would be referred to the Dean of Student's office. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.222.63.239 (talk) 09:27, 11 February 2018 (UTC)