How is a time-out done properly?  

Where?

Is the child allowed to have toys or hold stuffed animal?

What if the child will not sit on the chair or stay on the mat?

If the child cries, is the parent supposed to comfort them?

Is it supposed to be no talking during a time-out for kids and parents?

Is the time-out supposed to teach self control?

I've always done it somewhere quiet and out of the way, the naughty step always seem to work best.
You can have a house rule that ANY child (just so her parents dont think it's directed at them and for it cause tension straight away) has to spend one minute for each year old they are (2 yrs=2 mins which is FOREVER to the child) on the naughty step/stool when they misbehave. Dont use rooms that should have a nice relaxed atmosphere, like a bedroom or bathroom, as it could cause further problems with reluctance to go in there. They cant have any toys or distractions at all. If they get up and move, quietly put them back and walk away. If necessary continue to do this, over and over if you have to, until they have spent their alloted time in the time-out.
Dont get angry, calm and consistent wins out every time.
Good luck

This post was last modified: 12-31-2011 01:21 PM by cynara.

In basketball, someone calls for time. The ref blows his whistle and forms a T with two hands. Then the players run to the bench to be cussed at by the coach.

In basketball, someone calls for time. The ref blows his whistle and forms a T with two hands. Then the players run to the bench to be cussed at by the coach.

lol

Not sports - for child's punishment.  I wish people would stop being such smart asses.

Another questions - why would a mother let a child sit on her lap and comfort her during a reprimand?

What would you say to parents who have an unruly child while they are visiting your home?  

Or one that bites?  This child is too old to bite because she knows better.  She just is very defiant.

you  know how things go here

you hadnt been on the thread for over 12 hours

just a quip, and it did bump your thread back to the top of the list. where it could have been seen by someone with a more serious reply

This post was last modified: 01-01-2012 03:18 PM by skyblue1 .

I have read a couple of parenting books which utilise the time out strategy and time out is to be used as a consequence when a child continues to do a behaviour despite being asked to stop by the parent. Obviously the child has to be at a developmental level that they are capable of understanding about consequences. Time out is also described as an opportunity for the child and parent to calm down, in order to defuse a situation that may be difficult for both.
I have used time out for my boys since they were around 3 years old, and tended to use time out most when they were aged 3 - 4 years. I don't have to use it as much anymore, now that my boys are aged 5 years and 6 years, and they can calm themselves better now and we can "reason" through situations more.
We use the laundry for time out, because it is away from the living areas of our house where other people are hanging out, but still within ear shot so I monitor how they are going in the laundry. The laundry is pretty much empty except for the washing machine and there is nothing of interest to my boys in there so that space works well for us as a time out/ calm down zone.
I use time out for the boys mainly when we have tried to resolve a difficult situation (eg., fighting over a toy) and one of the boys becomes so over-stimulated and upset, that any further communication or interaction will make them more upset. In that situation I tell them to go to the laundry and once they can use a quiet voice (ie have stopped shouting and crying) I will come and get them. Once they have calmed down (usually takes about 5 mins or less) then I come to the laundry and we have a calm talk about what they did that was wrong and what they could do instead. Then sometimes I ask them to go and apologise to their brother especially if they hurt the other one.
Then once it has been resolved and everyone is calm, we forget about the altercation or incident.

This post was last modified: 01-02-2012 02:11 PM by harp.

I have noticed that using a particular room or a special chair seems to be a problem with having to interrupt activities and go to that location for an immediate time-out.  Also the chair seems to have to travel with them when they are going somewhere else.  

I think if I had my own children, I would train them to maybe face the wall, stand still or put their hands on their head.  Not easy to do since it is tiring.  My parents just gave a quick smack.  While pain works it is not likely to teach a child self control.

I find that even as an adult I often have trouble controlling my anger and giving myself a time-out might work.  I think that sometimes a time-out might just give opportunity to plot for revenge rather than correct emotions and thoughts.  

There is probably some implicit process that is supposed to be going on between parent and child that no one ever explained.  If the time-out is supposed to work on correcting whining, and fake crying for manipulative purposes - then I do not understand how that works.

I think a part of the time out strategy is the concept of removing all attention (positive or negative reinforcement) from the child. It is so easy to get into a battle of wills and time out helps to remove that element.
Personally in the way I use time out with my boys, I don't really see time out as "punishment" but rather the opportunity for everybody to calm down. Sometimes when my boys are screaming at each other I am feeling really stressed too, so separating everyone works well, and allows us all to settle down. Once we are calm, we can work out the issue.
I find we tend to have issues requiring time out only really at home. The boys often don't scream and fight each other or other kids when we are visiting or when we are in community settings. But if we are at the park or supermarket, and one of the boys is engaging in a behaviour that is not ok, I just warn them that we will go straight home if they continue. Usually that is enough for them to stop, but if not I will follow through with the consequence of stopping the enjoyable outing.
There is not one perfect parenting strategy that works every time, I think of time out being one tool that I sometimes use.

How is a time-out done properly?  

You put them in a spot for a certain amount of minutes depending on their age. For a two year old, it be two minutes, for a three year old, it be three minutes and every year you extend a minute.

Where?

It can be the stairs or a chair. I wouldn't recommend bedroom because they can just play in there but unless they hate being sent in there, it can be a good enough time out for them. Or it can be the wall or whatever you find works depending on the location.

Is the child allowed to have toys or hold stuffed animal?

No or else it's not a time out. Unless it's their bedroom they hate being sent to.

What if the child will not sit on the chair or stay on the mat?

You hold them there.

If the child cries, is the parent supposed to comfort them?

No they just ignore it and keep telling the child they are there until time out is over.

Is it supposed to be no talking during a time-out for kids and parents?

Yes, it's a time out

Is the time-out supposed to teach self control?

Of course. If time out isn't teaching the child anything, then obviously time out isn't a good punishment for them because it's ineffective. This applies to any kid, special needs or not. This worked on me as a small child but as I got older, it quit working because all I did was day dreamed and I knew I wasn't there long so the punishment didn't work.

When I raised a Guide Dog puppy for 12 months, we were not permitted to strike the dog for any reason. This is totally in line with my philosophy (if not then I wouldn't have been chosen as a carer to begin with).

When the puppy started showing food aggression (growling) a vet advised me to give the dog a time-out. This involved taking the dog immediately to an isolated room (like a bathroom or laundry), leaving it there for a couple of minutes, then ignoring it when the time-out was over for about 10 or 15 minutes.

This and other non-violent methods of discipline resulted in a dog that was better behaved and much more even tempered than the dogs of people who saw me as an irresponsible pet carer for not striking or kicking my dog.

With children the idea is the same. A time-out is partly a very mild punishment, but (IMO) mostly a means of breaking the momentum of a negative situation involving children.

No toys, no TV, no talking. The time-out only finishes when the child has sat/stood for a sufficient period of time while following the "rules" of the time-out, so the child needs to learn that being defiant only makes the time-out longer. I did use a belt around my son's waist to keep him on the chair - once or twice. That is probably not appropriate, but IMO preferable to striking a child who will not respect the time-out.

A time-out is not only for the child. It can defuse a situation where a parent may eventually "snap" and hurt the child or over-react to the child's behaviour.

this kid bites.  She will get a time out and say she is sorry but she still bites.  The situation was not so frustrating for the child to bite but more willful disobedience that she did knowing it was bad.  

This is not my kid but a relative.  Really I do not want this kid in my home since she also throws things.  This is not a child-proof home so I would rather she not come until she is older.  My husband says she should come so I will see if she breaks his stuff how angry he will be.  The parents do not control this child and they do not do the time-outs properly:  let her have toys, talk to her, hug her when she is being reprimanded.  She likes the attention being naughty gives her.  They actually yell at people for giving them parenting advise.

Sounds like whatever you say, these parents won't listen anyway. And you can't discipline the child yourself. But that rule has one exception: if a child threatens you or your possessions and the parents are either not around, or not paying attention, or they don't seem to mind, you can do whatever you need to do in order to save yourself or your possessions. Of course your action has to be appropriate to the situation. For instance, you don't hit a child that touches something you just told him not to touch: you just push his hand away from it, time and again if necessary, saying "no" very firmly. But if a child would bite me, I think I would hit it out of a purely physical reflex. No educational meaning, just self-defense.

This post was last modified: 01-03-2012 08:04 PM by Earth Mum.

I would love to see an aspie child raised in complete freedom.  I think they would turn out to be amazing individuals.  People forget that as aspies age their behavioral age will catch up to their mental age.  I think time heals all wounds.
Why spend all the time trying to change them?  It's very hard to spend day in and day out in timeouts for everyone. If your child responds to timeouts then I don't believe they are aspies.  Months and years go can go by before a behavior can be modified and usually when it is it is because they made the choice themselves.

I am not a parent, and never will be, I should state that before I say anything. (Not that my place, with lab projects and vials of various lower non-animal/plant life forms in the fridge and other places within easy reach of the post-babyhood now ambulant, self-centered anklebiter, would be suitable child environment to begin with. Would be pretty ugly if they went to drink milk from the bottle and instead got a big slug of chloroform, for instance)

But to raise ANY child in complete freedom is the height of foolishness. A newborn baby IS the center of its own world. Its wants, its needs, psychologically mother and father aren't people, with thoughts, emotions, needs of their own, but obedient sources of breast milk, comfort and changers of beshitten diapers. Of course quite how it has to be with human larvae. A child, in their first few years, they are yet to reach an age where they have any concept of responsibility, or consequences. So raising them free to do as they wish is a bad idea. As they say, with great power, comes great responsibility, and again, the aphorism 'absolute power, corrupteth absolutely'. True enough in a great many, quite probably most adults. Can you imagine, idea mama, for instance, a 3-4-5-6 year old with the freedom to take what they will, trash what they will, choose to be served only high-sugar food (most land-living mammalian young naturally avoid sources of bitterness and seek sweetness, I would imagine, serving an evolutionary survival basis, given a great many poisonous plants are full of bitter-tasting toxic alkaloids to deter predation. After all we are pretty much, taking a historical view on the species on an evolutionary timescale, and for that matter a world view in todays world, mid-sized bipedal hairless apes who's brains became more of an asset than physical armament when it comes to beating the shite out of each other)

Adults, having developed civilizations have reached, over the centuries, various civilizations, possibly, at times, in the western and far eastern world, ones which, at times, are actually civilized.

A child has no such self restraint, or innate drive towards acting as anything other than self serving, when they are very young. And the psychological maturity requisite to process and integrate the more advanced concepts involved in, bluntly putting it, being a civilized human being takes time. But time alone is insufficient. It requires human input from those who have already achieved that which one seeks to teach a child.

To say that time heals all wounds, whilst often said, I find a very naiive attitude to take. Its clear enough from childhood traumas of a severe nature, those who survive a killing spree by some psycho stranger/equally psycho family member, child molestation cases, natural disasters, they can turn into deeply ingrained neuroses, PTSD, even manifest decades down the line, the person having seemed to have bounced right back, with time and caring for the individual, as physical pain incurred when a subconsciously triggering action/event is undertaken, or place traveled to.