Behavior Problems? Why Time Out Might Not Be the Best Approach

Picture this: You’ve had the longest day at work and are almost too tired to make dinner, but manage to pull together something that looks,smells, and tastes like a decent meal (go you!)  only to have your normally well-behaved four year old tell you she thinks what you’ve made is yucky, that she’ll only eat waffles or ice cream (or something else a bit outlandish), and then proceed to toss your perfectly lovely meal across the room. Yes, there are times when even the most patient of parents can lose their cool, and this is pretty clearly one of them. I think (or hope!) we’re all agreed that spanking isn’t a productive or acceptable way to teach our children right from wrong, but what about time outs? For decades now, time out has been the go-to alternative to the archaic physical punishment of past generations, but is it really the holy grail of teaching your kiddos how to behave? I don’t think so, at least not in the way we’ve all been doing it. Here’s why.

Using the situation above, it’s easy to understand how you might feel that your child is ungrateful, or even spoiled, and that she needs to be punished for her behavior—time for a time out, right? Well, maybe not. When children act out, it’s rarely about what we first think it might be about! When you’re caught up in your own hard day and your own frazzled feelings, it can be hard to wrap your head around what might be going on with your tiny person, but it’s so important to take a breath and to really think about that. Chances are, that if your son or daughter is acting out, he or she has had a hard day, too. Maybe your daughter is feeling sad or frustrated because you’ve been more distracted or even coming home late from work (a hard week for you is often a hard week for your child as well!). If you’ve recently started new routines at home, or if you’ve started your child at a new pre-K program, maybe she’s feeling like everything is confusing and out of control, and she wants to let you know how frustrated she is. The bottom line is that when your child is acting out, the tantrum or rudeness he or she shows isn’t the actual problem, it’s just a symptom of an underlying problem that you need to seek out and address. And sending your child away to sit in some embarrassing chair in a corner will certainly not fix that underlying problem. In fact, it will likely only confuse and anger your child—she’s not reflecting on what she did to upset you in that chair, she’s more likely thinking about how mean you are and fantasizing about running away with her teddy bear!

What you really need to do is institute a breather for both you and your child so you can both calm down from the intensity of the outburst before you talk about what’s going on. You can say something like, “No yelling (or biting or throwing food, or whatever thing your child has done!), that’s not nice. Let’s take a minute to breathe.” And then just take a second to compose yourself while your child also calms down. Once you see the tension start to dissipate from your little one’s face and shoulders (it’s usually quite obvious), it’s fine to ask them if they’re feeling okay, or to ask about their day. Don’t focus again on what they’ve done to upset you, and really try not to hold a grudge—you’ve already told them it was wrong!—but do try to gently and lovingly get to the heart of the matter and discover what’s pressing on your wee one’s heart. Doing that will help build trust and show your child that you care about her life and her feelings, which is quite the opposite of what happens when you banish a child to an embarrassing chair or corner and make a display of her.

Yes, this method takes patience, but parenting overall takes patience. And look at it this way, the sooner you can get to the root of the problem and help your little pumpkin feel supported and less upset, the fewer outbursts he or she is likely to have. If that’s not a win-win situation, I don’t know what one is!