I came across this article while looking for articles against time-outs that would appeal to a more mainstream audience… and I was quite happy to find it…
Though it was mostly repeating things that I have already know (time-outs are detrimental to attachment, do not work the way parents think they work, do not solve the problem but only focus on behaviour etc… ) something that was said really hit home with me…
“Sending a child away when they’re distressed is essentially saying to them, “I can’t handle you when you show this side of yourself. Come back when you can be the manageable Susie or Johnny that I can handle.” Not only are we telling the child that we only find the good, compliant version of themselves acceptable, we’re also declaring our inability to cope with all of who they are…..When a parent sends a child away because they can’t handle their misbehavior, they’re effectively telling them that they (the child) have the power to render them (the parent) incompetent and helpless.”
This is something that I really hadn’t thought about before… and it makes so much sense.
As parents we need to be guides to our children, we are their leaders and their teachers. If our children are taught that they can render us “incompetent and helpless” by behaving in ways that we do not like, we are entering into a power struggle that we are sure to lose. How can we teach children to deal with stressful situations if we cannot deal with them ourselves.
I have to admit that this is something that I have and will most likely again struggle with also (not time-outs per say, but power struggles and dealing with stress in impulsive ways) and I know that it is something that I can and will work on… and in the last months things have been getting easier…
Food for thought isn’t it?
This is so interesting and considering this type of crisis management in childcare is getting more and more popular through the naughty step, time outs etc. (demonstrated by the popularity of The Super Nanny TV show in England and now in the U.S.) I cringe to think what damage it is doing to children.
This methodology has some degree of success in the short term, hence the fact that a reality show for parents can be good entertainment, but I feel it is like a sticking plaster on a very large and open wound. It is the parents who need open heart surgery, not the kids.
I think the key to all this is to be able to acknowledge what the child is feeling, even if we thing it is ‘wrong’ that they are acting in that certain way. Once the child understands that we know how he is feeling it is like the mood passes and they are able to move on and do not need to internalize their feelings in any way.
We need to be supportive at this crucial moment an all it takes is a quiet word, a hug or even silence, in order that the child may express himself (hitting a pillow or throwing a sock at the wall works in extreme cases).
Children will shut off the moment they sense that they are being lectured to or being given a ticking off, we can tell them until we are blue in the face about the way they should be behaving, but within the first three seconds they have already shut off – I remember doing this with my mother!!! All I used to think was “She doesn’t understand how I feel”
What goes around comes around of course.
x
Because I use timeout for myself as both a stress management tool, and way of managing my interactions with difficult colleagues, it was natural for me to use it with my youngest. He had significant anger management issues, and when he was cross would do his best to disrupt the rest of the family to the best of his ability. We generally had a quick word about how we understood he wasn’t happy, but it wasn’t fair to make everyone around him unhappy. Could he please go to his room until he was able to behave in a way that was fair on other people. I don’t think we ever had a time on it – and in the first few months we did this, he had not infrequently fallen into a deep sleep within about a minute. We have always gone up to him after a few minutes, and had a cuddle and a chat about how you can be ‘all cross’ and still not throw the wooden toy at your brothers head.
I still need to go into my office and close the door sometimes. Counting to ten is a ‘grown up’ time out. For small children with big emotions, I do think that time out (if combined with kind words and understanding) can help them to work out when they need the peace and calm an empty room can bring. My boys put themselves in time out when it is all too much for them – generally these days announced by a firm declaration ‘I want to be alone now, thank you!’.