Being there for your kids - Correction with Time-Out

Episode Date: September 27, 2019

     You know, stuff happens. As the parent, you want to handle that stuff in the best, most effective way. Frequently, parents use time-out to handle stuff. However, how you use time-out is more important than that you use it. Some parents simply put their child in time-out "until I say so." This is unhelpful. It makes the parent feel good, feel powerful, but most children simply wait out their parent and don't learn what to do to avoid punishment in the future. Effective use of time-out is simply to give your child time and space to calm down. When they are calm, then they can hear you better. It also gives you time to think through how you want your child to benefit from the time out. If you see your child's time-out as his punishment, he reaps no benefit from it. It simply becomes a power game. When you sit and talk with your child after he has calmed down, using your active listening and defining accountability and responsibility, your relationship is enhanced and you both reap benefit, a magical moment.

Hi, I'm Dr. John Robinson, and this is Teachable Moments. Let's talk about the magic of timeout. Most parents think of putting their child in timeout as the must-do yucks of parenting. You know, I just got to be hard on my kid until he gets it. A few parents think of using Time Out as a magical moment for parenting their child. Wendy was in the kitchen preparing breakfast for her kids when she heard a crash upstairs. Her 10-year-old, Darren, turned the corner and came flying down the stairs declaring, it wasn't me. Wendy passed him on the stairs and continued up. When she got to the hallway,

she saw her six-year-old, Jake, standing over a flower vase, broken to pieces on the floor, with the daisy spread out and water trickling away from the mess. Jake burst into tears when he saw anger on his mom's face. He ran back into his bedroom and slammed his door shut. Wendy walked past the mess on the floor and wrapped on Jake's closed bedroom door. Jake, just stay in your room and calm yourself down for a while. You're in time. out. I'll be back in 12 minutes. On her way downstairs, Wendy got a towel from the bathroom and draped it over the vase, flowers, and water on the floor in the hall. She went to the kitchen to finish getting Darren's breakfast and then getting ready for the bus. Keeping an eye on the clock, after 12 minutes,

she found her way back to Jake's bedroom. After tapping the door gently, she asked, Jake, are you calm down? Are you ready to help me with this mess out in the hall and talk about it? Jake sniffed and responded, yes, ma'am. Such accidents occur in all homes. It comes under the category of stuff happens. Most stuff, however, is avoidable with appropriate rules, care and responsibility. Wendy could have spanked Jake's bottom for being careless. She could have grounded him for a week. She could have made him do extra chores or written, I will be more careful, 500 times. All of these actions would have been understandable punishment for the offense, but would Jake's behavior have been corrected? The nature of timeout in parenting is basically

to help your child calm down immediately, and also to have time to think through what happened and how he might avoid the difficulty in the future. Jake's first and most natural consequence was to help his mom clean up the mess. He got the wastebasket and carefully picked up the shards of vase to dispose of them, while Wendy found a new vase that was stored in their garage. Jake mopped up the water while his mom put the flowers together in the new vase and set it back on the corner table in the hall. After taking care of immediate business, Wendy used her of listening to follow Jake through his explanation of what had happened. Because of the time outbreak in the drama, Jake could admit that he broke house rules about not running in the house.

He agreed that he could have been more careful, and he accepted his natural consequence of writing his mom a note of apology about the accident. Mom then fixed him breakfast and took him to school a little late because the situation led to his missing the bus. Behavioral research has found the optimal length of times out for kids to be roughly twice your child's chronological age. Hence, for Jake, age six, he got a 12-minute timeout. If your child hasn't productively used the timeout to calm down, then talk to him about cooperating and re-up another 12-minute timeout. He will learn that calming down faster is better for him in the long run. Finally, natural consequences tend to be more creative and effective than punishment, resulting in changed behavior.

Punishment is about exerting your power. Natural consequences are about relationship and helping your child grow and learn. I'm Dr. John Robinson, licensed to clinical psychologist and Christian author of Teachable Moments Building Blocks of Christian Parenting, and this has been Teachable Moments. Teachable Moments, Building Blocks of Christian Parenting, is available online at Amazonbooks.com and in local and national bookstores. More on Dr. Robinson at TMC-P-I-N-C.com.