Timeout

First off, it's not called Time-out as many people have a problem with that, it's called the naughty step/seat/whatever.

It's not about evoking fear in your children to behave well, it's to eventually teach them right from wrong. Slapping your baby sister gets you x minutes of not playing... for example.



You're laborers, you're supposed to be laboring! That's what you get for not having an education!!

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I was spanked when I was a child, but many children are not and turn out just fine.

I am now a teacher and I've seen children from all kinds of families. Some are raised with very lenient parents, some with really strict parents. Some students were spanked as children, some not. What I've seen is that none of this makes much difference.

What makes the most difference is consistency in discipline. When a child grows up knowing boundaries, it matters a lot less how those boundaries are taught.

My "problem" students come from abusive situations, divorce situations (where the parents are inconsistent or play against each other), parents who aren't around, and where the parents are inconsistent in setting boundaries.

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Is a timeout really that much of a punishment. When I misbehaved as a child, I got spanked and so I was really scared of punishment so I tried to good. Nowadays parents give their child timeout. That just doesn't seem like much of a punishment. I would given anything to sit on a chair for 5 min. How could anybody fear that?

Greatly depends on the kid. The threat of getting a spanking was a strong deterrent for me too...but the naughty chair (or standing in the corner as it was called back when I was a kid) worked for me too because I found it to be embarrassing and I didn't want to miss out on playtime. It works on my nephew perhaps 80% of the time (he's about 7 now), but then if his behavior becomes too obnoxious or the behavior is so egregious than he'll lose privileges or get a spanking (if losing privileges doesn't work) and that will work the other 10%.

When I was working in daycare, you got to see how well different forms of discipline worked with different kids. We of course were restricted to timeouts and taking privileges away...but if you knew your kids, was careful to use the most effective discipline that would work for a certain kid and mixed it in with positive reinforcement for good behavior (something that a lot of parents forget to do), that worked the majority of the time. Now of course there was the tiny percent of children where nothing worked except a good spanking. Scary thing was those were the type where you knew they would grow up to be serious troublemakers...and sorry to say they ended up proving us right most of the time.

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