Why Time-Outs Are Bad
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By Nicole Gregory
Your toddler pokes his sister for the fourth time in 10 minutes, throws himself on the floor in a fit of rage when you turn off the television or deliberately pours milk on the new rug. Exasperated, you send your child to his room and administer a 10-minute “timeout.” While this swift action may feel right to you at the moment, experts say that when a time-out is used strictly as punishment, it is ineffective and can, in fact, backfire.
“Punishment is not helpful in shaping a toddler’s behavior,” says Sam Goldstein, Ph.D., coauthor of Raising a Self-Disciplined Child. “If the toddler didn’t have the skill to handle the situation in the first place, then punishment is not going to make him more competent.”
So before you banish your toddler to another room, take a minute to consider what he is feeling. “Maybe this kid is overwhelmed easily and he’s had too much stimulation. Another child took his toy and he doesn’t know yet how to deal with frustration,” says Claire Lerner, LCSW, a child development specialist with Zero To Three, a national nonprofit organization that promotes healthy development of toddlers and their families. “These are times for support and learning, when you can have a big impact on shaping your child’s development,” says Lerner.
What works, what doesn’t
What is a compassionate, effective timeout? It could be holding your tot in your lap, away from her sister she’s been poking, or in a chair in another room for a few minutes when she refuses to pick up her toys. Goldstein says “time-out” originates in psychological literature as “time out from reinforcement,” meaning removing the child from whatever is reinforcing the unwanted behavior. One mistake parents make with timeouts is to say “Okay, you’re free now” when the one or two minutes are up, says Goldstein.
Time-outs work best when you bring the child right back into the setting and guide her to negotiate it differently. “You could say, ‘I want you to help me pick up your blocks,’” Goldstein advises. “If she says ‘No!’ then calmly say, ‘Okay, we’re going to another time-out.’”
Great backyard summer treat for the kids. Frozen fruit pops on a stick. 
Comment by jen on Jun 29 2011 10:47:55:
This is crazy, and just another parenting fad. Children need consistant discipline, from a young age. It is laughable to suggest that discipline will backfire, and that even timeouts are now not appropriate for the new discipline fad. Any parent that doesn’t discipline their child, will be allowing the child to be in charge, which is not healthy, and is not teaching their kid anything. I feel sorry for any parent who follows this article, and even more sorry for their child.
Comment by jen on Jun 29 2011 10:49:48:
additionally, the notion that doing timeout, but doing it with carefully worded sentences, makes me want to vomit. Seriously? Your child misbehaves, you choose the discipline method, follow through every time, and it is as simple as that.
Comment by Kate on Jul 06 2011 08:00:44:
Or, you could stop thinking in terms of “good” vs. “bad” behavior, and try to see the situation from the child’s perspective. Use it as an opportunity to teach instead of punish. Remember, everyone parents differently, and what works for one family won’t necessarily work for another. We are all just trying to do our best by our kids. We know a family who is teaching their daughter to meditate during a “time-out”. Also, the age of reason doesnt come until 6-8 years old, so especially for a toddler, a “traditional” time-out is basically useless and ineffective.
Comment by Brittany Roland on Jul 14 2011 09:39:35:
i myself don’t believe in timeouts unless the punishment isn’t called for a spanking. and i do spank my children if they misbehave i don’t believe in hugging them telling them that somethings “not nice” it’s not nice to be run by one’s child. I believe in the saying “spare the rod spoil the child” and my rod is never spared. I think everyone should go old school and if the child acts up then there’s no such thing as a timeout but a good old ass-whupping!
Comment by meghan on Oct 07 2011 08:27:18:
Time outs and forgoing them to consider the child’s feelings is a load of crap! If I or one of my siblings had deliberately poured milk or anything else on the rug, our butts would have glowing in the dark. Kids need discipline and structure constantly. When they’re little they need to know not to do things and as they get older they learn WHY not to do those things. It’s called being a parent. If more moms and dads were concerned with raising responsible human beings instead of not wanting to be the bad guy, we wouldn’t have as many dipshits running around making a mess of things.
Comment by Nicole Belle Bjork on Oct 12 2011 02:09:07:
As a Child Development major, I can tell you that "time-outs" are only meant to be used to help the child calm down when they are too overwhelmed to control their emotions.
Let's face it, with young children, they get overwhelmed by their emotions on a regular basis. It's not their fault, and they should not be punished for it, because their brains are not emotionally mature enough to handle things the way adults do.
Everything a child does (under the age of 3) is only to explore their world, to find out how it works, not to intentionally misbehave. They wonder "what will happen if I do this?". They're not thinking "Ooh, I'm going to make Mommy mad on purpose".
You cannot expect a child to act or think like an adult because their brains are not mature enough for that. Punishing a child because they are acting like a child is cruel and abusive.
I wish I could continue, because there is a lot more I could say, but if I responded to every comment or post that displayed bad parenting, I wouldn't have time to go to school or be a good parent myself. Educate yourselves, please. If you are a parent, your child should be your priority, which means raising them right needs to be your priority.
Comment by Leslie on Oct 17 2011 08:17:27:
This article should be titled “WHEN Time-Outs are Bad.” I give time-outs, and I mostly agree with this article. If a child is too young to know what he/she is doing wrong,a time-out will not be effective. If it is simply a punishment for behavior that the child has not learned to control yet, it is not going to be effective. A time out should be given when the kid knows what he/she is doing wrong, and does not stop after being warned 3 times. (Yes, they should stop the first warning, but kids are kids, not adults, and sometimes takes them longer.) Then they should be in time-out for one minute per year of age, unless they do something else that is a STOP behavior, and time is added. But this is not good for a toddler, who may not even have the reasoning to know what they did wrong. In these cases, gently telling them what was the wrong behavior and telling them to how to fix it is much more appropriate, and it may need to be gone over several times in the course of weeks or even months before the toddler “gets” it. Let’s not punish our kids when they don’t even understand the difference between “good” and “bad.” The time-outs should be for the times when a child does something they KNOW is not nice or good, and continues.
Comment by Rosanna on Oct 17 2011 04:04:53:
Omg… This is why kids are soo screwed up today and the grown ones are in and out of jail. My kids are very well behaved and I have givin them timeouts and a smack on the hand when needed.Of course I show them what they should of done and how they can handle it next time but they still need a time out. My kids are just fine and not screwed up.The screwed up ones will be the kids that dont get timeouts and have their feeling catered to 24/7.Those poor children will wonder why everyone else doesnt baby them and cater to them and their feelings.
Comment by MEGAN on Jan 18 2012 01:35:42:
Thank you Nicole Belle. You said it perfectly.