I have a question for those of you who do use time out. Many posters on this thread are saying that redirection does not teach a child anything...so I would like to know in detail what exactly time out teaches a child when they hit someone for example? Let's say a child is 3 and they hit another child of the same age while playing with the cars. They have to go to time out. What
exactly are they learning from that experience?
IMPO, I think it is like prison sentences...if offenders are not taught a different way of doing things (Re-direction) then they continually re-offend. They may learn to not do the crime in front of you the provider but they will never know a different way of conflict resolution. When I personally say re-direction, I mean giving the child an alternative to his bad choice/behavior and having them not be allowed to play in the group if specific social skills are not observed within that play period. Timmy learns if he wants to hit, he can hit the bean bag and if he hits other children he can not play with them. Timmy just got a choice, which is important for learning self-regulation and self-control and he learned a social skill which is that he is required to behave in a certain way to be part of a group. By giving him that choice he also learns he has control over his actions.
So my question is still, when a child sits in time-out for up to 10 minutes (
), what is he learning from sitting. If you have a discussion about the bad behavior after his time out, now the whole situation just became atleast a 30 minute span of attention he received without really learning anything except "Boy, sitting for that long sure sucked...I better make sure when I hit Billy again I do it so Ms. Johnson doesn't see me do it" Sitting for up to 10 minutes just gives them time to think about how to re-offend in different ways...it offers no alternatives for doing things differently. ..and after sitting for ten minutes I wouldn't have any attention left to listen to the discussion that would follow. JUST MY OPINION.