Time Outs: Helpful or harmful? Here’s what the research says

0:00 [Music] hello and welcome to the your parenting Mojo podcast before we get started today on our topic of timeouts I wanted to share a few words from a listener who's also been in both of the parenting and the learning memberships she read my book Parenting Beyond power when it came out over a year ago and I only just got around to asking her permission to share her thoughts on where the book ranks compar compared to the hundred or so

0:32 other books that she's read here's Teresa I've just finished your book um amazing really good it really it was really like yeah I don't know how to describe it I was like I read it and I was like Yay it's like all there in this really neat book and I could just like refer back to the book because it's like you know you managed to like funnel it all into a really and really easy to read and really what's the word like

0:59 almost like a reference I want to just check that thing what was that page and you're like oh yeah that was that bit and like little scripts it was yeah super helpful um I was going to say like I've read probably I don't if I'm embarrassed about this or proud of this but I've probably read over a hundred parenting books and yours rates up there like top five top five thanks so much for the kind words Teresa Parenting

1:20 Beyond power is available in local bookstores on Amazon and in audiobook format so you can even hear me read it to you now let's hear from listener Melissa who asked me a question about timeouts here is Melissa hi Jen I have a question about timeouts so my understanding is that timeouts are not great because timeouts are punitive and they're socially isolating and they're often used when a child is disregulated and the child actually needs connection and understanding but then I read a blog

1:53 post by Dan seagull who authored the whole brain child and he alludes that there may actually be a potentially appropriate use of timeouts when used as part of an intentional parenting strategy so I'm a little confused I'd like to know if there is such a thing as a good and appropriate use of timeout especially for things like misbehavior rather than in response to emotions or tantrums and is there a way of using a timeout that is effective it might

2:21 actually be an appropriate strategy in the respectful parents toolbox thank you so much what an interesting question to explore so let's break down the element of Melissa's question so we can address them one by one in this episode we'll look at whether there is a way of using timeout that is effective which will become an entry to thinking about the origins of timeout and the research available on it we'll also look at a related topic which is whether timeout

2:46 is harmful in any way to our kids I tried really hard to fit everything into one episode but I couldn't compress it enough to make it listenable so in our next episode we'll look at using timeout in incidences of misbehavior rather than in response to emotions or Tantrums as well as the last part of the question about whether timeout can ever be an appropriate strategy in the respectful parents toolbox before we dive into the first formal question let's just make

3:12 sure that we're on the same page about what timeout is because it's described very specifically in the research researchers Define timeout as quote the contingent withholding of the opportunity to earn reinforcement it consists of time away usually for 1 to 5 minutes from rewarding stimuli including attention from the parent as a consequence of some form of misbehavior parents learn a simple routine that requires the child to have calmed or settled before being allowed to rejoin the rewarding activity that they've been

3:40 removed from end quote sounds so simple right the name time out is a shortened form of the phrase time out from positive reinforcement which is derived directly from BF Skinner's behaviorist theory in the 1940s behaviorists investigated whether they could change pigeons and then chimpan disase Behavior by removing access to food when they didn't do a task and then they moved on to research on changing children's Behavior essentially what we're doing is we're seeing that children view their

4:10 parents' love and attention as a positive thing which in behaviorism is called a reinforcement and when we give time out from positive reinforcement we're saying that the pigeon or chimp or child doesn't have an opportunity to access positive reinforcement for a period of time the procedure was developed for children by Dr Arthur STS in the 1950s who still very much believed in it when he was interviewed for an article in the Washington Post in 2019 he initially tested it on his own

4:36 daughter and now they have a family joke that her behavior was so bad that her dad had to invent time out longtime listeners to the podcast know that I do a lot of hedging here on the show there's a lot of well the studies say this and if you squint at the data in just the right way you can indeed see a statistically significant result in the case of timeout the research is surprisingly unequivocal I'll quote from

5:00 a 2019 paper by Dr Rachel Knight at the University of Michigan medical school and her colleagues she says time out has been studied for almost six decades where the plied research in children first reported in the 1960s overall timeout has been found to reduce many types of problematic Behavior such as non-compliance and oppositionality aggression destruction of property and yelling SL inappropriate vocalizations timeout is also a treatment component in several evidence-based manualized parent management training programs in addition

5:31 timeout is effective in addressing problematic Behavior across several ages including infants Toddlers and preschoolers schoolage Children and adolescents despite the voluminous research on timeouts Effectiveness the popular media frequently portrays timeout as harmful ineffective or both end quote so this is a fairly typical statement that opens a modern paper on timeout and each of the main ideas in it is supported by a citation so I went through them one by one the citation for

6:01 the assertion that timeout has been studied for almost six decades with applied research in children first reported in the 1960s is a paper by montro wolf who was actually Dr stars's graduate assistant also other authors on this paper were Todd rizley and Hayden Mills and this was published in 1963 if the name Todd rizley rings a bell it's because he was also involved in the research on the so-called 30 million word gap that we looked at in a couple

6:26 of different episodes this paper was more about the behaviorist ideas behind timeout rather than timeout itself though the researchers Behavior spased conditioning methods that timeout is related to and how the researchers use these to get a three and a half-year-old autistic boy named Dicky who had a slew of other diagnoses as well to stop having tantrums and start wearing his glasses so his vision wouldn't be lost the authors with withheld Dicky's food until he complied with their demands

6:55 rather than making any attempt to understand why he was hurting himself during Tantrums and why he wouldn't wear his glasses from the researchers perspective this case was successful but we have no idea how Dicky turned out in the long term as far as behaviorist researchers are concerned once the behavior has changed there is nothing more of interest to learn or do we don't know if the self Haring Behavior ever returned or if Dicky developed other habits that his parents found difficult

7:20 after all nothing's changed in the circumstances in their home the only thing that changed was Dicky's Behavior if dicki was self Haring as a stress response it seemed likely that he may have developed other stress response behaviors later on researchers didn't help Dicky to learn any new tools for managing his stress response only that when he expressed it as he had been doing via Tantrums in which he hurt himself that so-called privileges like food would be removed Dr Knight went on

7:47 to describe the different kinds of behaviors that could be addressed using timeout the first of these were non-compliance and oppositionality aggression and destruction of property there were two studies cited in support of this claim in the first one researchers worked with four children and their parents in a lab setting parents were told to give children instructions like come here or give me the truck wait 5 seconds for the child to comply give a verbal reasoning for a

8:12 timeout put the child in timeout while ignoring them return them to timeout if they tried to escape and then release them from timeout after the timeout period plus 3 seconds of quiet at the end and then the parent would immediately ask the child to do the original task again the procedure was moderately successful in changing Behavior although compliance hovered around 60% after the timeout procedure Which is far from Total the second study looked at 71 kids with ADHD 44% of whom

8:41 also met Oppositional Defiant Disorder criteria these children were subjected to a timeout procedure that was so complicated there was a flowchart in the paper to describe it that involved reward points and timeouts that were extended for bad behavior and could be cut in half for good behavior five children refused to go or stay in the timeout area and exhibited high rates of negative behavior during timeouts these children were rewarded for the time they were not in timeout for example one

9:10 child earned a nickel for every 15 minutes he was not in timeout and he could spend the money at the end of the day in a vending machine although this is not an accepted part of timeouts as parents are currently trained on them the authors concluded that timeout significantly suppressed the rate of problematic Target behaviors for children with ADHD in the context of this intensive program but the abstract fails to mention that they also had to

9:33 add rewards for the children who resisted timeout the citation for yelling and inappropriate vocalizations is a study of two children age 12 and 14 with an IQ of 52 and 55 and if it's been a while since you've worked with IQ scores a score of 100 is considered quote unquote normal and so an IQ in the 50s comes with significant challenges in this study a teaching assistant started Distributing food rewards randomly in class an observer in the class decided

10:04 when a child had misbehaved and would covertly signal to this teaching assistant to put an orange card on the child's desk and state name of the child you have misbehaved you cannot receive treats for the next 10 minutes neither the teacher nor the student was ever told what Behavior was incorrect the children's vocalizations decreased by 55% and 53% respectively although it is not clear whether it was only problematic vocalizations that decreased or whether the children just stopped

10:34 participating in class timeout is indeed an important component of three evidence-based programs that Dr Knight describes including parent child interaction therapy which we'll talk a bit more about in a bit Dr Knight goes on to State the different ages at which timeout can be used the study on infants was on four children aged 10 to 12 months whose mothers were trained to start praising their children a lot and then give play pen time Ms for what the

11:00 researchers called engaging in dangerous behavior and this occurred between about a third and half of the observed intervals before the study began after treatment this dangerous behavior only occurred in roughly 10% of observed intervals this was not a short process though training sessions were conducted every four days lasting between two and two and a half months except for one mother and infant pair where the mother's illness and work schedule resulted in training periods every 12 days over a period of 10 and a half

11:29 month months and this is probably why timeout is generally not recommended for children under the age of two the study supporting using timeouts with toddlers And preschoolers is kind of an odd one because it focuses on a rarely used form of timeout called deferred timeout If the child refuses to stay in timeout they're told they owe timeout to the parent before the parent will help them again with a task or by playing with the child the effectiveness

11:55 of timeouts in school AG children is supported by studies we've already discussed well the assertion that timeout is effective for adolescence draws on a 1988 study of timeouts conducted in three psychiatric hospitals for children and adolescents some sort of facility that courts had sent children to and a day treatment program so as we return to Melissa's question on whether timeout is effective we see that researchers who cite evidence in support of timeouts Effectiveness often cite research that

12:23 Canada doesn't really relate to our children if our children are not in an Institutional setting as a side note here having done a number of episodes now such as the two episodes on the Wonder weeks as well as the episode on why authoritative is not the best parenting style where researchers deliberately select white middle- class samples of normally developing children and parents with no known problems of their own so the researchers can try to as they put it understand what actual

12:49 development looks like before studying problematic populations it's really interesting to see the timeout research taking a very different approach much of the timeout resarch focuses on the most difficult cases often consisting of case studies that only involve a very few subjects it's very rare to find a case study that describes any procedure as failing because these tend not to get published it's well known that journals are more likely to publish significant findings than null findings so it's

13:18 possible there are a Litany of unsuccessful and unpublished cases out there leading us to an erroneous conclusion about timeouts Effectiveness the only unsuccessful one that I found was actually by our old friend Dr Todd rizzly he worked with a six-year-old girl who had brain damage caused by menitis with quote an overlay of emotional disturbance and autism he used a combination of timeouts shouting at her shaking her and giving her electric shocks to stop her from climbing

13:45 furniture and engaging in autistic shaking Behavior which today we would call stemming at no point in this study did anyone try to understand why she was climbing so much or facilitate it in a safe way and despite all the abusive treatment that she received in the lab the paper says that quote no aggressive behavior toward any person or object occurred in the laboratory end quote perhaps the real headline of this story should have been that this girl had more

14:12 amazing emotion regulation skills than half of the population when rli's actions should have earned him a punch in the face the title of his paper was the effects and side effects of punishing the autistic behaviors of a deviant child so the child was perceived as deviant first despite all of her diagnoses that indicated potential reasons for her behavior the early researched used participants with cognitive defects neurodevelopmental disabilities and or serious mental health diagnoses

14:42 especially those who were institutionalized it seems that timeout was perceived as a less aversive alternative to corporal punishment electric shock and drugging patients in these settings that was commonly practiced much of the research on timeout that includes larger sample sizes is than five children is conducted within Head Start programs which are preschool programs that serve children from lowincome families in one study from the 1980s 83 children in a Head Start program were seen by a dentist he

15:12 wanted to know whether timeout would be an effective way of inducing compliance in the dental office if the child engaged in disruptive behavior during the appointment the first incident was handled with a brief request for cooperation and after the second instance the dentist sent the child to a 3-minute timeout up to three times the child is removed from the dental chair placed in a small chair facing the corner until he quote calmed down quit crying and was ready to help end

15:39 quote 12 of the 83 children required timeout which was successful in inducing seven of the children to continue with the exam the other five required additional techniques and two of these required restraints rather smugly the authors note that quote regardless of the method used treatment was completed on all 83 children and quote so what did these children learn here I'm thinking of Dr Larry Nasser the former US Olympic gymnastics team doctor and I would argue that it isn't a massive stretch to go

16:09 from a dentist who forces Tools in your mouth without your consent potentially while you're restrained to a sports team Doctor Who puts his fingers into your vagina telling you that it's a normal pressure point therapy for pain relief each one involves a figure of authority in a white coat telling you that they know what's best for you if you you learn when you're in preschool that the white coat is going to do what they want to do with your consent or without it

16:33 are you going to be more or less likely to question what authority figures in white coats do to you in the future as part of understanding the effectiveness of timeout I knew I had to read a book called timeout in child behavior management because it was published in 2023 and I knew it would have an up-to-date assessment of the research on timeout one of the co-authors is Dr Cheryl mcneel who has worked extensively with parent child

17:00 interaction therapy or pcit which incorporates timeout so I knew I was getting a pro timeout perspective but I was pleasantly surprised by some aspects of this book it references a lot of studies and yet is written in a way that's very easy to understand which much of the time out literature specifically and behaviors literature more generally is not normally in these kinds of books if there's any attempt to consider the research cited by the detractors of the approach being

17:28 discussed it's done in a way that leaves me shaking my fists and mentally shouting that's not what the study said but this book made a genuine effort to engage with the literature on what are called exclusively positive parenting methods most of which was done by Dr Ross Green on his method collaborative and proactive Solutions co-authors Dr linaman and mcneel conclude that while research on these programs is promising quote there is not yet enough empirical evidence to recommend exclusively

17:54 positive parenting approaches in the face of a vast literature supporting time timeout and behavioral parent training end quote we also know that reasoning is not an effective way of getting child compliance and this is generally seen as an important component of exclusively positive parenting approaches but reasoning usually means that the parent convinces the child of why it's important that they comply with the parents demand I don't advocate for reasoning in this way either because the researchers are correct it doesn't work

18:24 when you don't want to do something that someone else has asked you to do does it generally help to have have them try to convince you of their reasons why you should do it of course it doesn't we actually want them to listen to the reasons that we said no and to work together to find a way that works for both of us our children want that too Dr laman's own Master's thesis was on whether pcit can lead to increases in

18:45 Emotion regulation and she concluded that it does and in the timeout in child behavior management book this study is cited in support of the idea that quote preschoolers and Elementary age children have demonstrated improved development of emotion regulation and self-control following limit setting with timeout end quote but while timeout is an important component of pcit there are a lot of other components to it as well parents are trained to praise their children and avoid questions and commands because

19:14 these are more likely to generate responses from children that parents don't like and then which ramp up the spiral of negative interaction parents learn how to be physically close and affectionate with their children make more eye contact use appropriate vocal and facial expressions and so on over something like 25 sessions with a practitioner the program is so rigorous that 2/3 to 3/4 of families usually drop out of research studies on pcit so a secondary purpose of Dr laman's thesis

19:41 was to try to see if offering rewards like cheap clothing items would reduce the attrition rate which it didn't parents are also trained on how to set timeouts effectively yes but that is only one of a very large array of elements in pcit when we read that sentence again I'll say it again pre schoolers and Elementary AED children have demonstrated improved development of emotion regulation and self-control following limit setting with timeout we see that it's very carefully constructed

20:10 to imply that timeout caused the increase in Emotion regulation when actually emotion regulation increased after participation in a program of which timeout was one fairly small element we could argue that it's likely it was the positive interactions that generated the Improvement and not the timeout at all in general I would advocate for using the strategy that has hundreds of studies supporting it over several decades rather than the relatively few studies that have looked at exclusively positive parenting methods but what if

20:42 the reason there are hundreds of studies is because studies based on behaviorism are really easy to do the things you're trying to measure are so easy to find You observe Behavior at the start and at the end if the behavior changes which hundreds of Studies have already said that it will then you get a statistically significant result on a publication if you're a researcher whose application for tenure depends on successful publications of statistically significant results wouldn't you want to

21:08 do research related to behaviorism why would you want to investigate a new approach where the outcomes are more related to values and life satisfaction than the number of times per day my child is climbing a bookcase so what if all of this research saying that timeout is amazing is actually an artifact of the messed up academic tenure process rather than because timeout is really the best way to deal with misbehavior we also have to consider what actually happens when the child

21:37 gets sent to timeout there's a good deal of agreement in the literature on what constitutes an effective timeout and I'd guess this isn't what the majority of parents are doing anyway because there are quite a few elements to it and even more ways that you can fail to do it well according to the experts doors Laman and mcneel outlin this process very specifically so I'll give you their directions I also interject where they recommend procedures that aren't

22:01 supported by the literature and where other major sources like the CDC do things differently from them firstly you have to make effective commands these are commands that are specific and phrased in the positive so put those books on the Shelf rather than don't make a mess or go and tidy your room if the child complies you are to provide specific praise thank you for following directions If the child doesn't comply within 5 Seconds you say if you don't

22:26 put the books on the Shelf you'll have to sit on the the timeout chair a phrase that they include although there's actually evidence that that does not add to timeout Effectiveness the child then has five more seconds to comply If the child complies you praise them if they don't comply you say you didn't do what I told you to do so you have to sit on the timeout chair although there's also evidence that the addition of the reason

22:46 does not add to the effectiveness of timeout either then you gently lift the child from behind with your arms clasped under their armpits and across the chest in a barrel hold you remove any objects from their fingers and carry them to the chair you step Out Of Reach so the child can't hit kick or grab you and say stay on the chair until I say you can get off and then you go and do something else

23:08 that looks enjoyable to the child within their sight you're supposed to watch the child without providing attention so kind of out of the corner of your eye without making eye contact you time 3 minutes going by and then you listen for 5 seconds of Silence from the child the Centers for Disease Control advises one minute of timeout per year of the child's life but this is actually not supported by research after 3 minutes plus 5 Seconds you approach the child

23:33 outside the kicking Zone and say you are sitting quietly in the chair which is supposed to reinforce quiet behavior on the chair in the future then you ask are you ready to and you insert the task that you had previously asked them to do if the child agrees or makes an effort to comply you go with them to make sure the task gets done if the child says no or refuses you restart the timer and say

23:56 stay on the chair until I say you can get off then you wait 3 minutes and 5 Seconds and wait until the child replies and repeat as needed until they do the original instruction which means the child can't use timeout to escape the original task once the child is done you say a neutral comment like okay or thank you so the praise you give after the timeout doesn't make the child want to do timeout again then there's one more

24:21 step until the process is complete where you immediately give a simple follow-up command to establish compliance or as you might imagine being on the receiving end rub the child's nose in it just a little bit more to make sure they know who's boss if the original command was come to the table the follow-up command could be now put your napkin on your lap If the child complies within 5 Seconds of the follow-up command or after the

24:43 chair warning timeout is over if not you go back into the timeout procedure If the child gets up from the chair during timeout you give a once in a lifetime warning you got off the chair before I said you could if you get off the chair again you will go to the timeout room then use the same Barrel hold as before to move the child to their room and leave quickly closing the door and without pinching anybody's fingers

25:06 holding it closed while being visible to the child but not providing eye contact for one minute I assume this means that unless you have a half door you're holding the door just cracked open after 1 minute listen for 5 seconds of Silence from the child when this is achieved go into the room pick up the child return the child to the timeout chair step away and say stay on the chair until I say you can get off

25:29 once timeout is over you should try to reestablish positive interactions and don't issue any more directives for a few minutes which is quote crucial for ensuring a child's desire to please his or her caregiver doors Laman and mcneel don't say what happens if you're ever in that once in A- lifetime warning situation again although you might remember from episode 148 on is spanking a child really so bad that much of the research on spanking was done by Dr Mark

25:56 Roberts at the University of Idaho in the 19 1980s the specific purpose of that research was on spanking as a backup when so-called coercive children try to escape timeout in a chair Dr Roberts found both timeouts when shut in a room and spanking functioned as effective backup methods that made the child stay in the chair next time although room timeouts were more difficult to administer especially when you're out and about and the child knows you don't have a room to put them in Dr

26:24 Robert larier who's Dr Mark Robert's longtime collaborator wrote that since the only type of room timeout that had been shown empirically effective is a 4X 5ft empty room with a 4ft high plywood barrier to contain the child but still allowed the child to see the parent Dr loelia then argues that clinics and families that lack this isolation room of precisely this Arrangement quote need to retain the spanking option or they would have to use alternative backups

26:51 for timeout that are either unproven or have been shown to be less effective end quote and this specific paper was co-authored with Dr Diana bind and was the very same paper where they noted that quote undoubtedly some parents can be authoritative without using spanking but we have no evidence that all or even most parents can achieve authoritative parenting without an occasional spank end quote that was the phrase that launched my research that became episode 154 authoritative isn't the best

27:21 parenting style in a paper published in 2024 Dr larier and his co-authors point out that researcher's opposition to spanking has hampered our ability to conduct randomized controlled trials to compare backup spanking with room isolation and says that quote this may help explain why clinical treatments for child conduct problems are only half as effective now as when backup spanking was prescribed end quote that is a lot the procedure sounds

27:53 relatively simple when you kind of spell it out all in order but if you imagine your child screaming at you and trying to hit you throughout the whole thing and maybe with other children screaming and doing their thing throughout the whole thing it doesn't seem nearly as simple especially if you're supposed to end up in a 4ot x 5 foot plywood room or with a spank the show super nanny was mentioned in one research paper related to

28:16 timeouts and spanking I've never watched it so I Googled it and picked a random episode which featured a couple from Florida who had watched the show super NY and were trying to implement timeouts based on what they'd seen despite watching the super Nani's explicit instructions on how to administer your timeout the super Nani was shocked to see the parents implementation of the idea as they repeatedly went back to the child while the child was in timeout to

28:39 issue more commands to the child as they released the child from timeout they would hug the child and say I love you which the instructions say could then entice the child to want to go into timeout because it's parental attention and therefore a reinforcer but the child would just be physically so wooden and have this haunting vacant look in their eyes it almost seemed like the parent was saying I love you to reassure themselves that they were doing this

29:04 thing that the child hated for some reason that was important you might also have noticed the lack of consideration in the language the parent uses toward the child in these studies it's pretty typical for researchers to tell a parent to instruct the child by saying do x no please no when you're done with what you're doing no are you done with what you're doing and certainly never would you be willing to sometimes the parents would issue 30 commands one right after

29:31 another do this do that do this do that if you don't do this you'll be in timeout do that if you don't do that you'll be in timeout if the children in these studies ever spoke to the parents in the way in which the parents are instructed to speak to the children the children would get sent a time out but none of the adults involved see any problem with talking to children like this the research lacks what is called

29:52 ecological validity meaning we can see a change happen in the lab but if parents ever tried to use time timeouts in this way in the real world they'd get in trouble fast issuing that many commands to anyone doesn't make them want to collaborate with you and this is why pcit focuses first on reducing the number of commands parents give because then you're reducing the number of opportunities your child has to resist you another paper lists the various

30:17 problems parents May face as they Implement timeout and there are a lot of these they can generally be summarized as the parent not understanding the timeout procedures not implementing them correctly for various reasons including not understanding how to implement each component of the skill and getting distracted due to other children the parents ADHD not knowing how to apply it in specific situations and not being willing to apply it because you want to do things you find more rewarding than

30:42 punishing your child or because you're in a public place and it gets your child to calm down faster if you just give them what they want there are a lot of ways that this can fail and the research reports that pretty much every parent who has never explicitly been trained by clinicians on how to do time out effectively are doing it wrong another paper lists the various problems parents May face as they Implement timeout and there are a lot of these they can

31:07 generally be summarized as the parent not understanding the timeout procedures or not implementing them correctly for various reasons including not understanding how to implement each component of the skill getting distracted due to other children the parents ADHD not knowing how to apply it in specific situations and not being willing to apply it because you want to do things you find more rewarding than punishing your child or because you're in a public place and it gets your child

31:32 to calm down faster if you just give them what they want there are a lot of ways that this can fail and the research reports that pretty much every parent who has never explicitly been trained by clinicians on how to do timeout effectively is Doing It Wrong DRS linaman and mcneel say that timeout is not appropriate or effective for infants and toddlers partly because these children may not fully understand parental commands and partly because you can more easily motivate them to comply

32:00 without using negative consequences they argue that timeout is effective for children between 2 and 10 years old because they're easier to carry and move than older children they can't kick as hard run as quickly or cling to door frames as well as older children can they say that quote caregivers provide physical affection food toys and other preferred tangibles financial support social interaction and attention and access to and involvement in preferred activities in in turn caregivers of

32:29 young children are the keepers of access to reinforcement in most contexts therefore caregivers can strategically deliver and withhold reinforcement to motivate desirable behavior from their children Additionally the caregiver child bond is typically the most significant relationship in the young children's lives end quote and as I read this quote I was reminded of episode 2113 on how to stop using power over your child and still get things done that's the episode where I interviewed Dr Ari Pary about her transition from

33:00 using a power over model to one where she shares power with her children Dr parsey was born in Iran and grew up in the US and in this clip she shares how her thinking on compliance shifted during the time we've worked together we've talked about how you you don't you can reconcile the model I think to fit you know your own family needs if you can identify what the values are and I would just challenge every parent

33:25 to first see if they can identif how much is compliance your definition of a good kid how much does it matter to you and then where does that come from is it really important to you to have authority and hierarchy and compliance or could it be that collaboration and cooperation and respect and kindness and helpfulness and these other things can achieve some of the same goals and outcomes without needing the hierarchical authoritative compliance and when you start reflecting on well is

33:56 compliance really important to me I think you have to look at where it came from and for me I remember very distinctly um reading some of your emails about this about the authority uh and I remember feeling resistant like to it like I don't know that I can go all the way there right and so I was coming up with all the reasons why that's a bad way to go um and in my internal dialogue was like

34:26 well I'm the parent just as if just the title or the role is enough uh I'm more educated I'm the older one I pay for the house I supply all the needs I you know and so I'm that these things that the life experience and the education and the provision of the finances that these things should themselves give me the power over their needs should make my needs be more valuable than their needs as I was

34:52 hearing these thoughts it sounded they were all the same things that they say in Iran and other very heavily patriarchal societies about reasons why the men should have dominion over their wives or the women the same usually they're older they're the ones providing the money they're the you know and I could not and I still cannot think of a reason of why the children should just do what they're told by their parent because of their child and you're the

35:19 parent or why the parents needs should you know supersede the child I still can't think of a reason that I don't hear used as justification to oppress women so for me personally I had to come to the realization that I couldn't be a feminist or believe in uh equality of the genders in the home and simultaneously demand that I should have Authority or control over my children um

35:49 versus a family culture where all the needs are equal and we work together collaboratively to meet all of our needs so is that why we're using time out basically because we can because our children aren't big enough to fight back because we provide the things that they want and need you know to me this sounds a lot like what Dr parsey said about the reasons why men should have dominion over women and so do we believe in that

36:14 too and if not why are we using time out the research on timeout along with a lot of other research on this kind of topic takes a deficit and fear-based approach it says we can use timeout to motivate children to behave in ways that are conducive to healthy development which means not getting in trouble with parents and teachers not getting suspended or expelled getting good grades going to a good college not getting arrested not engaging in

36:39 substance abuse and so on it positions time out as the best available option compared with spanking and other forms of physical punishment and basically says that if we don't use time out when our children are young and misbehaving that that will inevitably Cascade into criminal activity and substance abuse later in life and potentially even in the teenage years there is indeed evidence showing that children of parents who participate in a parenting Intervention which includes timeout show

37:07 positive outcomes for periods up to three years later although these samples were with children with diagnosi problematic behavior and significant parent risk factors we might imagine that an improvement wouldn't be that hard to make in this kind of circumstance and that the parents simply being taught to be more consistent could be a big part of the benefit if you're going from parenting that the child finds confusing and frightening and that involves hitting to Parenting that the

37:32 child finds unfair and annoying but consistent and less threatening you're probably going to see an improvement in child measures of attachment and well-being research on college students Recollections by Dr jinidu at the University of Sydney found that parents effective use of timeout was associated with less avoidant attachment better mental health and emotion regulation over and above the effects associated with authoritative parenting and secure attachment in childhood but the alternative parenting strategies that the researchers asked about were taking

38:03 away a privilege yelling spanking and shaming so of course timeout creates better outcomes than those Alternatives the college students generally endorse timeout as an effective and acceptable discipline strategy that had more positive impacts on their current well-being than alternative discipline methods used in childhood although I do wonder if they would still feel the same way after they had kids themselves I don't know that any of us are prepared for the way that becoming a parent rips

38:29 US Open and makes us realize that all of the hurts from our childhoods that we thought we had a lid on and we're coping with are still very much present and that we are not okay so essentially we're fighting over which parenting style hurts our children the least by asking college students who have never had anyone try to understand and meet their needs which of five crappy parenting methods they hated the least that's a pretty low bar right shouldn't

38:56 we be aiming higher in our relationships with our children timeout is also not the only thing the parents learned in these interventions but the research talking about the positive outcomes implies that it's timeout that's the main factor creating this benefit when it's highly unlikely that this is the case much of the research on timeout is done with children whose behavior is so bad that their CH their parents get referred to a clinic for help we can see

39:20 that timeout as well as the more positive tools the parents are trained on create better outcomes compared to an environment where the parent is so frustrated with their child that they hit the child but there's no research saying that parents who already have a generally positive relationship with their child can add time out and also see benefits in Emotion regulation and compliance in fact I'd say it's possible the child would perceive timeout as much more negative in this

39:46 context timeout also looks good to a child when it's an alternative to being hit timeout doesn't look nearly as good when the alternative is just that the parent tells the child not to do what they were doing which the child gets to follow or ignore the people advocating for the use of timeout as a disciplinary strategy pretty much ignore this idea I'm not saying that parents of children with really bad behavior should use timeout but everyone else shouldn't I'm

40:09 just saying that this accounts for the benefits found in the research while Illuminating the idea that perhaps adding time out isn't the best strategy for everyone else this starts to Edge us towards a question that Melissa didn't ask but which is addressed in the literature and I want to take a look at it which is is there any evidence saying timeout is harmful for kids this is where Dr Dan seagull comes into the picture because he was involved in quite a kafuffle a

40:34 few years ago basically Time Magazine interviewed him and Dr Tina Payne Bryson on timeouts as a promotion for their book no drama discipline the article included the paragraph quote when the parental response is to isolate the child an instinctual psychological need of the child goes unmet in fact brain Imaging shows that the experience of relational pain like that caused by rejection looks very similar to the experience of physical pain in terms of brain activity end quote time shifted that up a little bit

41:05 to create their subtitle which read in a brain scan relational pain that caused by isolation during punishment can look the same as physical abuse slapped a title on it of timeouts are hurting your child and shipped it out to make the rounds on the internet drors seagull and Bryson hastily published a Q&A blog post on Dr seagull's website where they clarified they had not intended to say that timeout are equivalent to child abuse their second question is do you

41:31 believe that timeouts are hurting children and the first sentence of the answer is it all depends on what you mean by the term timeout I would argue it also depends on what you mean by the term hurting doctors seagull and Bryson say that the appropriate use of timeouts calls for brief infrequent previously explained breaks from an interaction used as part of a thought out parenting strategy that is followed by positive feedback and connection with a parent in

41:55 other words if the parent is disre regulated they aren't supposed to put the child in time out because there's an increased possibility the interaction will end badly the parent is supposed to not ra raise their voice escalate their emotion or not use any other behavior that humiliates embarrasses or threatens the child the parent might physically harm the child as they move to the timeout chair the child might match the parents disregulation and try to escape from timeout and now we have to either

42:19 Wrangle them to their backup timeout room once in a lifetime only or spank them to get them to stay in the chair in Dr zo's study of students 82% reported experiencing timeout in childhood although adherence to evidence-based parameters and implementation was widely varied only 23% of participants reported that their parents were calm when delivering timeout and while we can question the extent to which people completely accurately remember their childhood experiences because parents are often frustrated by their child's

42:49 misbehavior and because timeout is used to deter misbehavior it seems likely many parents are not in the ideal calm state when delivering the timeout doors Laman and mcneel are adamant that there is no scientific evidence demonstrating Behavioral or emotional symptoms of trauma related to timeout and I am not aware of any evidence either but in all of the papers and books I've looked at on this topic I have yet to see anyone explain why this is the case if we know that we shouldn't

43:20 use timeout when children are distressed because they're activating the attachment system and looking for comfort and we know that attachment Rel relationships are crucial for children's successful development which the timeout researchers say is important and give us a reason we should use time out because we are an attachment figure and so we do control the reinforcer of our attention and affection and we know from the old still face experiment that the mother is sitting right in front of an infant with

43:45 a flat affect for just a few seconds is enough to create disregulation in the child how is it possible that forcing a child to sit in a chair or a room when they're disregulated while we PR refuse to provide them with Comfort isn't harmful in some way more recent research has found that 2 and a half-year-old children who are more developmentally mature quote continue to react in dramatic ways to even a brief period of maternal unavailability such as that

44:13 afforded by the still face and that the still face continues to be a powerful and age appropriate stressor at this age end quote is it really possible that no harm is being done as the parent ignores their child and deliberately avoids making eye contact while they're in timeout is it possible that this harm is partly offset by the positive behavior training the parents in pi pcit get along with the timeout training or is it that our blunt survey instruments aren't

44:40 designed to capture the kind of harm that's actually happening the purpose actually of Dr Knight's paper that we looked at earlier was to investigate whether timeout causes harm and to the children who experience it they looked at children Age 3 years in Pre kindergarten in the fifth grade and found outcome variables that were similar whether or not parents reported using time out no differences were found with respect to internalizing problems like anxiety and depression externalizing problems like aggression

45:08 and rule-breaking behavior or self-control but the absence of evidence of harm is not the same as the absence of harm I asked the parents in my parenting membership what they remembered about their experiences of timeout when they were young parent CLA said quote in the elementary years I remember being sent to my room I have no recollection of the behaviors I'm guessing it related to conflict with my sister I remember stewing in my room a lot I feel this part still lives strong

45:36 in me feeling isolated and alone and that no one understood me or cared to and that I had to figure it all out by myself I think I would eventually move on to a quiet activity by myself I drew a lot and I imagine this was useful in those times I also really enjoyed spending time alone and still do although as I got older isolating myself definitely became a protective measure against shame and it was hard to

45:58 separate out when I was doing that versus when I was just liking the Solitude and of course it only fed the shame as a teenager I was grounded so frequently for smoking weed drinking sneaking out I actually enjoyed spending more time with my parents on those weekends watching movies and being with them without my sister but then I would sneak out and party when they went to bed it definitely didn't stop the behavior so while I was able to enjoy

46:21 the time with them there was also a massive wall between us and I learned to hide so much of myself this persists in our relationships today sometimes I literally feel blank empty and have nothing to say around them because those protective parts are so strong in their presence Claire told me she was diagnosed with depression in her early teens and she was clearly engaging in what researchers would call externalizing Behavior as well with her friends we can see grounding as the

46:47 teenage form of Time Out recognizing that friends at that point have become the primary reinforcer and removing that instead of Parental attention in this case it was highly ineffective because CLA actually liked spending time with her parents and it didn't stop her from doing the things she wanted to do anyway she went on to say I think I was always really sensitive but learned to shut it down so I could feel safe and accepted in my family I was so incredibly numb

47:12 hardened and pained I think many of my high school friends were similar and we found belonging with each other drugs and alcohol were something to look forward to a distraction from The Emptiness and self-hatred and they made seeking connection and being vulnerable both feel doable and acceptable when we're in the middle of it and we're only seeing the parents' perspective we can see how they would have thought that timeouts and grounding would communicate that her behavior was unacceptable but

47:37 if we see it from Claire's perspective we see this Behavior as a desperate cry for help and that more separation and disapproval is the last thing that she needs I haven't seen any timeout researchers using survey instruments to measure the shame that CLA felt and the isolation that she still feels when she's around her parents time time out certainly did not cause all of her difficulties but they also didn't make it any easier for her to connect with

48:03 her parents and get help from them and they exist within a system of parenting that doesn't prioritize connection between children and parents parent Lea says she vividly remembers being put in timeout with her nose in a corner one time her aunt had both she and her younger sister with their noses in a corner and they weren't allowed to come out until one of them apologized to the other Lea said shame resentment resistance and determination kept me in that corner until my younger

48:30 sister finally caved and offered the first apology I don't even remember what it was some silly sibling bickering that got us in the corner in the first place I just remember hating that it felt so arbitrary intrusive and forced Lea learned to follow the rules tow the line read the room and bury her own needs she now has two bachelor's degrees and as far as I know she's never been in jail but she says I've had to

48:53 relearn listening to my own needs and wants relearn how to act advocate for myself I bristle when someone corrects or criticizes me instead of letting me make my own mistakes and learn and experiment I've also struggled with conflict aversion and finding value for myself outside of others perception of how good I am once again timeout alone did not create that situation but a home environment in which timeout was perceived as a useful and appropriate parenting tool created it in CLA and

49:21 Lila we see two ways that I often see the disconnection that arises from using these kinds of parenting styles play out either the child Rebels when they're young by getting in trouble because they're seeking the belonging they can't find a home among friends instead or they act like good children so we think we've done a good job but inside they have no idea who they are because they're so used to ignoring their needs to please us the American Academy of Pediatrics

49:47 and the US Centers for Disease Control both recommend the use of timeout apparently based on evidence of negative outcomes associated with physical discipline and the strong empirical support of timeout perhaps this accounts for the apparent lack of harm among children whose parents use timeout when I watched the super nany episode it was clear the parents were practicing timeout in a very inconsistent way sometimes Dad wouldn't do anything at all while Mom would be screaming at her

50:13 kid to stop screaming at her since we know that consistency tends to be supportive for many children it's possible that a simply delivered three minute time out is relatively less damaging for a child than the seemingly random Lottery of effects depending on how the parents feels at that particular moment parent Akiko in the parenting membership Community told me that she was a pretty obedient child but she remembers being locked out of their apartment several times during her

50:37 childhood she was also spanked occasionally and her mom said things that Akiko found critical which created feelings of Shame Aiko believes that if she had known what she'd done wrong she wouldn't have done it again but instead she had the sense that her mom had lost control of herself and her mom's behavior s felt very scary and out of proportion to whatever Akiko may have done or not done there was never any follow-up explanation of why her mom had lost it

51:01 in a situation like this we can imagine how a clearly delivered time out where the child understands what happened and how to avoid a meltdown from their parent could be a clear Improvement in the child's experience all of the parents in the parenting membership that I've quoted in our episode today have done well by conventional standards many of them are highly educated and have had interesting careers from the behaviorist perspective time out has been a success their

51:26 behavior has complied with societal expectations but inside things are not always going so well even if we don't have tools that are used in clinical settings to measure their shame they're feeling and that they struggle to advocate for themselves and they think that they aren't good enough all of that is irrelevant to a behaviorist there's just behavior and what happens in response to that behavior that's how we tend to view children's experiences but it isn't how we view our own

51:54 experiences another hypothesis I have is related to the complex interplay between social comparison and internalizing behaviors like depression and anxiety research on social media use shows that when people compare themselves with others and particularly when they Envy what they see on others social media feeds they're more likely to experience depression I'll acknowledge the directionality isn't always clear it is possible people who experience depression are more likely to compare their experience to others but what I'm wondering is whether children who see

52:24 that their siblings get time out and so do their friends and they figure this must just be what life is like and because nobody else has it any better than they do there's some kind of protective function at work I would hypothesize that especially when a child who has put in timeout a lot who has a sibling who is better behaved and rarely or never experiences time out that these social comparisons could highlight how unfair their treatment is which could

52:50 increase the probability of internalizing behavior like depression very occasionally the time out case studies on single children will mention that the participant child has siblings but the researchers never make any attempt to understand the participant child's role within the family and how this is affected by the dynamic the parents have with other siblings it isn't too hard to imagine a favored younger sibling who gains a great deal of power and connection with a parent by provoking the participant

53:17 child and then acting like the victim of the participant child's so-called aggression and the aggressive child gets referred to Behavioral Services this definitely happens in schools as well I see a lot of posts in online parenting communities from parents saying their child is being hit Andor bullied by another child and of course we want that to stop happening another parent in the parenting membership recently shared that her son whom I'll call Oliver had hit another child repeatedly and of

53:46 course the parent felt terrible about that she's given me permission to share this anonymized story but it turned out that the other children in the setting would routinely welcome Oliver to his Forest school program in the morning by saying everyone hates Oliver or we're never playing with you and then of course the kids end up playing together and during that play Oliver would say three times that he didn't want a certain thing to happen and then he

54:10 would hit Oliver's Behavior looks like the problem here but what about the other children who are overriding his consent three times when we only focus on aggression as a thing to fix it looks like Oliver is the one with the problem when actually Oliver is doing so much this right he's saying no three times frankly if anyone override my daughter kris's consent three times I would want her to hit them as well fortunately Oliver's teachers were receptive to

54:37 Shifting the group dynamic by discussing consent with the whole group offering for Oliver to play closer to them so they could hear when he needed help and encourageing him to shout for help if he was further away from them but doesn't it seem like the teachers missed an opportunity to use timeout effectively wouldn't that have been a better way to tell Oliver his behavior was unacceptable to a behaviorist none of that context in terms of what the other

55:02 children are doing matters all that matters is Oliver was hitting and timeouts can get him to stop hitting but I do not want to live in a world where young boys learn it's okay to override consent because I'm pretty sure that's not going to help us create a world where everyone's needs are met so that's where we're going to leave it for today to summarize timeout is an empirically backed parenting method that effectively changes children's inappropriate behavior and no research

55:32 has shown that it harms children's mental health and that is why we can't just read the research without doing our own analysis and looking at it through the lens of our values because when we do that we find that if our goal is to raise children who don't carry a strong sense of Shame around with them and who understand their own needs and can advocate for their needs and who perceive themselves as good enough then research backed to time out may not be

55:57 the tool to help us get there I'll be back in the second part of our series on timeout to ask whether it's ever appropriate to use timeout for Miss Behavior even if we wouldn't use it to respond to a child's emotional distress and whether timeout is ever a tool that should be part of a respectful parents toolbox and if it isn't what are we supposed to do when our child misbehaves especially in ways we've asked them not

56:20 to do 3,000 times and we know we don't want to spank them and if we aren't giving them time out our are we saying they should just get away with whatever they like no we are not I will be back with the second part of this episode very soon to help you find a way to navigate whatever misbehavior your child is doing right now without spanking and without timeout if you want to find the Myriad references that I consulted for

56:44 this episode you can do that by searching Timeout on the podcast page at your parenting mojo.com [Music]