So, The Washington Post has a piece up criticizing time outs

[conuly]

and offering, instead, "time ins" which remove the child from the situation without banishing them.

I don't particularly find this that interesting to discuss, but I am interested in the comments. All the critics - and there are plenty! - are convinced that sitting with your child and helping them calm down and refocus is bad because "then they'll just act out to get attention". They seem to take this fact on faith. Doesn't make much sense to me. If a child is really misbehaving for attention, surely the problem isn't that their parents pay too much attention when they misbehave, but that their parents don't pay nearly enough attention the rest of the time?

They also think that this means a. ponderously talking out and reasoning about everything every time your toddler hits somebody and b. that two year olds can never, ever, ever use any reasoning skills... even though they can calculatedly misbehave just to get hugs or something. They're wrong on both counts. Small children are surprisingly capable of understanding the logic behind "Hitting is mean, because it hurts others" and these talks don't have to be long and tedious. But honestly, mostly when a small child acts out it's because they're a. tired b. hungry c. teething or d. growing. Give them a cookie, shove some oragel on their gums, and put them to bed. You don't need to make a whole big punitive production out of everything. Usually children outgrow biting/hitting/screaming in their own time no matter what you do. So don't stress.

(Edit: And seriously, no serial killer ever got that way because Mommy and Daddy hugged them too much. Likewise, absolutely nobody in the world sits in their cheap nursing home, alone, thinking "I screwed this up. I should've hugged my kids less and hit them a lot more, and then they'd come visit me". I promise, you will never regret being kinder to your kids when they're kids.)

Comments

[calimac]

"these talks don't have to be long and tedious."

To the parent, maybe. But what the article calls "time ins" sound exactly to me like what we got in childhood and called the dreaded Lecture. Avoiding getting these was our main incentive for proper behavior.

[conuly]

LOL.

They can definitely be that way. I mean, I can throw out a damn good lecture at the drop of a hat, any day of the week. But the point, especially at a young age, isn't supposed to be that way. It's just that our culture tends to put all child care into this punitive mold, and I can tell you from experience that even when you know it's not the only way, it's hard to break free.

[calimac]

There was also the fact that my mother could never stop talking, even when the conversation was congenial.

[annofowlshire]

I was going to rant, but really you've said it here:

(Edit: And seriously, no serial killer ever got that way because Mommy and Daddy hugged them too much. Likewise, absolutely nobody in the world sits in their cheap nursing home, alone, thinking "I screwed this up. I should've hugged my kids less and hit them a lot more, and then they'd come visit me". I promise, you will never regret being kinder to your kids when they're kids.)

It's funny, though, because the people who tell me that I hold/play/interact with my little one "too much" and "I'm spoiling him" are the same people who then say "he's so happy and alert and interested and interactive!"

I mean, it's possible these things are related?

[dewline]

That there are still people in the world who complain that life isn't cruel enough to children tells me there's a lot of holy work yet to be done.

[conuly]

Probable, even, though I feel I should say there's no guarantee. He might've been like that anyway.

[wpadmirer]

Very damn true. It's like people want to return to the dark ages about fucking everything.

[conuly]

Well. None of them were going "rah rah sis boom bah, spanking spanking rah rah raaaaaaaah!"

[asakiyume]

It's good to have lots of tools in your parenting tool kit, since their personalities and the situations they get in are diverse--and parents are diverse. No one technique is going to work for all people all the time, and what you get in comments are people remembering some time when their notion of the technique didn't work for them.

I do think **any** technique can be used stupidly or twisted or can cause damage--hell, even hugs and I-love-yous can hurt if they're they're used to manipulate or in a power display or transactionally. And contrariwise, almost anything can work if kids really feel in their bones that they're loved and safe.

[conuly]

what you get in comments are people remembering some time when their notion of the technique didn't work for them.

Most of them, I suspect, either have never seen anything like this and are reflexively against anything too nice or dislike how somebody they know is raising their kid (or how they think they're raising their kid) and blaming this even if it's utterly unrelated.

[asakiyume]

I confess I immediately thought back to an interaction in a park that I was a bystander for, back when I was a parent of small kids. It was, to my mind, a *terrible* application of time in. But there are lots of other occasions I can think of where people have used it well.

[loligo]

If a child is really misbehaving for attention, surely the problem isn't that their parents pay too much attention when they misbehave, but that their parents don't pay nearly enough attention the rest of the time?

A framing that works for some people is "feeding the meter". Kids NEED a certain amount of attention and interaction. There's no way around it. If give it to them in small, frequent doses when they're behaving the way you want them to behave, you're not only reinforcing the behavior you like, you're also avoiding the "parking ticket" of behavior problems when they get lonely/upset/dysregulated.

[conuly]

That's a good way of putting it.

[jack]

Oh gosh. I very little first hand experience here, but...

To me it seems very much like there's different situations that need different remedies. If someone is in a meltdown (typical of toddler tantrums, but equally applicable for older children, or adults who still experience the problem), they typically need to get away to calm down. "Away" is crucial, and usually "quiet" is good, but sometimes "focused physical activity" or "comfort" is better. Often they're tired, hungry, emotionally upset, frustrated, and will deal better if that's fixed.

Trying to argue, explain, anything is basically pointless, if their body is full of strong-emotion chemicals, they might, with extreme effort, be able to listen to a logical argument for why what they did was wrong, why they should analyse their behaviour and make restitution now by sheer force of will before they get any help for their situation, but calming down *first* is almost always better.

Conversely, sometimes someone is not that out of control, but needs to learn that hitting/breaking/refusing whatever isn't ok, and talking about why may actually help, in which case "think about what you did" might help if they do know but weren't thinking, actually SAYING so is often useful, but I don't know what works best, talking or lecturing or quiet thinking or something else.

Too many things seem like an excuse for punishment, even mild punishment. I don't know if we'll get better as a society, I hope so, but it seems like if you don't do anything actively bad, it usually figures itself out somehow.

But as an endnote, I'm sort of pleased that we're moving PAST "time out" as a thing, when I still remember that time outs were seen as too soft because they weren't explicitly punishments. I really like your "no-one regrets being too kind" ending.

[adrian_turtle]

there's different situations that need different remedies.

This. Parents need to have a lot of options in their toolkits, because kids have a lot of DIFFERENT problems. Different kids, different ages, different reasons for misbehavior, different misbehavior. I remember when the local toddler (now a teen) was peopled-out and overwhelmed, when she came home from daycare and encountered a house full of guests including other toddlers. She pitched a fit, with biting another kid.
"Young lady, do you need a time out?"
"P'ease?"
She's an introvert. Now that she has better social skills, she knows how to ask for alone-time. (She's a teenager. She slams the occasional door, but she doesn't try to bite anybody.)

A technique that usually works better should definitely be in the kit, but it shouldn't be the only tool parents have. That leads to parents who can't cope at all. A technique should only be taken out of the kit if it's actually damaging. How many years of social pressure did it take to get physical violence out of the standard parenting toolkit?

[ayebydan]

I agree with your take on things.

[conuly]

I don't know that most people are moving past time-outs, but some people are starting to think about it.

[larryhammer]

Because TBD was adopted as a toddler and we were working Really Hard on reinforcing their attachment to both of us, we've done time-ins instead of time-outs -- the LAST thing you want to do to an insecurely attached child is to threaten to separate them from the attachment figure. (This is also why we didn't do sleep training.) This involved holding TBD on one of our laps and talking them down till they were calm enough to stop doing the behavior in question. Most of the time, they were doing it because they were otherwise emotionally disregulated, so calming down was essential.

If not for attachment, we would have tried time-outs, which might have worked better, given TBD's trollish personality. It was very easy for TBD to ramp up misbehavior during time-ins, just because. Removing anyone to troll would have given them a better chance, in those situations, to calm down.

Which is by way of agreeing that different tools are needed for different kids.

[redsixwing]

I have to wonder about people who think everything needs to be a ponderous lecture. Age appropriate information is a thing, and pitching to the attention span of the audience is a smart thing to do rather than some sort of capitulation.

[conuly]

It's not that they think that, it's that they think the only alternative to punishment is "nothing at all" or "touchy feely talks, which take forever and accomplish nothing".

[jesse_the_k]

As someone who grew up with entirely the wrong sort of attention paid, it's healing to read this.

[conuly]

♥

[author_by_night]

Ultimately, I don't think there really is a right or wrong way per se (barring all exceptions); I think it comes down to what works with your kid. Which isn't to say parenting advice is wrong - I think it's great. It just needs to be applied liberally depending on the kid and the situation.

For example, I remember the "starving children in Africa" argument well. (Yes, I realize it's slightly problematic in retrospect, but it was what it was.) I was a super empathetic child who took that to heart! However, my curse in life has been with a small stomach, so there were times I was legitimately full. My family just didn't dump a bunch of food on my plate, and they believed me when I said I wasn't hungry anymore - as long as I didn't reach for a cookie immediately after the fact.

Small children are surprisingly capable of understanding the logic behind "Hitting is mean, because it hurts others" and these talks don't have to be long and tedious

Yeah, and I don't get the assumption that they will be. I was always told off in to-the-point but effective ways. I actually think it's good to teach empathy and understanding. My parents asked me how I would feel; that did the trick. I do think stricter punishments are fine when needed, but that isn't my call to make either.

[altamira16]

Yes, it all depends on the kid.

If I put my child in his room, he would not stay. He would put his fingers in the door to avoid being away. However, some children hated being touched when they were having a tantrum so they needed to let it all out in the middle of the floor and get back to normal when they were done.

[conuly]

Poor kiddo!

[conuly]

(Yes, I realize it's slightly problematic in retrospect, but it was what it was.)

Not during the actual famine. (Which, joy, there's more of them!)

Kids in other generations were told about starving children in Asia, in Europe, in Armenia, over here, over there, starving children everywhere. Of course, just thinking about those kids while you cram more food into your belly doesn't help anybody.

[silveradept]

I suspect many of the critics are looking out for a solution that works for all children at all times, or even perhaps for their child (or child-self) at all times, which is utter foolishness. What works depends on the child and the situation at hand. Even thigh I have to professionally construct a program that is supposed to work for most of the children most of the time on the regular.

I certainly agree with the last paragraph, coming from a household that spanked, which didn't do a whole lot at all in terms of behavior modification and did a lot more about not getting caught.

[ayebydan]

Fundamentally I think society has a problem with realising that children are more than just a single subgroup. You cannot just read 'age two' in the manual and have it all worked out. Children, like all of us, are individuals with individual needs, wants and ways and abilities to express themselves.

[conuly]

Yes, though at two their individual wants and needs often do include the aforementioned teething.

[gwydion]

One of the tools in my teacher classroom Management Techniques toolbox was a modified form of Glasser. I used it when I had that thing where you have two kids bothering each other. "Well s/he touched my desk!" "Well s/he touched my paper!" Instead of getting into the who bothered who first argument, I'd make them each tell me what they personally could do to prevent this kind of arguement. They would inevitably make several attempts to "But s/he..." I'm be firm, "You don't control their actions. You only control your own. I will ask them next, but right now, I want you to tell me what you personally can do to stop this from happening." Drove them bats, but they would invariably come up with a plan involving not sitting next to each other today and not touching the other person's stuff. It waaaay cut down on those arguments, and also taught them to start thinking in terms of self regulation, making advance plans for contingencies etc..

Did I use Glasser for everything? Hell, no, because you don't always have that kind of time. Sometimes what you need is for people to stop doing that dangerous thing right now, for example. That's why it's a tool box with a whole bunch of techniques that suit as many contingencies as you can think of.

I figure if you do opt in right, it's like Glasser: an investment in time now against trouble for the rest of the year. It's likely not the response for every single parenting issue, but a useful thing for certain situations.

[conuly]

Glasser?

[gwydion]

He was a psychiatrist who's choice theory is used for some types of classroom management. Here is a wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasser%27s_choice_theory#In_classroom_management

Like, there are things I absolutely disagree with him about as psychiatrist particularly, and you definitely don't want to use him for a bunch of things, because working the process takes time, but it really does work for certain types of ongoing interpersonal problems between kids.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"All the critics - and there are plenty! - are convinced that sitting with your child and helping them calm down and refocus is bad because "then they'll just act out to get attention". They seem to take this fact on faith. "

I know, right? ARRGGHH!! They're right up there with the morons who're convinced that their kids aren't doing their work because they're 'lazy'.

"They also think that this means a. ponderously talking out and reasoning about everything every time your toddler hits somebody and b. that two year olds can never, ever, ever use any reasoning skills."

Doesn't have to be ponderous, but isn't 'talking and reasoning instead of hitting' one of the main lessons we're trying to teach? A lot of times, "I see you're really mad right now" is a good opening. It's okay to be really mad; it's not okay to whack someone with a toy truck.

"I promise, you will never regret being kinder to your kids when they're kids."

This, absolutely.

[fred_mouse]

As a parent -- time-in is great, if the parent has the resources for it. But I used to put myself in time-out when I wasn't coping, and my kids learnt to do the same for themselves. I don't think I phrased it as that, except when I was angry. Generally it was ' I need a bit of time to myself to rest/relax/calm down. You can come and join me in a little while'.

[nassima]

My reason to isolate my kids (not ban them) is to place them in a calming environment when the situation escalated because of sensory overload. I tend to tell them that they can come back when they feel they're better. I try not to make it feel as punishment but as something to make the situation better for everyone involved.

My daughter, who is quirky in many different ways, sometimes needs breaks or she will begin crying/get totally overwhelmed (for example, doing her homework). Something that works is getting her away from me and having her hit the piano instead!

If it's not enough, then I go talk it out with them, if I am myself in a state to talk calmly.

I think that parenting must take into account not only the emotional state of the kid but also the one of the parent. We do all we can but sometimes we also need isolation and calm! So: "I would like you to walk to the other room because you and your brother need to be in separate rooms right now and I need some calm" is IMHO a totally valid reason.

[conuly]

Absolutely.