Making timeout work

I walked into my friend’s house to discover her young daughter perched atop a china cabinet. My friend was making dinner and her husband was playing on the Wii as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

My friend informed me that her daughter was in timeout, and since she was unable to stay in the timeout chair, she had earned a spot on top of the cabinet. So there she sat, legs dangling 6 feet above the ground in a timeout that seemed to have gone completely out of control.

Timeouts can be a mom’s best friend. I use them — a lot. Some days it feels like I’m trapped in a series of revolving-door timeouts.

But I still believe in the timeout — if you do it right. I think this discipline method can be executed differently in each family, and like any good technique, the key is consistency.

In our house, timeouts have a few simple rules:

• No warnings: Once our kids know the house rules, we don’t waste time warning or threatening to put them in timeout. They break a rule, they go to timeout. Sometimes our daughter will even put herself in timeout without us telling her to. She knows the rules, so I’m not going to spend my day yelling, “If you do that one more time . . .”
• No time limit: The rule is that the child in timeout can come back and be with the family once she has calmed down and changed the behavior that earned her the timeout. No coming back crying or upset. When timeout is over, it’s over.
• No preaching: Timeout is also over for the adult once our daughter comes out of timeout. As long as she has changed her behavior, we don’t have a long talk about what she did wrong or how she can be better. We just embrace her back into the family fun.

Overall, these timeout rules have served us well in our house. They have also stopped timeouts from becoming an arbitrary punishment — or even a punishment at all. Instead, timeouts are moments to calm down, take a deep breath and recommit to proper behavior.

Do you use timeouts in your home? What are the basic rules of timeout?

Erin Stewart is a regular blogger for Deseret News. From stretch marks to the latest news for moms, Stewart discusses it all while her 4-year-old daughter crams Mr. Potato Head pieces in her little sister’s nose.