The Trouble with Timeouts
Joshua Gans at Game Theorist (”Musings on economics and child rearing”) blogging about disciplining his youngest child:
When it comes down to it, this blog is a censored version of my parenting life. It is not and I do not claim it to be a full record. And when it comes to Child No.3, who is soon to turn 4, the terrible twos have seemed to lasted well beyond what one would have hoped.
Same here at Girl Detective. I try not to gripe about the daily grind; if I do I try to make it humorous. But my husband G. Grod and I have struggled with discipline issues, too. Gans’ post is long, but I found it worthwhile itself, and for the Slate article it linked to on timeouts. Both are matter-of-fact about dealing with kids. Gans candidly calls his struggles “the war” and the Slate piece mentioned, more than once, the desire of a parent to hit a child when things escalate.
Before I had kids, I didn’t believe I ever would, or even would want to, hit a child. (All you parents of multiple kids may now take a break to laugh your heads off.) As with most (all?) of my pre-parenting “I nevers,” this got proved wrong pretty quickly. Parenting books say things like “model the behavior you want” and “don’t lose your temper.” Good ideas in theory, but much harder in practice. And frequently not effective, even if done “correctly.”
Both the Gans entry and the Slate piece are refreshing in their realism. The Slate piece points out that most people misunderstand the purpose of timeouts, and offers these useful guidelines:
1. brief
2. immediate
3. done in isolation from others,
4. administered calmly…and without repeated warnings
July 4th, 2008 at 8:30 am
I’ve informally grouped most discipline issues into two categories: 1) those which are serious (e.g., hitting another child, biting, etc.) and 2) those which are merely insolent, difficult, strong-willed, etc.
I still feel like it’s reasonable to lose my temper with the type-1 issues - they are the sorts of things I refuse to tolerate even a little.
But with the type-2 issues I’ve noticed that I get the most angry when I have the least time to properly deal with the issue. If I can convince myself to slow down and not let outside pressures drive me (I know, not always easy to do) then I find I can much more calmly administer time-outs, etc.
It does seem like kids intuitively pick the worst moments… when we’re already late for the movie, when we’re late for a date, when we’re in the checkout line at the grocery store. I’ve thought of attempting to be 30 minutes early for all events. That way I’m guaranteed a time cushion to cope with the inevitable meltdown.
But that’s not often realistic.
July 6th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
I find that the type 1 and 2 issues tend to occur close together, which tends to mean I’m responding to all things big and small,or ignoring all things big and small. And time is definitely a factor, as is location. It does often seem like war–having to make decisions under fire and in hostile territory.