Short Time Outs

The standard recommendation on time out duration is one minute per year of age, often capping out at 5min. In my experience (n=3, not independent) this is much longer than needed; I typically do about a minute regardless of age. The important thing is that the punishment is predictable and immediate, not that it's strong. We typically put kids in time out in three ways. The most common way is when we count to three but they still don't listen: Anna: Lily, get out of my room. We don't usually get all the way to time out. Typically "that's one" would have been enough: it shows that we're moving from our normal mode of interaction to "actually this is just something you just have to do." Another way kids will go in time out is in persisting after a warning: Nora: [throws a toy wildly in the living room] consistent, clear, and immediate signal of parental disapproval. It doesn't need to be particularly unpleasant in itself; knowing that I'm unhappy with them seems to count for a lot. Other thoughts: If they went in time out because they were refusing to do something, they do still have to go do that thing after. This is a kind of forfeiting ill-gotten gains. If they're clearly upset I'll have them stay in time out until they've calmed down. Simple separation is often enough. If the kids are fighting I might ask one of them to leave the room. I often see parents give commands they don't really need to, where they could instead let the kids work it out or decide that it's not important. If there's nothing to enforce it can't lead to a time out. I do need to be careful: if I ask them "are you going to clean up this game before moving on to the next" then it would be wrong for me to threaten them with time out if they said no. Discuss