Time Out

Last Shabbat we had some friends over and the concept of giving a child a time out came up in the conversation. My husband laughed and mentioned that time out was a phrase he had not heard used in our house for a long time. I guess I can say that we don't use time outs anymore when we are having a problem with one of our kids. We used to use them but as everyone knows time outs do not work. If they did work you would have only had to do it a few times and then your child would behave when ever the threat of a time out was mentioned.

Amazingly, even though I knew this, every so often I would go back to using time outs as a way to discipline my kids. I have to admit this was often after reading an article about how effective time outs were or after seeing Nanny Jo on The Nanny (a guilty pleasure) use them.

One evening after a trying day with one of my kids which included many time outs I read in a book that when you feel like giving your child a time out it probably means that you need a time out (I believe that I read that in Naomi Aldort's book Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves.I just need to look through the book to make sure that I am correct).It was one of my big ah ha moments. Since then I have only given time outs to myself, which by the way, work much better than when I used to give them to my kids.