It's time-out kiddo!

I noticed here that when kids get real bad, parents would just say "time-out" and this makes him or her cry. Hmnn...this is actually new to me. In the Philippines, it's way too different. It's so simple for parents to whip or spank their children as a punishment.

I read this article on MSN.

How to make "timeouts" less like bar fights
By Alan E. Kazdin

The "timeout" has replaced the swat on the behind as many parents' default punishment for a misbehaving child. It's worth noting, then, that this parenting tool is widely misunderstood and frequently misused.

Most parents already have a rough working notion of how to use timeouts. When a child does something wrong, you send him off to sit somewhere by himself and do nothing for a set amount of time, like a hockey referee putting a player in the penalty box. Two minutes on a bench for hitting at the playground, five minutes on a stool in the corner for talking back, and so on. Because the timeout seems so simple, most people feel comfortable using it intuitively, guided by assumptions that the punishment should fit the crime, that a timeout gives the child an opportunity to reflect and repent, and that it teaches the child who's in control.

These assumptions lead many parents to use more and longer timeouts to match the frequency and severity of a child's offenses. If a child gets five minutes for, say, hitting a sibling, then a more serious offense, such as biting, should rate 15 or 30 minutes, right? Not necessarily. Using more and longer timeouts might seem proportional, and it might even conceivably teach a lesson about justice, but it won't help change the behavior that's causing you to give timeouts in the first place. And if you don't change the behavior, you're going to be enforcing a lot more timeouts. Read full article here...