I wanted to point out a new(ish) perspective of time-outs and how they can have unintended negative effects on emotional regulation development. The gist of it is essentially, by sending a child away to experience emotions that their body is too underdeveloped to control or certainly to understand, we actually create a sense of shame around that emotion. The child learns subconsciously that anger equals isolation therefore, for the sake of self preservation, he must supress that anger to be accepted in his famipy unit. Supression is not a healthy coping mechanism and does facilitate the development of healthy emotional regulation. In fact, anger plays a very important role in how we perceive threats, and we can unintentionally do our children a disservice by forcing them to “shut the anger off” instead of teaching them how to properly regulate it.

Alternatively, “time ins” have garnered a lot of hype lately and focus on the caretaker being present through the big feelings in an effort to co-regulate with the child. In this way the child does not feel isolated, feels that it is ok to experience anger (or what have you), they are confident that their care takers love is NOT conditional based on their behavior, and they learn healthy, effective coping strategies through modeled behavior (deep breaths, grounding exercises, quiet time, screaming into a pillow or squeezing a stuffy really tight to release some of the pent up physical energy, etc).

Now of course, in the heat of the moment, it isn’t always so easy to remain regulated yourself as the parent!! But I think having this info in your back pocket and working towards this as a consistent response to defiant and inappropriate behavior, as opposed to a time out, could lead to a much happier parent/child relationship overall. I hope this is helpful in some way!