I think I like the way I set it up last week, with me posting some of my favorite quotes to get the conversation going, so that's what I am gonna do again!
Here they are in no particular order:
"The parent can either walk away, (which may leave a child sobbing, or crying out in a panic, "Mommy, come back! Come back!) or banish the child to his room or some other place where a parent isn't. This tactic might accurately be called forcible isolation. But that label would make a lot of parents uncomfortable, so a more innocuous term tends to be used instead, one that allows us to avoid facing up to what's really going on. The preferred euphemism, as perhaps you've guessed, is time-out."
"Time-out is actually an abbreviation for time out from positive reinforcement. The practice was developed almost half a century ago as a way of training LABORATORY ANIMALS."
"For many people, the first question would be whether this approach works. Once again, however, that proves to be a more complicated matter than it may seem. We have to ask, "Works to do what?"
"Spanking and time-out, both communicate to children that if they do something we don't like, we'll make them suffer in order to change their behavior. The only remaining question is how we'll make them suffer: by causing physical pain through hitting, or by causing emotional pain through enforced isolation."
"Intrinsic motivation basically means you like what you're doing for its own sake, whereas extrinsic motivation means you do something as a means to an end- in order to get a reward or avoid a punishment. It's the difference between reading a book because you want to find out what happens in the next chapter and reading because you've been promised a sticker or a pizza for doing so."
"The more that people are rewarded for doing something, the more likely they are to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward."
What grabbed you the most this chapter? How damaging time-outs are or that rewards are just as damaging? Or both?
I thought this was a thought-provoking and informative chapter with a lot to offer. But I really do disagree with him on his view that time-outs are interpreted by children as 'love withdrawal'.
ReplyDeleteNow, I have to qualify that by saying that it depends on the time-out. I think that if a parent is frostily telling a child “When you act that way, I don't even want to be around you. Go to your room and don't come out until you're ready to act like a civilized human being”, and especially when this is part of a relationship in which the child already feels parental approval/affection to be very dependent on whether he acts in accepted ways, then, fair enough, it could be interpreted as love withdrawal. I think it's important for us to be aware of this.
But... the advice I usually see about time-out, in parenting books or programmes that support the practice, is that you shouldn't get angry, you should stick to the 'one minute per year of the child's life' rule, once they've had the time-out that's the end of the matter unless they repeat the misbehaviour, and parents should also be spending lots of positive time with their child. Is a child seriously going to misinterpret a calm, firm “Johnny, you know you're not allowed to call your brother names. Now you have to go sit on the stairs for five minutes” as a withdrawal of love? Unless there are some pretty serious problems with the whole relationship between that parent and that child – in which case, the thing to focus on is fixing those problems – then I absolutely can't imagine any child seeing it that way. And – once I read this section carefully and thought about what Kohn was saying and what he was backing it up with – I realised that Kohn really doesn't make the case for this. He *states* that children interpret this as love withdrawal, but he doesn't provide any evidence that this is so.
I did find that, the first time I read this, I didn't really spot this crucial gap in his argument. This is because he makes two claims (that children interpret time-out as love withdrawal, and that love withdrawal is harmful to children) and provides lots of references to back up the *second* claim, and so it's easy to miss the fact that he doesn't really back up the first. I found it to be a lesson in the need to read arguments carefully!
(By the way, I'm not trying to say that time-out should be the be-all and end-all of discipline – I think it does have its limits, in that it isn't teaching children about what they should do or how they should handle situations. I just don't agree with Kohn's claim that children are going to interpret a properly-done time-out as love withdrawal.)
OK, I think I had more to say, but it's taken me all day of snatched moments to write this much... I think I'll post it and if I have time to write more I'll write more and if I don't then at least I'll have posted this.
@Dr. Sarah...I see your point, and thanks so much for taking the time to comment, but I don't know, in my heart I think that any time-out, whether done in a "nice" way or not, the child still sees it as love withdrawal.
ReplyDeleteI guess if the child is old enough you could ask them how they feel in time out? But how do you really know they don't see it as love withdrawal? You know what I am saying? How can you know for sure?
I agree with you Stephanie....maybe the child won't interpret the time out as love withdrawal but if there is a chance they will, then I think I can find a better way.
ReplyDeleteIn our home, if the situation shows that everyone needs a break, then we do just that, take a break. However, we do it together instead of everyone isolating themselves or being isolated. My daughter and I sit next to each other quietly for several minutes. I ask her to tell me when she's ready to talk about it. When she says she's ready I ask her to talk first..."What are you feeling?", "Why do you think we needed to take a break?", etc. I respond to her comments and concerns and then offer my parenting/lesson as well if it's still necessary or beneficial. Not only can I call a “break” but so can she.
In addition to eliminating time outs and using side by side breaks instead we have also eliminated "if/then" statements in our home. Here is a post (http://tallyconnection.com/2010/12/no-more-ifthen-statements/) I just did about this on TallyConnection.com.
Thanks so much for telling me about this book. I feel like I am going to do a lot better as a mom having read this book. It took a lot of the concepts I already believed in and taught me how to put them in to practice instead of just shadowing the parenting behaviors that I see all around me every day without questioning them. Thank you!
@TallyMom, I love your idea of everyone taking a break together.
ReplyDeleteI find myself doing similar things with Penelope even now, when I say Mama needs to take some deep breaths and say some Om's, do you want to do it with me?
Thanks for reading the book! I just read your post on your site, thanks for sharing and inspiring others!
Thank you for sharing the book and for reading my post on TallyConnection!
ReplyDeleteI found something that I read about praise in another book to be a middle ground between "great job" and no praise at all. I'm simplifying this to the point that it's probably not a fair representation of the discussion on praise, but that book, NurtureShock, discussed praising results rather than achievements. Instead of "Great job" or "So smart" they advocated, "I see that you worked very hard on that [test, soccer game, whatever}, and that hard work paid off." It was more of an observation, I guess, and it praised the effort and not the result. The conclusion was that those children were empowered to try new and different tasks based on the confidence built, while the children praised for success (akin to conditional-style praise, I think?) would be reluctant to take on new tasks because they wanted to remain viewed as smart or successful and feared being viewed as not. Because their efforts were what was appreciated, the children knew effort was within their control to apply in a new context.
ReplyDeleteI really liked that approach, and I'm having a hard time suspending my appreciation for that approach by believing praise is almost by definition conditional. Of course, I'm only on chapter two and maybe my understanding of conditional praise is still incomplete. My mind is open, we'll see.