Now Hear This: Timeout is not for discipline
“OK, Jonathan, that’s it! I told you what would happen if you hit your brother again!”
Got any idea what’s about to happen to that child? That child is about to enter into a 21st century version of “Twilight Zone” Timeout.
Timeout is punishment for something the child has done that elevates their parents blood pressure to an uncomfortable level. The child is made to stand or sit alone somewhere for some period of time to think about, in some meaningful way, what he or she is being disciplined for.
Just timeout. That’s it? No pain for the bad deed? No hand on their little rump?
Is it any wonder we have a cat that answers to “Kitty,” a dog that answers to “Rover,” and three kids who answer to nobody!
OK, I’m from the old school. But trust me, that old school turned out some fine American men and women who got their butts blistered usually by a father, but sometimes a mother, who loved them the old fashioned way – with a strong hand, an uncompromising stare and a loving heart.
Where’s the love in timeout?
This timeout thing is used in a whole new context in the modern world. As kids, we called timeout when we were too tired to chase each other any longer. We called timeout (and hoped he was paying attention) when the third-grade bully was pushing your face in the dirt.
Time-out is something they do in football and basketball games, for goodness sake.
I asked a young mother of two the other day, who I knew was having great difficulty with discipline, what she thought about timeout and she replied, “At my house it’s good for about two minutes.”
“So what’s the use?” I said.
“It’s what all my friends do,” she responded.
“Ever thought about something a little more impressionable?”
“Like what?” she questioned.
“Like ? oh, say ? a hickory switch. (My mother always told me if I was bad all Santa Claus would leave me on Christmas morning would be a bag of switches, and I knew what they would be used for. Needless to say it got my attention.)
“You’re asking me to spank my child?” she said with a pained expression on her face.
“I’m saying what has been from the beginning of time, a tried-and-proven standard of discipline, used by parents universally, just might be something you should think about as an alternative form of correction. That’s all.”
Conclusion: In the absence of strong, loving discipline, what we have today is a new group of couples with kids, who in spite of their parents, just might turn out respectful, studious, intelligent, neat and ambitious, but they belong to a special PLO Club – Parents Lucking Out.
(Hope Hines is a television sports reporter and a Nashville personality.)