Someone asked about time-ins on the previous thread.

In a time-out the child goes to sit by their self and either gets their self under control, or thinks about what they’ve done, or bides their time until they are free again, or whatever. The point is, they are “out” instead of “in”, they are off to themselves.

In a time-in you hold the child. For older kids many parents sit the child on their lap, facing away, and wrap their arms around the child’s torso. There is no talking, this is the time for the child to get themselves under control, or think about what they’ve done, or whatever. Often I think the message ends up being “if you do things you know you should not do then you will lose the privilege of doing what you want for the next two minutes”. I know many people say time outs and ins aren’t supposed to be about that, but often they seem to be.

Anyway, with younger kids there are a variety of ways you can hold them, but the point is that they don’t feel as if they were “sent away for being bad”. When you are trying to foster attachment you don’t want to do that. But, at the same time, you don’t want to teach them that you holding them is punishment, and you run that risk with a time-in.

As with everything, parenting is mostly a matter of realizing what will and won’t work with your child. There is no right or wrong answer, it’s whatever works.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 at 11:14 pm and is filed under Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.