Timeouts seem self-explanatory: your kid acts out; you make
him go to his room or sit on a chair in the corner, by force if necessary; the
worst the offense, the longer the timeout, right?
Wrong, wrong, wrong, says renowned child psychiatrist Alan
E. Kazdin, writing for Slate.
While timeouts can be effective, relying too heavily on the timeout as
a method
of punishment will do nothing to change your child’s problematic
behavior. In fact, excessive timeouts worsen bad behavior—which means
you give more and longer timeouts, which
means your child acts out more, which means your home becomes a
battlefield.
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