Sunday, December 14, 2014

Bye-bye, Time Out

With this post, I am not about to tell you that you're doing it wrong.

I'm not going to tell you that your method for disciplining your child is inferior to mine. 

I'm not going to suggest that you change what's working for your family. 

I'm just going to tell you about something we've done recently in response to an ever growing problem of finding an effective means of discipline and instruction for our child. 

Time outs don't work for The Boy. They do not teach him anything but to get angry with his parents. His immediate thought when placed in time out is not "what did I do wrong?" or "how can I avoid getting a time out next time?," but "How do I get out of here?" and "I'm really pissed off and I don't know why."  This is despite the fact that we tell him why he's being put in time out.  The problem is that he's so upset and in such a heightened emotional state, he can't understand us.  He hears us, but the intelligent, comprehending part of his brain is not the part that is engaged when he gets a time out.

So it doesn't work.

There is a lot of screaming. A lot of crying. A lot of pleading and begging. A lot of drama.

A LOT. 


There is no evidence of changed behavior after time outs. No, day in and day out, it is nothing but more of the same behavior with the same ineffective means of "discipline," the time out. 

Like I said, time outs don't work for our kid.

And they don't work for my husband and me either...besides the obvious that they have proved to be an ineffective means of behavior correction for The Boy, they increase our anxiety because his anxiety is increased.  He gets upset. We get upset. No real communication occurs in the time out process. Only punishment.  For the whole family.

So we needed a different way.

Enter No-Drama Discipline by by Daniel J. Seigel, M.D., and Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D.  Seigel is a child psychiatrist.  Bryson is a pediatric therapist/social worker.

In the book, they teach that discipline is not about punishment, but instruction. You teach when you discipline. And when an individual, parent or child, is in a heightened state agitation, no teaching or learning can take place. No discipline occurs.

I'm not going to describe, chapter and verse, what we've done differently. But we don't generally do time outs anymore.  The few times I've resorted to one after reading No Drama Discipline, I've regretted it. It's been just as ineffective as they always were before.  The urge is always there, to just toss him into time out, but I have to remind myself that I need to do what works, not what is easier for me to do in the moment. 

The point of no drama discipline is to connect emotionally and intellectually with the child so that you can calmly give instruction and the child can calmly receive it. If it sounds like more work than a time out, it is. It's a lot more work.  But who said parenting was easy?  And, frankly, I'm happy to put in the extra work to effectively discipline The Boy rather than to continue with the ineffective time outs. 

So instead of time out, we do what my husband has taken to describing as "an aggressive hug."  We sit down with The Boy, and we hold him until he calms down. Sometimes, this involves saying, "I know, I know. I know you want to watch Ninjago right now, I know," (or whatever the issue is). The point is to chill the kid (and yourself) out so that you can proceed with effective instruction.

So when he's calmed down, we redirect his energies and focus onto good behaviors and better choices.  We talk about what happened. We ask him what a better choice would have been. Sometimes, if appropriate and possible, we give him a do-over to make the better decision.  This doesn't mean that he ultimately gets his way all the time. He's still often disappointed. But it does mean that we have engaged him intellectually and emotionally to refocus his brain on appropriate behaviors, responses and problem-solving, rather than heightening in his base, negative emotions that lead to further bad behavior.

Is he a perfect angel?  No.  He's a little boy who is still learning. But his behavior is better, so much better, than it was before we started implementing the No Drama Discipline techniques.  Even his teachers sent a note home last week noting his improved behavior and problem solving skills.  We're seeing real change in his behavior because we changed our response to it.

No drama discipline has worked to bring more calm to our house, and has reduced the number of tamtrums and outburst from The Boy.  He's learning how to use his intellect, rather than his reptilian emotions, to navigate the world.

Does this mean that he won't occasionally burst into singing the Chuck the Truck theme song at volume in the middle of a restaurant? Or throw a tantrum?  Or make pouty demands?  No, because he's three.  He's still learning correct behaviors. But it does mean that our approach to handling that situation will now be more effective at changing the negative behavior.  We're optimistic that more good things are to come.