Parenting And Discipline: How A 'Time-Out' Disciplinary Practice Can Impact Children

When children become frustrated and uncomfortable, time-out forces them to be silent and to feel rejected by their parents. When a child misbehaves and is sent to reflect, he feels hurt. This pain, combined with the frustration that caused his bad behavior, drives the birth of anger. And the practice of disciplines such as time out, which generate pain and anger in children, can also damage them.

A serious consequence that could be suffered by children sent out time, is the lesson that when people feel emotions that make them feel uncomfortable, they must contain them. When they are upset in time out and are unable to express distressing feelings, children desperately need to put a brake on the feelings of pain they feel. To do this, they learn to ignore the energy that comes from their pain and feelings of anger or learn to be distracted.

According to Aware Parenting, this is how these children learn to suppress their feelings of pain. In this process, nervous habits may appear, including thumb sucking, nail eating, hair pulling, scratching of the skin, pulling on clothing, pinching and many other similar behaviors. The purpose of these behaviors is to remove the feelings that make them feel uncomfortable and to identify with the criticisms that have made their parents, self-punishment.

These defense strategies serve to release the anger and make children ignore the feelings that make them feel uncomfortable. As a result, not realizing true feelings could become a distinctive feature of a person's life. This reduces the self-awareness that a person should have and could affect the quality of life forever.

According to APP News & Journals, a better way for parents to raise children who behave well and are self-disciplined is by satisfying their normal needs and desires sensitively and continuously, demonstrating and expressing human values in their daily interactions with their children and exposing them to life experiences that reinforce these values. Problematic and poorly bred children are formed when parents do not meet their normal needs and desires in a continuous and adequate manner.