We have had great success with positive parenting (I think there is a book of that same name). Instead of timeouts we focus on calming and identifying emotions. It is empowering for children to be able to self-identity overwhelming emotions and handle them appropriately, which is a skill more adults would learn as well (myself included!)

Simple tricks are to tie physical actions to images to help them calm down. "Smell the flowers" then "blow out the candles" instead of "take deep breaths". We ask him to identify his emotion: "Are you frustrated?" "No, I'm sad!" Leading to a chat about the source of the reaction and not just deal with just the physical event.

Instead of a timeout we ask if he wants to go calm his body then come back when he is ready. Our 4 year old has been saying things like "I need to go calm my body!" when he gets upset, which is amazing. If he is in a situation in which he needs to be removed actively we don't treat it like punishment we say "let's go calm our bodies before coming back."

Having a GOAL to the timeout gives your child agency and helps them navigate emotions.

Presumably they're now in school and have bitten, hit, scratched, pushed, or otherwise physically harmed others (most kids do particularly in the transition from parallel to cooperative play; greed is a very strong instinct). What's your spin on that? You just suggest that the child removes themselves if they feel like it?

I'm not hippy dippy over here, just applying empathy and learning to time-outs. Instead of punishments for bad actions they are a chance for him to communicate what's wrong and a chance to teach him how to handle his emotions. It is a long ass road for sure, and I certain don't leave him to handle physical situations himself. It is only occasionally he gets upset about something and notices he needs to calm himself down. Most of the time, he needs guidance.

His preschool is actually where most of these techniques come from and they spend a bunch of time identifying feelings and keeping things positive/productive and do things like have the kids jump on a mini-trampoline to burn off excess energy.

If he is hitting someone, I immediately move him away and try to work him through talking/breathing/etc. Most really bad situations can be avoided by putting him in a position to succeed. That just means stuff like don't keep him out until 11pm and don't drag him around unhappily if we can help it. He is only 4 but we try to respect his personhood - he doesn't make the rules but we consider his wants/dislikes and warn him when we know he is going to need to do something he won't like. In turn, he tends to behave better in those situations - he has been on a 13 hour flight with no drama. In his life, has only required a kicking/screaming drag away response maybe once or twice. A lot of that is simply avoiding those situations before they develop.

All kids push boundaries so we try not to set fake goalposts, (i.e. No cake for you if you do this! But then give him the cake anyway.) We only threaten things we are willing to go through with, even if they mean shittiness for everyone. We've left stores before we wanted to, left dinners early and left parties early to avoid meltdowns. While it sucks, those are big events that prove we aren't making empty threats but informing him of real boundaries. When we know we can't uphold something we simply don't threaten it.

He also has a younger brother (2 yrs) and of course they fight over toys often. The progression goes from: "Did you ask or just grab? Can you share/take turns?" If the younger one is grabbing from him (which is more common): "Can you trade/offer him an alternative toy? Can you ask him to wait instead of fighting for it?" If none of that works, I take the toy away for a while and say "that's the rule". It's great to blame the "rules" because they can't argue against them.

So you are using timeouts, you just name them differently.

I'd say the difference is that "timeouts" are putting the kid in a corner to cool down vs. taking them aside to actively calm them down. I think when most people say timeouts they are talking about separating the child and letting them stew for a while.

> like hitting newborn baby brother

We ran into this problem. Our oldest would just hit him again 5 minutes after the timeout. It got to the point where she would hit him, say "timeout!" and go to her timeout spot. She hated the timeout (she cried during it), but she decided it was worth it.

She basically took every chance she could to hurt him. If she was walking by him, she would purposefully step on his fingers. Or hip check him. Or smack him on top of his head.

We tried pretty much everything, and nothing worked. Ultimately she grew out of the behavior after about 8 months.

We did the timeout when our 2 yr old first hit new baby and it reduce the behavior short term, but we also had our 2 year old start holding the newborn (with assistance) while giving a lot of praise. That replacement of the negative behavior with the positive really helped the 2yr old's attitude towards new baby.

I'm curious as a future parent: How old was she, and how do you think she would have responded with an explaination of what was going on: She's jealous because she sees the baby getting more attention than she is, and explaining when she was a baby, she got just as much attention and that you love them both equally.

She was about 2 and a half when they were born. To be more specific, we actually had twins. And she only did it to one of them. Explaining things are what we tried first - its always our first goto - explain, redirect, etc.

When we tried to explain things, she would mostly just ignore our words and change the subject. There was even a period of time where even mentioning "baby" would cause her to yell "NO BABY!".

BTW, you might have heard of the "terrible twos". But the "threenager" stage was much worse for us.

Some of the defiance is kinda funny, depending upon your sense of humor. Like when my wife said "I hope when you get older you call mommy to tell her how much you love her", and she said "I'm going to call you to tell you how much I don't love you."

It's a lot better now, but she has always been pretty persistent and strong willed. At the end of the day, you get what you get. We have some friends with the most amazingly behaved first child that didn't care for our kid's behavior and some of the stuff we just let her do. Then their second kid was more like ours and after that they had more sympathy.

>We tried pretty much everything //

Did you smack her?

Worked first time to stop a child running on to the road for me, never needed to repeat it. Other kids in my care have learnt without that necessity, thankfully.

Grandparents tried it. She still did it not long after. After that we decided it wasn't worth trying.

The twins bite her when she does something they don't like. Doesn't stop her from doing those things they don't like either.

Often timeouts work because it separates the kid from the stimulus and gives them an opportunity to cool off and let their conscious mind reassert itself over their emotions. Not necessarily because they think of it as a negative consequence to be avoided.

Often when young kids do harmful things they are not really "thinking" in that moment. Sometimes it is hard for them to even recognize it as something "they did" as opposed to something that happened to them. Strong emotions, to a little kid, are things that happen to them, not things they do. They don't understand why they do things, sometimes.

The heart of raising a young kid to behave properly is teaching them to understand and manage their emotions. We tell our kid, "you feel angry, and that's ok. It's ok to feel angry. However, you're still responsible for how you behave." And we give her appropriate options for dealing with feeling angry. One of the tools we've taught her is a cooling off period, but we don't label it a "time out" like a punishment. As she has gotten older, she gives them to herself sometimes!

Some kids are distraught when separated from the family, others are quite content. IME timeout can be far more emotionally damaging than smacking. A well timed smack is a punishment for action; a "timeout" appears to be a desire for separation originating with the little-person's most loved-ones. A short-cut to the brain telling it that a behaviour is unwanted (smack) vs. an emotionally loaded action telling them [seemingly] their loved ones don't want them around.

I've smacked and ended self-destructive behaviour immediately and permanently (with ongoing reinforcement); done timeout and simply made a child distraught and supremely insecure.

Horses for courses, as they say. [That is, people vary and what works for one person will not work for another.]

Slight aside, isn't all correction for "harmful things" just at different levels of harm? I don't for example correct my children's "poor manners" in putting their elbows on the table because I don't consider it harmful in any substantial way; presumably my parents found it harmful enough to chastise me over otherwise why would they do so. My presumption is that they felt I'd be somewhat excluded by polite society for failing to adopt societal norms of table manners.

Timeouts don’t have to involve separation from loved ones, just from the stimulus that’s causing the behavior.

You can be with your child during a timeout. It’s not jail.

This is what we do.

We have "thinking timeouts" where we got to their room or somewhere quiet with them and sit with them until they are calm enough to think

I don’t have kids but when I get really angry and step away from the situation I often get into a loop and my emotions spin out of control.

Say I’m really angry at my wife. If she leaves me alone after an argument I might go crazy for hours, throwing things at the wall, and cursing for a long time. It’s like my brain gets into an infinite loop and without new stimulus, I am just stuck there.

What works better is if she try to talks to me maybe 10 minutes after the incident. I don’t want to get into a loop and want to get out but can only do it with help or some new stimulus.

Does this happen with kids? I remember this happening when I was sent to my room as a child, but I’m bipolar so maybe it’s just me.

If you are angry for hours maybe try going to exercise or meditate(fixing this issue is actually one of the goals of meditation) or something, but that is above my pay grade.

With my kid, he sometimes does not cool down during a tantrum until he goes in his room for timeout for a few minutes, and he is always measurably calmer after timeout. The recommended timeout time is 1 minute per year of age - it's not like they're abandoned for hours.

With my kids they are always allowed to "get some space" if they want to, but we never force isolation on them (we may suggest it, and often that suggestion is accepted, but it's clear that we're available to talk if they want to).