399. Q&A: Are time-ins better than time-outs?

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:02):

Ever wonder what psychologists moms talk about when we get together, whether we’re consulting one another about a challenging case or one of our own kids, or just leaning on each other when parenting feels hard, because trust me, even when we do this for a living, it’s still hard. Joining me each week in these special Thursday shows are two of my closest friends, both moms, both psychologists, they’re the people I call when I need a sounding board. These are our unfiltered answers to your parenting questions. We’re letting you in on the conversations the three of us usually have behind closed doors. This is Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions.

(00:44):

Hello, welcome back to the Beyond the Session segment of the Securely Attached Podcast where we answer listener questions and we have Dr. Rebecca Hershberg here. Thank you for coming.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (00:55):

It’s my pleasure. I’m thrilled to be here. Been a while.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:59):

I know. And I’m particularly happy that I have you today for this question because this is very much your wheelhouse. You quite literally wrote the book on this. So I’m going to read this question. Let me know what you think. Okay. Hi, Dr. Sarah. I’m a huge fan of the podcast and both my husband and I have found it super helpful. One of my friends told me that she’s been doing quote time-ins instead of time-outs with her three and five-year-olds. But honestly, I still don’t really understand what it means or how you actually do that in the moment when your child is already losing it. I’d love for you to do a podcast episode talking about this a bit more. Thank you. So first of all, shameless plug. Dr. Hershberg wrote the Tantrum Survival Guide. So you know a thing or two about these sort of strategies and just kind of like what’s actually going to work in the long run. So I’m going to let you kick this one off.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (02:02):

I once again have to just comment on the fact that I do feel like all of this language has left a lot of parents more confused than they need to be. Like a time in versus a timeout. I think really what you want to think about, there’s two things you want to think about when your child is doing a behavior that you don’t want them to do. One is very much from Mona Delahook’s book, right? Beyond behaviors. Is this a top down behavior or is this a bottom up behavior? And I believe there’s other podcasts where we’ve talked about this, but it’s sort of like essentially, is this in the kids’ control? Is this a behavior that they are doing regularly in a way that it feels like they understand, right? Like they are regularly pulling the dog’s tail, no matter how many times you’ve talked about it and taught them about it. Versus, is there something that they do when their nervous system is completely offline? And maybe one time it involves absolutely freaking out and running over to the dog and pulling a dog’s tail, but it’s clearly the result of total dysregulation because those behaviors are going to respond to really different things.

(03:22):

Now to my mind, a time in, I’ve never really understood the term. I think it’s in response to a lot of false press about timeouts, frankly. In homes that are communicative and warm and loving, where let’s say the attachments are secure and whatever language we want to use to describe those, a time in really should be most of the time what’s happening. A time in is I’m going to connect with my kid. My kid is having a hard time. I’m going to connect with my kid. I’m going to sort of maybe pull them aside. I’m going to see if there’s anything I can do to help. And we can talk about specific behaviors. I don’t remember if this listener named anything specific, but a time in is kind of, at least the way I think about it, it’s how I run my house, right? It’s I want to look at the cause of the behavior. I don’t want to just immediately jump on a behavior and have a consequence.

(04:21):

I want to figure out what’s going on with my kid. I want to connect. I want to see if I can deescalate the situation by staying calm myself. A timeout is a very specific behavioral tool. It’s not the opposite of a time in. Again, to me, that’s where language let us arrive because someone came up with this gimmicky way to say it. A timeout is a behavioral tool that is meant to take away any reinforcement from a negative behavior, meaning taking away all attention, right? So you actively remove your attention from a child doing a behavior in the hopes that taking away your attention will lead them to realize there’s no secondary gain and to stop doing it. It’s only appropriate for behaviors that a child is in control of. And it really doesn’t always matter whether you actually do a timeout, you put your child in another place or not.

(05:18):

It’s really, originally the way it was sort of you put your child on a chair and then it was sort of research said like, actually it doesn’t matter if there’s a chair. You could just sort of put them on a mat. And then it was like, “You may not even put them on a mat.” It’s just this idea that certain behaviors get a very concrete amount of time that you disengage from your kid. You do it immediately. You do it in a planned way where you have told them this particular behavior is going to get this particular consequence. It’s not in their room. It’s not pulling the door closed. It’s not till they calm down. It’s typically, I think, a minute for every year of their age. So it would be two minutes if they’re two, three minutes of everything, and it works for certain things and it doesn’t work for others.

(06:05):

Now for a long time, people, including myself, said it only works if you do it correctly. And there’s a lot of people actually really doing it wrong. But then there was actually a really interesting study, a meta-analysis that we can link to, because I certainly don’t know the name right now, that came out saying it actually doesn’t really matter how you do it. And this is where all this research becomes really interesting. I’m going to sort of period, pause, next paragraph, because I want to hear your thoughts and I want to hear maybe we can talk about some specific examples, but I’m going to say the same thing that I say in response to parents when they ask me this or just sort of generally or on Instagram or whatever it is. It’s not one size fits all. It’s not one size fits all for a particular kid. It’s not one size fits all for a particular behavior and it’s not generally in my experience helpful to make yourself crazy with the language. “Am I going to do a timeout? Am I going to do a time in? What script should I use here? Should I use this script for this? “Pause, think about what’s going on with your child. In the moment, if your child is doing something that you don’t like or that’s disruptive, pause.

(07:20):

Ideally, that’s the most important thing you can do. Honestly, that’s a lot of my book. Pause. And then respond intent. If you can, respond intentionally and intentionally might look like this seems like a timeout based on the conversations I’ve had with my kid before, or what is going on with my kid? This is out of the blue. Oh, I felt their forehead. It looks like they have a fever coming on. Intentionally maybe, you know what? We’re leaving for the doctor’s office in five minutes. We have an appointment. I’m going to give them another chocolate chip cookie. It’s just this idea that as the parent who is connected and attuned to your child, you can pause and stop and respond to how it feels right to you. And most of the time, in my opinion, especially if we’re talking about typically developing kids in close, generally healthy families, it’s going to be fine. And then if you end up in a pattern with a particular behavior or whatever, then we can sort of look a little bit more nuanced, but I hear an anxiety in this question that I think is not needed.

Dr. Sarah Bren (08:27):

Yeah. I agree. And it’s also not rare. I think this is a very … I think so many parents, especially parents of young little kids, they’re figuring this out kind of as they go. Maybe it’s their first kid, they’re consuming a lot of information and it’s confusing.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (08:50):

Right, they’re feeling understandably, it’s confusing and they’re feeling understandably like, ” Oh, I want to do the thing that’s going to stop the behavior. Is there a thing that if I start to do it, my kid will never do X, Y, Z again. “And the bottom line is no, there’s not.”

Dr. Sarah Bren (09:04):

Yeah. Sorry.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (09:05):

And so it’s really just about getting to know your kid, using these general strategies that we talk about a lot on this podcast, whether it’s connecting with your kid, using positive attention, using specific praise, using planned ignoring, like you sort of kind of play around. And again, the most important thing you can do is pause and regulate yourself, whether you’re using a timeout or a time in or this or that or whatever. And we don’t have to necessarily make it more complicated, which so much of what’s out there does, I think.

Dr. Sarah Bren (09:39):

Yeah.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (09:40):

These behaviors that kids at these young ages show are all development … I shouldn’t want to say all, but for the purpose of what I’m saying now, most are developmentally appropriate. They’re typical, they are important, right? Your child is testing limits, your child is developing autonomy, your child … And we need to respond in warm and connected and consistent and clear ways, clear expectations, like all the things.

Dr. Sarah Bren (10:08):

Right. I think too, what I always get stuck on with families when they want this answer, like I get asked this question sometimes and I’m like, before I can answer that question, I kind of have to rewind the tape with you a little bit. And kind of like to your point, like, what are we using them for and what is the outcome we’re trying to achieve? Because there are those two questions without the answers to those questions, it’s really hard to know if a timeout will be the thing or a time in or whatever, because you could do a very strategic series of timeouts and really extinguish a behavior. You could do a million timeouts and never extinguish that behavior because to your point, you’re treating something with the wrong tool. So I like to think about anything whether … And again, semantics, we’ll put that aside for now, whatever you got to call it, whatever you would define a timeout or a time in, I think there’s utility of having that in your toolbox and you need a lot of tools in your toolbox, but more importantly than the tools in your toolbox, and they have to be good tools that you know how to use.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (11:30):

That are evidence based, right?

Dr. Sarah Bren (11:32):

Yeah. We want good quality tools, but you also need to know how to use them effectively. If you keep trying to hammer in a nail with a screwdriver, you’re going to not be very successful. So nothing wrong with the hammer or the screwdriver. It’s just that you don’t know how to use it. So one is build your toolbox with quality tools that you know how to use for them to be effective, but more important than the toolbox is diagnosing the it that we’re solving for and what we would like it to look like because if you’re trying to extinguish, let’s say, an aggressive behavior, like hitting, we have to first understand, to your point, Rebecca. We have to zoom out and say, first question, is this a developmental kind of thing? Is this because we have a two year old on our hands who doesn’t have any breaks and when they get mad enough, there’s nothing that’s going to stop them from hitting.

(12:32):

It doesn’t matter because at two, that’s what happens. You can’t time out hitting from a two year old if they’re mad because a 10 at two looks like hitting. That’s just realistic developmental expectations. Now, does that mean that it’s okay to hit and that we’re kind of like, “Well, what am I going to do about it? ” And we just allow it to happen? No, but it just means we play a much bigger role in preventing that from hurting somebody. We are going to be buddy guarding our two year old if they tend to hit when they’re hot. We aren’t going to give them … We’re going to protect them from that impulse because it’s still damaging, but it’s not on them to hit the brakes on that because they don’t have those breaks yet. If it’s a seven year old that’s hitting, we have a different challenge that we’re going to work on. So first you have to look at like the development.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (13:31):

The approach that I talk about in my book, which I just want to talk about for a second is, right, there’s these sort of building blocks of response and you, and you can’t just jump to the top one, right? And the first one is sort of you have to know what’s going on with your kid developmentally. Kind of what phase are they at? That’s exactly what you’re saying. What phase are they at? What’s deliberate versus just their stage of development and nervous system and brain. Second thing you have to know is your own stuff, right? What are your own triggers? What are the things that may be developmentally appropriate, but they make you bananas, right?

Dr. Sarah Bren (14:04):

Yes.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (14:05):

And then the third thing is the tools, right? The tools. And then I would say you just added a fourth one, which is the timing of the tools potentially, but blocks one and two sort of suggest that. And I actually start the book by talking about the thing that’s sort of the stereotypical tantrum, which is the child in the supermarket back before Instacart, if you see a child freaking out that they want a candy bar and every person that passes that parent child thinks that they know the answer to this. It’s like, well, you can’t say yes because you can’t give into a tantrum. But then what if you find out that this is the child’s first outing with the parent since the new baby sister has been born? And suddenly it’s like, okay, well maybe the tantrum is actually less about the candy bar and more about this new baby sister.

(14:53):

Well, then the candy bar is actually not necessarily going to solve anything or not solve anything. It’s not about the candy bar. What if the child hasn’t slept? What if the child is getting a fever? What if the mom has a history of an eating disorder? And so the mom tenses up every time she’s walking through the candy aisle and the child is picking up on that. You can look at the same behavior, and this is why I think it’s very important that there are influencers out there who have no credentials to do any of this. You can look at the same behavior, unless you can pan out and look at the situation holistically. And I think as psychologists, we’re particularly well trained to do that, although we’re certainly not the only ones, you’re not going to be able to come up with a plan that’s actually addressing what’s happening and whether it’s a timeout, whether it’s a time in, like again, we’re getting stuck on a surface level here, that’s the least important part of the issue.

Dr. Sarah Bren (15:46):

Totally. And so that, just to go back to this idea of you have your tools, but let’s look at how … I want to give parents a few sort of strategies for diagnosing the it. I don’t want to call it a problem. I want to call it the focus. Is it a screw? I’m trying to screw in. Is it a nail I’m trying to hit in? What am I doing? What am I working with? What is my child struggling with in this moment? Is it dysregulation, to your point? Are they 10 out of 10? Doesn’t matter how many timeouts you do. 10 out of 10, we’re not really talking about skill acquisition here. We’re talking about regulation. So the tool I’m going to pull, if I’ve diagnosed this as a regulation issue, and this is not a good skill, this kid is clunky with their negotiation skills with peers and they’re not able to say, “I want to turn.” Or, “Can I use that when you’re finished?” Or, “No, I’m using that right now.” That’s skill building.

(16:50):

Again, you’re not going to build those skills with timeouts, maybe with time ins, but probably not. It’s really going to be in the before the next time, like the cold moments in the day-to-day life where we’re going to build assertiveness skills and communication skills and teach them how to say no, or can I have a turn? It’s not really going to be in the tricky moment, but if it’s not a regulation issue and it is a skill issue, and we already know that, then we’re going to try to figure out, to your point, like you described this in the beginning, there are worlds in which a timeout is a tool in your toolbox you can leverage for repeated behaviors that a child tends to like lean to because they have limited tools in their toolbox, but they keep going to it when they’re not completely lost their mind dysregulated, but it’s a little bit more top down.

(17:50):

It’s a little bit like, I’m actually trying to solve a problem here. I’m just doing a really clunky job at doing it because I’m a little kid and I don’t have great skills yet, in which case timeouts could potentially be used exactly the way you described, Rebecca, where it’s, “I’m going to use this as a teaching tool. Hi, kiddo, this is the expectation and this is again, you prep them for it, you introduce it to them in a cool moment, not in the heat of the moment, but ahead of time, before the next thing.” Say, “This hasn’t been working. I think this is what’s going on. I want to help you. This is how I’m going to help you so you understand this is what we’re going to do and if you can’t do that, and I’m going to help you as much as I can to do it, it being the desired behavior.” If you can’t do it, AKA, you do the non-desired behavior, then I’m going to give you, I’m going to have you sit here for a couple minutes and just going to have you cool off.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (18:53):

Not even cool. I would just argue with that because the whole point is they’re not necessarily dysregulated, right?

Dr. Sarah Bren (18:57):

Sure. You’re right. What would you say? I’m trying to think how I would just kind of finish that.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (19:03):

It’s the skill thing. I’m going to have you sit here because I hope that just sitting here without any of my attention for a couple minutes won’t be that fun and because it’s not that fun, it’ll help your brain learn not to do that thing anymore. The idea is it’s the same way that I give a consequence to a kid if the consequences is no screen time, right? My hope is that this is something that will help your brain learn not to do this behavior anymore. Again, I’m on your side. I want to teach you not to do this behavior anymore and nothing else seems to be working. I hope this works. Let’s give it a shot, right? Because parents often … We’re told so many things about they have to sit … Taking a break to calm down is a really different thing from a timeout. Taking a break to calm down is like we need to take a break to calm down.

Dr. Sarah Bren (19:53):

And that’s more of a quote time in because co-regulation is part of that calming down process. So again, it’s like, if you know what you’re trying to solve for, it’s going to inform the tool you pull from your toolbox. If I want my kid to calm down and practice regulation skills, I actually am going to get a lot farther in achieving that goal with my child if I model that and help co-regulate them. So a time in, again, this idea of like, “I’m going to stay with you, ” is to down-regulate them.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (20:24):

Which is why if you send your child to your room when they’re super dysregulated for a timeout, of course it’s not going to … Then it’s everything we’ve talked about, but I’m sort of just getting … I’m feeling passionately about this because there’s so much misunderstanding around it and there’s so much … A timeout is a tool, right? Just like you said, I just want to repeat it. It’s a teaching tool. We teach our kid, we say, “This is something we’re going to start doing in the hopes that again, I’m going to work really … You cannot pull the dog’s tail. We’ve talked about it. We’ve looked at pictures of dogs. We’ve talked about what it would feel like. I’m going to keep doing that. I really hope that you’re able when you’re angry to yell and scream and snap your feet and not pull the dog’s tail.” If that doesn’t work and you do end up anyway, even though you know you’re not supposed to, even though you know you’re not supposed to, if you end up pulling the dog’s tail anyway, here’s what’s going to happen.

(21:18):

I’m going to take out a timer and you’re going to sit here, so let’s practice, right? Let’s practice. Let’s see what it looks like. And the hope is that maybe it’ll kind of not be fun and boring. Trust me, I know. I love hanging out with you. It’s going to not be great for me either, but the hope is that it teaches your brain the next time you’re about to pull the dog’s tail, not to do it. I just said that in a lot of words, ideally you pare it down, but that’s the idea. It’s not like this is a consequence. I’m so angry with you. You get a timeout, go to your … That’s not going to help anyway.

Dr. Sarah Bren (21:51):

Right. And I think that’s the problem is most of the time, and I’ve been guilty of this too, like I pull that tool, the ah tool when I’m done and I’m lost it. So you said this earlier, but some of this is really knowing your own stuff so that you can get less triggered by it. But I do think if you really want, if you’re listening, if you clicked on this episode, because you’re really curious about what is the difference between a time in and a timeout, which one’s going to solve the problem of the behavior I don’t like, the better way to answer that question, I promise you, and this is frustrating, but really, really accurate and probably going to guide you in the right direction in the long run, is to not ask that question, but instead say, “What is it that I’m trying to solve for?

(22:49):

Why do I think it’s happening? How much of is it developmentally appropriate and I need to figure out ways to scaffold and support on my end to buffer my child from this behavior ricocheting everything. And if it’s a skill based thing, how do I build that skill outside of the heat of the moment?” And if it’s a regulation thing, how do I work on regulation with my kid in the moment and out of the moment? And sometimes these tools like time ins and timeouts might be something you grab to address that. But really, behavioral change is a long process and it’s really much more about a holistic, supportive, curious stance on and really looking under the hood of the behaviors, what they’re telling you. And if you think of it from that standpoint, you’re going to know a lot more about what to do in the moment.

(23:55):

You’re going to feel so much more confident and it won’t be about extinguishing a behavior. It will be about supporting your child’s growth in the long term. And so when these tricky behaviors happen, you also won’t feel so like, “Eek, I’m failing,” because we’ve just given you permission to say, “That’s not the job.” The job is not for you to extinguish all of your children’s behaviors and make them a lovely, little, beautiful, packaged cabbage patch doll. It’s not going to happen, but you can really scaffold the learning and you’ll move them in the right direction and you’ll learn to tolerate some of the bumps along the way because they will happen and you definitely got this. And thank you. Absolutely. Thank you, Dr. Hershberg.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (24:38):

You got this. My absolute pleasure. Always wonderful to be here.

Dr. Sarah Bren (24:44):

Thank you so much for listening. As you can hear, parenting is not one size fits all. It’s nuanced and it’s complicated. So I really hope that this series where we’re answering your questions really helps you to cut through some of the noise and find out what works best for you and your unique child. If you have a burning parenting question, something you’re struggling to navigate or a topic you really want us to shed light on or share research about, we want to know, go to drsarahbren.com/question to send in anything that you want, Rebecca, Emily, and me to answer in Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions. That’s drsarahbren.com/question. And check back for a brand new securely attached next Tuesday. And until then, don’t be a stranger.