Lesson 3a: The Time-Out Chair

When hubby and I first discussed having children a couple of years after we were married, we were determined to raise our children differently than our parents. We did not believe in spanking children. We did not want to shield them from the truth. We wanted them to feel that they could tell us anything without fear. Most importantly, we wanted to be consistent with our decisions.

My parents believed in spanking children with a wooden board titled, "Heat for the Seat" with a comical fella with a smarting tush as decoration. When I was young, I would see that come out of the drawer and ran to my room and locked the door. I always pushed the envelope.

In lieu of spanking, the time-out chair worked wonders. In fact, I took delight in tossing the paddle in the trash in front of my Dad when he handed it down to me to use on my children.

To use the time-out chair technique, all we needed was an old-fashioned kitchen timer and a chair within our view. Our youngest, Rachel, spent so many minutes on the designated chair that after a year of using this technique, we'd give her the look and she'd walk to the chair on her own.

How does the time-out chair work?

1. Provide one warning that if the negative behavior continued, the child will go to the timeout chair for 3 minutes.

2. Once the child is in the chair, set the timer, within his/her site, for 3 minutes.

3. The child has to maintain contact with the chair. I can tell you that Rachel spent a lot of time standing next to the chair with her finger touching its arm; after all, a finger on a chair is contact. She maintained her control while we had the ultimate control - a win-win for all of us.

4. If the child loses contact with the chair, the time gets reset for three more minutes plus the remaining minutes of the original three minutes. Rachel was exceptionally skilled at racking up the minutes.