Thank you Slate and Alan Kazdin for the article on the use of time-out. As a therapist, I worked for years with emotionally disturbed children and used time-out successfully. So many parents and child care providers use the technique inappropriately, such as giving one minute of time-out per age of the child. 2-3 minutes tops is appropriate for any age child (up to about age 10). Time-out simply helps to take the emotion out of a situaton for both child and adult, then teaches how to pay attention to and talk calmly about the child's behavior, and what he/she can do next time when faced with a similar situation. This is part of inductive parenting, where parents teach and children learn that their behavior affects others. This helps develop empathy and a sense of personal responsibility, which we certainly need more of in today's world.

In response to others in this forum, time-out, like any form of discipline, can be altered depending on the personality of the child, but we should not be asking the child to apologize for poor behavior if they clearly do not feel bad about their actions. That teaches a child to "play the game" of apologizing, hoping that things will magically become better with an "I'm sorry."