Regarding timeouts: I found that when punishing children with a timeout, they were not allowed to do anything else but think about the action, they did that got them on a timeout and when they could give me a satisfactory answer, then and only then were they off the timeout . If they did not know why, then it was explained and the child had to explain it back. I also did not use this everytime, sometimes it was as simple as taking away that book, game or toy they liked so much. This seemed to work very well and I was fortunate not to have to punish too often.