re or perform, or anytime the child is undergoing stress of any type, are examples of possible timeout indicators (p. 2).
Timeout is not considered a punishment and it should not last for a time longer than what is needed for the developmental stage of the child. Two-year olds may only need a minute on the teacher's lap and a five-year old may need five or ten minutes, in another room, but with an adult nearby. Timeout is only considered potentially harmful if it is used as a punishment or if the child is so separated that feelings of abandonment are evoked (Ucci, p. 2).
Timeout is a method that can be misused when it is overused, whether in a school, home, or institutional setting. Delaney (1999) uses a situation in an inpatient treatment setting to demonstrate this point. This is a place where timeouts may become automatic to any of the many behavioral disturbances. As the timeouts are overused, they become more and more ineffective. Misuse may occur, when timeouts become longer and involve lengthy stays in a secluded room, in an effort to increase their effectiveness (p. 53).
Delaney concludes that timeout can be useful but only if its intent is understood. In the school setting, when the child participates in a negative behavior, he is usually rewarded by interaction with the teacher. When he is removed from the unwanted behavior and the interaction, the positive reinforcement has been withdrawn, therefore extinguishing the negative behavior. In this case, timeout interrupts the negative behavioral cycle. When the timeout becomes too long or involves a punitive location, the intervention has been changed to one of aversion technique. If the original behavior is stopped with this aversion procedure, the mechanism is no longer based on withdrawal of reinforcement. This aversion technique usually just suppresses the behavior which tends to recur when the punishment is over (pp. 52-54).
To avoid the overuse of ti...