WHEN TO USE TIME OUT WITH LEVELS

Under these conditions I will take more drastic steps then a general time out.

I may place the child on “LINE OF SIGHT” restriction.
This means that he can only play where I or another capable individual can see exactly what he is doing. The drawbacks to this are:

• The parent’s time is restricted as well.
• There seemed to be no clear guidelines of how long to keep the child on line of sight
• The child did not appear to learn appropriate behavior skills
• Line of sight became a power struggle and everyone’s stress levels went up

One mother was in tears as she told me that she couldn’t trust the child out of her sight, but the thought of never making a move without him next to her was more than she could bear. Remember these are tough kids. This little boy was only four and had gotten out of his seatbelt and began hitting his mother on the freeway. If she turned her back, he was hitting or kicking younger children. He had several major tantrums each day. The mother had reached her stress level. Telling her that she had to keep this child in her line of sight to keep him and the other children safe was more than she could handle.

This led me to create the “time out with levels”. It has been effective with some of the tougher situations.

On the next page I will explain the levels and the basic rules.