The Educative Time-Out Intervention in Reducing Challenging Behaviors 

Children's challenging behaviors are means of communicating an inner need. Emotional triggers are the primary reasons for disruptive behaviors (Education, 2018). Therefore, caregivers must understand the necessity of nurturing the student's emotional bank accounts. Teachers and parenting practices significantly affect the children's welfare. Implementing a technique to remediate or reduce the frequency of challenging behaviors requires following the procedures to achieve the needed results. Time-out is a therapeutic strategy that aligns with positive reinforcement to alter a child's problematic behavior. Time-out guidelines must be implemented by detecting the effect of external factors upon the child, resilient discussion, and respecting the child's dignity. These guidelines are:

•        Time-out is implemented as a consequence of challenging behaviors after analyzing the instructional and environmental factors and ensuring the student does not demonstrate skills' lacking
•         Replace the child's setting or remove a tangible reinforcement in a dignified manner
•        The scientific duration of Time-out must be short, around one to three minutes max for a child, and one minute per student's age.
•         Time-out intervention must align with a positive discipline strategy, not punishment (Central, 2022).
•         Depriving students' bathroom, lunch breaks, and the rest of the instructional period is prohibited. 

Unfortunately, teachers or parents utilize time-out as a punishment strategy to change the challenging behavior without paying attention to time-out principles. The incident below will demonstrate how teachers may violate the time-out principles and negatively affect students’ well-being. A KG2 child who presents a series of disciplinary issues such as talking with friends, yelling, and sometimes throwing objects to express anger. The teacher isolates the child in the punishment chair on the corner without letting the child know why. After that, she referred to the child through his inappropriate behaviors and did not differentiate between the child and his behavior. Another violation, the teacher uses time-out as a punishment, not as a positive tool to co-regulate the child. She implemented the time-out intervention without determining the environmental and instructional factors and if the child lacked the required skills. The teacher humiliates the child and isolates him without communicating with the child. Consequently, the child stops the disruptive behavior for a short while but later demonstrates a high frequency of these patterns. Accordingly, the unwanted behaviors increased due to the implementation gap of Time-out without following the guidelines.   

Teachers must approach and acknowledge the student that these inappropriate behaviors are unacceptable in an emotional and soft voice tone. Moreover, bending at the child’s eye level and making respectful eye contact to discuss these patterns is essential in enhancing the child’s response. Research has proved that the devastating impact of implementing time-out intervention without guidelines and positive reinforcement affects the students’ well-being and extends to the adolescence phase (Wolf, 2006). Children need communication, not isolation, to demonstrate better performance.

References

Central, I. (2022). Retrieved from https://www.interventioncentral.org/behavioral-interventions/challenging-students/time-out-reinforcement#:~:text=Time%2Dout%20from%20reinforcement%20(%22,tandem%20with%20positive%20discipline%20techniques.

Education, A. C. (2018). Retrieved from https://ace.instructure.com/courses/1828475/modules/items/32245325

Wolf, T. L. (2006). TIME-OUT INTERVENTIONS AND STRATEGIES: A BRIEF REVIEW AND RECOMMENDATIONS.