Why Timeouts Don’t Work — and What Actually Teaches Emotional Regulation

It’s not about punishment or permissiveness. It’s about working with our kids brains instead of against them. Psychology + physiology + practice.

Let’s handle the elephant in the room.

Timeouts were supposed to be the gentle alternative for 90’s parents who wanted to break the cycle of violence.

Instead of spanking, you sent your child to the naughty step or timeout chair. Quiet followed. That’s better right?

I have some tough love at the end about this… but first lets name the progress.

Yes…. Timeouts were and are a better parenting tool than hitting.

But the neuroscience research of the last quarter century has revealed something more complex:

1. silence isn’t always calm

2. compliance isn’t always growth

3. kids need co-regulation not isolation

When a young child is sent away in a state of distress, they often shut down, not to self-regulate, but to survive. The reason is simple… their Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) just isn’t developed enough yet to self-regulate.

Should we be surprised that we see teens and young adults, raised with timeouts, self-isolating and numbing with phones whenever they’re the least bit upset?

It seems to me like exactly what we taught them to do.

That said, I’m not saying we totally ditch timeouts. I’m offering us an brain-based, effective, and non-damaging way to use them.

First: The Brain Stuff….

Left totally to their own devices, kids generally do not “regulate” their biggest feelings. The PFC, the part of your brain that chimes in to say, “Actually this isn’t that big of a deal; I should stop freaking out,” simply isn’t there for kids.

Their big feelings can’t turn off with logic. They only resolve through nervous system regulation, a process children often can’t access alone.

When they spiral and get overwhelmed, a child’s brain flips into a reactive state, run by the amygdala (the fear/threat part of their brain). When that happens their PFC goes offline.

Once they lose access, they need help bringing it back online. This is called co-regulation, and it’s not optional. It’s how the brain wires for self-control over time (Porges, 2011).

This means timeouts, while they sometimes yield the external result we’re looking for, often do so without actually helping our kids learn to process their big emotions.

Taking Timeouts, Instead of Giving Them

The truth is, most parents send kids away for themselves NOT for the sake of the child… I’ll get to that in a minute, but lets assume for a moment we still use timeouts.

But….

Instead of “Giving them a timeout” we “Call a time out”.

As any high level athlete knows, timeouts are one of the most effective tools a coach has to break up chaos and get players back on track.

In baseball, basketball, and volleyball especially, coaches will often call a time out to pause, assess the situation with their players, and reset.

Timeouts are NOT punitive measures in sports imposed to isolate and shame players for poor performance, they are adaptive pauses where a regulated coach can co-regulate with their dysregulated players.

This is exactly what I am proposing parents do.

When your child begins to misbehave, meltdown, or spiral out of control, take beat, call a time out, huddle up, and reassess how we can change and adapt.

Contrary to my comment sections, proximity doesn’t reward bad behavior, it models how to move through it. Choosing to look forward at future behavior rather than back a past behavior is not “being soft.”

It’s being strategic.

You’re helping their brain reengage, their nervous system settle, and this critical moment to become regulation practice.

The Hard Truth about Timeouts

I’m ending this Substack with a hard truth I feel I have to name.

I think many 80’s-90’s parents, parents like my mom, were giving time outs as much for themselves as for their kids.

Our neurological default is often to do the exact thing to our child as was done to us. This is because, as I talk about in my book (Punishment-Free Parenting: The Brain-Based Way to Raise Kids Without Raising Your Voice) so called Observational Learning is the PRIMARY way humans learn.

When parents who were hit sent their kid to a timeout instead of hitting them, that was often as much about the parent’s dysregulation as the child. They sent them away so that they wouldn’t lose it and smack them.

Today, I hear the same thing from parents every day.

“The timeout is for me, as much as for them.”

I get it. If you need to step away before you do something worse, I’m with you.

All I’m asking is that we continue to parent ourselves so we can be a little less triggered and a little more responsive tomorrow.

Bonus for Paid Subscribers: How to Build a Calm down Corner and ditch the Timeout Chair

Instead of isolation, create invitation: a space that helps the child regulate.

This could look like:

• A corner with soft textures, visuals, and breathing prompts

• A “feelings thermometer” that tracks intensity without judgment

• A routine: sit, sip water, count four breaths, then come back and talk

These tools externalize the regulation process so children can internalize it over time. I have a downloadable PDF for Paid Subscribers below that you can use to design you’re own calm down corner.