Ming from Agents of Speech explains why timeouts don't work well for speech delayed children: they only produce short-term compliance and can backfire when no one's watching. Positive reinforcement and teaching replacement behaviors like polite requests work better long-term by building intrinsic motivation.
Hey, this is Ming here, speech therapist from agentsofspeech.com today we're talking about timeouts. So do timeouts work for speech delayed children or children on the spectrum? The answer is yes and no. Okay, so first of all, timeout is a form of punishment. So in therapy we have punishments and rewards. Right. We also have positive and negative punishments and whatever are positive or negative rewards. These are the things that we're always. We use within our expertise. Right? So let me talk about what timeout is. Timeout is when you remove something that they like doing, like their free time. You're removing like they're going to jail. You remove their rights to go out, to have a coffee, let's say, just because they're being timed out of. You know, in jail is out of life, but, you know, and at home, it might be from playtime, it might be from meal time, it might be from whatever. Okay, so it's a punishment. You have to understand that. All right? That's the first thing I want you to remember. It's a removal. It's a removal type of punishment. It's not an add on punishment. It's like if you do this, then I will hit you. Like that's an add on. Right. I added something. Okay. Anyways, so let's move past that. Second point is that rewards always work better than punishments. That's just the truth I've talked about on this channel, sorry about my cat. Is that they've tried. There's a study, if you watch back, about why rewards work better in our channel is that, you know, have you had ever had a. Like a traffic ticket? Right. That's a form of punishment too. That's an add on. I'm being fined for it. What if I get rewarded whenever I do something? Correct. The study in Richmond, Vancouver, with a lot of Chinese people and a lot of Asian people, is that the traffic violations went down a lot just because people felt good about themselves being rewarded whenever they did something good, even if it's small. Okay, so punishments never work that well. It's a short term thing. It's like it only works when the enforcer is around, which is me or you. Right. That's why these things don't last forever. Okay, if your punishment is timeout, what if there's no one to timeout your kid? All right, what if you put them in a room full of chocolates and they're not supposed to eat chocolates because they're lactose intolerant? Let's say it's not Dark chocolate. Okay. And then they're stuck there. There's take your chances and eat everything. And then when you find out you timed them out so what happens is that they were already rewarded for taking the chance and eating and getting rewarded and having all that dopamine hit when they actually stole the chocolate. Right. And then you punish them. What does that mean? That it's worth it. Okay, that's first of all. Second of all is that when you're not around, he or she's going to do it. Same as when we are jaywalking or like doing like we're speeding. When we see that there are no cameras and no police. We're gonna do it. Right? I'm gonna do it. I'm just gonna tell you, I'm just being honest with you that if it's convenient for me and I'm breaking some laws that aren't very. That aren't like, you know, like killing or whatever, then, you know, most of people are gonna take those chances. Okay? So other than that, rewarding is a much, much, much better thing. A lot of studies talk about how rewarding actually will have the child internally motivated to do something. Correct. When you're not around even to reward that person, he will still do the right thing. Okay? That's just what we've learned so far about rewarding versus punishing. Okay? The last thing I want to talk about is that timeout is a tactic and not a strategy. And that's the same like tactic is something that short term strategy is something that is long term. Let me ask you, how do you fade out timeout, right? How do you make sure that someone progressively understands the meaning of why they shouldn't do something? Does timeout help them or not? Not really. How do you fade it out? Can I time you out less and less and less? Then the punishment will be less and less and less effective. Then. Therefore the behavior would be more and more and more often, you know, I'm saying so therefore it's a tactic. Sometimes we do use it. All right? We do use it when we get really angry and it's like a consequence that we don't want to use is that, hey, man, you go over to the corner, I don't want to listen to you anymore. All right? It's sometimes I even. I do it as well as a form of punishment. And that's something that you have to bear in mind. The long term strategy is always to reward and always to teach other ways of getting what they want, okay? A replacement. And that often the replacement is using language, asking politely, you know, looking around and seeing alternative methods, teaching them to think whether if there's a tool or a method to get what they want without disturbing other people. There's loads of behavioral intervention things that you can do. These things you cannot analyze yourself. You need to find a therapist, a behavioral therapist to help you with that. But what you can do is to reward your kid. Whenever good behavior happens, just do it consistently and randomly. Then your child will start doing more and more and more good things. Okay, so that's it for this video. Just a short video to tell you about what I feel about time out. And that's pretty much it. So if you want to learn more about home therapy, please go to agents of Speech.com checklist to grab a free list of tools and toys that I recommend you getting when you're starting home therapy. Okay, so that's it. I'll see you next week. Bye. Bye.
