DES MOINES, Iowa – After failing to finish a reading assignment, 8-year-old Isabel Loeffler was sent to the school’s time-out room — a converted storage area under a staircase — where she was left alone for three hours. The autistic Iowa girl wet herself before she was finally allowed to leave. Appalled, her parents removed her from the school district and filed a lawsuit.
Some educators say time-out rooms are being used with increased frequency to discipline children with behavioral disorders. And the time outs are probably doing more harm than good, they add.
“It really is a form of abuse,” said Ken Merrell, head of the Department for Special Education and Clinical Sciences at the University of Oregon. “It’s going to do nothing to change the behavior. You’re using it as an isolation booth.”
Segregating children removes them from the positive aspect of the classroom and highlights that they’re different from other children, said Stephen Camarata, director of the Kennedy Center for Behavioral Research at Vanderbilt University. And isolating an autistic child might be particularly counterproductive.
“They don’t like being around other people so they might increase their negative behavior because they view it a reward,” he said.
Though there is no data on the use of time-out rooms, Camarata speculates that they’ve become widespread as schools confronted a growing enrollment of children with behavior disorders.
“I believe it’s because classrooms are much less flexible with more focus on compliance,” he said.
The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund in Berkeley, Calif., receives calls from parents across the country who complain about time-out rooms, said Cheryl Theis, an education advocate for the organization.
“Parents call and say their child’s disability has been exacerbated by this and are traumatized by this,” she said.
Merrell said he’s encountered time-out rooms he felt were unsafe.
This really makes me sad and upset. I cant fathom why they would put any child in a time out room alone, let alone one with a disability. If this were my child, I would not only take them out of the school, but also sue the school for neglect (unless of course there is a time out room monitor, which I highly doubt!) Why would the school want to take on that much of a liability, if the child runs away and gets hurt, its their fault, and they cant guarantee that wont happen unless they lock the child in, which is illegal. What’s next, bringing back corporal punishment??
What I wouldn’t give to be put in time-out for three hours all by myself. As a child I would have hated it, but now I would eagerly embrace the opportunity to nap.
this kind of thing is EXACTLY the reason that we decided to homeschool our 4th grader. She would go to school and be kept virtually isolated until she came home at night! In class she was set apart in the back corner of the classroom. During lunch she was forced to sit alone with no talking or looking at other students. At recess, she was told to walk the perimeter of the asphalt with no talking (once again!) At the end of the day, she often had to wait for the other students to leave before she could get ready and go home herself. Urk.
After about 3 days of this we had had enough. She would come home and go nuts! (Just because she hadn’t communicated with another human ALL DAY!!) It was either that or she would burst into tears and not be able to stop. It made her feel so bad about herself, it took us 6 MONTHS to get her to do math because if she got it wrong she would flip out! (Tears, hitting self, etc.) Problems we never had like this before.
It seems that classrooms today want robots. Period. Any one-on-one instruction has been pretty much done away with. So has accomodation for gifted or needy children.
I can understand a special place for a time out for MOST students…but students with some sort of documented behavior problems (like autism), it may be a total waste. They may not even get that they are being punished. I have a friend with an autistic son, and the only real punishment they can use on him is to hold him tightly in their lap away from whatever caused the misbehavior. If they leave him alone he self mutilates, if they do nothing the misbehavior gets worse.
For a normal child to understand timeout, though…it can’t be 3 hours long. For a school aged child, 10-15 minutes is probably MAX. Jocelynn can’t even remember why she is being punished sometimes when I let her out of her room after her time out.
It seems that classrooms today want robots. Period. Any one-on-one instruction has been pretty much done away with. So has accomodation for gifted or needy children.
Pretty sad really…
I seperated this from my other post for a reason, cuz it may be slightly off topic. Anyway…I think it’s not that they want robots…but they can’t handle the plethora of behaviors. In a group of 24, you might have about half of those kids that know how to sit properly and behave. The other half are probably a mishmash of undiagnosed behavior problems, diagnosed problems (but left in general population classes b/c the problem isn’t “serious” or the parents are unable to give special attention in a private facility), sleep deprived, hungry, or have some other problem be it physical, emotional, or mental that is keeping them from learning in that setting. (Those things could range from again, sleep deprivation all the way to brokenhearted over a parents divorce.)
Children are being given more and more to do that focuses on passing tests, their parents are more distant (jobs and such), and the teachers simply become babysitters that pass out work sheets. If they can’t get one child to do what they’ve assigned, the whole classroom erupts in chaos.
I was at a school that had a time-out room. They had a sliding scale.. five minutes for the first infraction, then fifteen, then an hour. Given how short the first trip would be, it was very *very* easy to get sent there. Considering that the teacher often would forget what number a given person was on, I often wound up getting the hour treatment.. or two hours, when they would forget to come get me because everyone had gone to lunch.
Oddly, I didn’t mind it that much. I used to take naps, which ticked off the teachers: “You’re supposed to be thinking about what you did wrong!”. If they caught me napping, they’d tack another sentence onto my time (come on, now, what is *that* supposed to teach?). Eventually, to save the trouble, I learned to simply sit and meditate quietly. Frankly though, I blame spending so much time in there as the reason I never really memorized all my multiplication tables.
I point out that the quiet room was often anything but, as we did have some seriously cranky students, who would scream and pound on the walls.
I think a lot of these strange punishments are coming about because teachers are no longer allowed to discipline students, for fear of lawsuits. Sending them to the principal’s office doesn’t work, because the principal has enough to deal with. Detention doesn’t work, because the kids aren’t old enough to connect ‘misbehave now = punishment later’ any more than they can ‘behave now = reward later’.
...I think a lot of these strange punishments are coming about because teachers are no longer allowed to discipline students, for fear of lawsuits. Sending them to the principal’s office doesn’t work, because the principal has enough to deal with. Detention doesn’t work, because the kids aren’t old enough to connect ‘misbehave now = punishment later’ any more than they can ‘behave now = reward later’.
Oddly enough, Robin, I totally agree with you. One of the major problems we have with children today is that they are being raised without the respect/fear of people in authority. I believe that respect is composed of at least a sinificant protion of the knowledge of the punishment that will be had should one not do as they are told. When i was going to grade-high school, each teacher had a paddle. On your third infraction (Yes, there were still warning and a very precise system of restrictions leading up to “swats”.) you wqould recieve 1 tp 3 swats in the hallway. All parents signed a release at the beginning of the school year and knew in advance if their child mis-behaved, there were repercussions. (Literally…)
After recieving a swat, (or three) parents would be informed, but as far as the teacher was concerned, the matter was finished. (And, once my parents were informed, it normallt meant another paddling at home.) One rarely broke the same rule(s) twice.
Nowadays, teachers and parents both, are afraid to discipline a child. A large segment of society has decided that it is in some way “damaging” to the child. Instead, excuses are made, and ‘workarounds’ are arranged, all so that the child never really has to ‘feel bad’. *sigh* Children today have no respect for adults, because they know that adults cannot truly punish them…
And it looks like it isn’t going to be getting better any time soon….
Nowadays, teachers and parents both, are afraid to discipline a child. A large segment of society has decided that it is in some way “damaging” to the child. Instead, excuses are made, and ‘workarounds’ are arranged, all so that the child never really has to ‘feel bad’. *sigh* Children today have no respect for adults, because they know that adults cannot truly punish them…
And it looks like it isn’t going to be getting better any time soon….
This is my biggest worry for my own kids. Not understanding that authority is in place for a reason. Yes, there have been FABULOUS minds that bulked authority and did their own thing…but what percentage is that in terms of our population? 1 in a million? 10 million…a trillion? My mom used to have something on her fridge about authority. It got old and fell apart but it said something about following the rules. You could only break the rules if your actions were honorable, and meant something better for everyone, not just yourself.
Authority has little to do with punishment and more to do with keeping people safe. In a group of 20 kids…if ONE kid started throwing chairs around the room…there are 21 people at risk for injury…the kid, the other 19 students, and the teacher. I don’t want my kid to be one of those kids…We have a private school picked out for her already. I wanted to homeschool, but with her stubbornness, she just isn’t learning what I am teaching. I think she feels a little trapped. I am mom, plus I am teacher. There is no seperation and she doesn’t understand the difference between mom and Jocelynn with a coloring book and teacher & Jocelynn with a worksheet.
It seems that classrooms today want robots. Period. Any one-on-one instruction has been pretty much done away with. So has accomodation for gifted or needy children.
Its true.
Its cruel really, leaving an autistic kid in a time-out room. Kids are mentally un stable so with their behavior as Dj said they wany robots. My school does not have time-out rooms but they do send students too their principal or they give them notes too parents. If i was a teacher or at leas a principal i would suggest less drastic and more helpful schools for disabled students. Honestly i think we should have seperate schools for things like these.
