are "time-out" rooms in schools abuse?

Are "time-out rooms" in schools abuse?

Some parents and educators are speaking out against "time-out rooms" at schools, saying they're used too often to discipline kids with behavioral disorders -- and that they harm more than they help.

One autistic eight-year-old in Iowa was left in a small room by herself for three hours after acting out, and her parents have filed a lawsuit against the school district. Read more about it here.
Posted by Amy Rolph at October 20, 2008 3:00 p.m.
Categories: Elementary schools, World and nation
Comments
#200500

Posted by unregistered user at 10/20/08 3:47 p.m.

I've never heard of time out rooms, but they sound appalling. There are certainly none in my children's Seattle (public) schools but if there were, I don't think parents would stand for it for a minute.
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#200534

Posted by unregistered user at 10/20/08 4:17 p.m.

They are in frequent use in Washington, primarily for special education students. Washington law has fairly specific restrictions on the use of time out rooms, but school staff has to be educated as to what the rules are. Search the WACs for "Aversive Interventions" for specifics.
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#201861

Posted by unregistered user at 10/22/08 9:48 a.m.

I think time-out rooms are a great idea. I use time-outs at home, so why shouldn't the schools?

Time-out rooms really should have glass between them and the rest of the students, however. That way the kid who acted up will be able to see what they are missing, and may learn that it's better that getting a time-out.
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#203822

Posted by unregistered user at 10/25/08 9:02 p.m.

You've got to be kiddig me. Waje up!!!! Special ed students are routinely subjected to these "time out rooms", right here is Seattle Public Schools, even if their behavior is specifically a result of their disability. A disabled kindergartener at our, very upscale high performing school, was subjected to a "time out" room...for 3 hours... soiled himself, etc. It's shameful behavior, on the part of our schools. And it it continues on today. Sure, parents implement "time out", and parents "spank" kids too... it isn't an excuse for school abuse. Parents who spank kids still wouldn't want others, like school staff, performing the same... and with good reason.
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#203827

Posted by unregistered user at 10/25/08 9:11 p.m.

If this IOWA school district is vulnerable to law suits... so is SPS. Seattle Public Schools does EXACTLY the same thing as is described in this article. I hope they do get sued. Not that many people can cough up the 30 grand required to initiate a law suit, even though the district may well be libel for the court costs too.
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#207611

Posted by unregistered user at 10/30/08 6:12 p.m.

Time out Rooms Started in 1971 with the Kent school District in Washington State .This program was patterned after a program at Western State Mental hospital for patients with behavioral disorders and discipline problems.The concept used in schools today is no different nationwide than it was back in 1971.Yet not many people know what harm and lasting ill effects it bears on children in their development stages. Being locked in dark isolated unsafe environment is mentally unhealthy for any child.This event extinguishes the child's ability to become part of a group by being separated from the group and learning good behavior.It also kills self confidence and the ability for a child to belong to a group and know what appropriate behaviors are acceptable. Educators should not be allowed to decide whether a child may have behavioral disorders this should only be decided by a clinical doctor with years of experience with these issues. (Not a teacher with limited psychological training).
Some would say this is no different than being in a concentration camp or being a prisoner of war .
WWW.ACLU.ORG THIS ORGANIZATION LOOKS TO UPHOLD CHILDRENS AND PEOPLE'S CIVIL RIGHTS .Maybe someday someone will save the children !
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#297234

Posted by unregistered user at 5/1/09 6:58 a.m.

that is clearly unheard of , i mean an autistic child give me a break that more than abuse thats crule and unusual

Part of becoming/being a teacher is to learn how to deal with children when
they act up, it's called pedagogy.

Not that long ago mainstreaming was the solution; now it's the problem?

Who advocated mainstreaming?

Who is now finding fault with it?

Perhaps the same people who advocated emptying institutions for mentally disabled adults, but now bemoan the "homeless problem."

This is what comes from flavor of the month sociological fads.

Advance one only to condemn it in favor of a new one.

The answer to infamous institutions like Willowbrook was the much more difficult task of reform than simply sending all of their residents out on the streets and a happy notion that they could fit into society with the well wishes of those recently outraged by Geraldo Rivera exposes.

Assuming mainstreaming was ever a valid solution and not just something that seemed like it should be good for these unfortunate children and made their parents feel better, isolated failures should not necessarily render the entire approach a failure.

These problems are highly complex and feel good solutions touted on the basis of impression rather than research rarely, if ever, work.

1. Simple acting up rarely leads to the development of IEP's.

2. IMNSHO, teaching children how to behave is not the responsibility of the school system. It is the responsibility of the parents.

Mainstreaming came back into style just over 40 years ago in Canada. The results never seemed to support it, but funding for separate streaming/extra services for "exceptional children" wasn't available from the public or private sectors - it wasn't a sexy alternative.

This is rich.

Sending one's child to "time out" rather than scolding, punishment or (God forbid) corporal punishment, has long been the rage, but now, having classified it as abusive, teachers and presumably parents are supposed to find the new, acceptable way of dealing with kids who "act up."

I bet teachers and beleagured parents who have awakened to find "time out" is abuse can't wait for the next silver bullet they might be permitted to use.

Sticking a kid in a closet for an extended period of time is almost certainly harmful, but it is also not "time out."

We need to make an effort to deal with the problem of bad teachers and bad parents, and not try to find magic solutions for them. This is the problem with valuing process over individual competence.

I don't necessarily disagree with what you've written, but I would not minimize the desire of the parents and advocates of disabled kids to force a process wherein the children were considered/treated as "normal."

After all, we strive mightily to find ways to describe these kids' disabilities in the most innocuous ways for fear of labeling them as different.

The fact of the matter is that they are different, and they need different techniques. This does not devalue them as individuals, it recognizes that they have unusual needs.

All the good wishes and politically correct coercion in the world is not going to transform a severely retarded or autistic child into a member of the much vaster group of unafflicted kids.

Better to strive for a society where the unfortunate are valued and helped as they need rather than one where we attempt to ignore their differences and deny their special needs in a misguided effort to help them.

Before the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA) was enacted in 1975, U.S. public schools educated only 1 out of 5 children with disabilities.[14] Approximately 200,000[14] children with disabilities such as deafness or mental retardation lived in state institutions that provided limited or no educational or rehabilitation services,[15] and more than one million children were excluded from school.[14] Another 3.5 million children with disabilities attended school but did not receive the educational services they needed.[14] Many of these children were segregated in special buildings or programs that neither allowed them to interact with non-disabled students nor provided them with even basic academic skills.

The EHA, later renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), required schools to provide specialized educational services children with disabilities. The ultimate goal was to help these students live more independent lives in their communities, primarily by mandating access to the general education standards of the public school system.

Initially, children with disabilities were often placed in heterogeneous "special education" classrooms, making it difficult for any of their difficulties to be addressed appropriately. In the 1980s, the mainstreaming model began to be used more often as a result of the requirement to place children in the least restrictive environment (Clearinghouse, E. 2003). Students with relatively minor disabilities were integrated into regular classrooms, while students with major disabilities remained in segregated special classrooms, with the opportunity to be among normal students for up to a few hours each day. Many parents and educators favored allowing students with disabilities to be in classrooms along with their nondisabled peers.

In 1997, IDEA was modified to strengthen requirements for properly integrating students with disabilities. The IEPs must more clearly relate to the general-education curriculum, children with disabilities must be included in most state and local assessments, such as high school exit exams, and regular progress reports must be made to parents. All public schools in the U.S. are responsible for the costs of providing a Free Appropriate Public Education as required by federal law. Mainstreaming or inclusion in the regular education classrooms, with supplementary aids and services if needed, are now the preferred placement for all children. Children with disabilities may be placed in a more restricted environment only if the nature or severity of the disability makes it impossible to provide an appropriate education in the regular classroom.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstreaming_in_education

great stuff, but where are the supplementary aids and services coming from? and are they being provided without extraordinary pushing and shoving by the parents?

Promising mainstreaming and then not providing the support needed to make it successful is worse than not promising it to begin with.

Preferred, yes. Happening in a way that actually provides good results, occasionally.

Threatening teachers, rarely helpful.

Actually, generally the things you describe were suggested by people trying to find better ways of assisting people with problems in a less restrictive and isolating way.

(Institutions and special classes suck...though we need to be sure there is something better before dismantling them. We still have some special classes here, by the way.)

They then tended to be jumped on by governments seeking ways to cut spending, and implemented without the really crucial element of quite intense support for those moved into normal classrooms, or back into the community. Theyu have never (to my knowledge) been implemented as they were proposed.

This has meant they really had no chance of success, although, despite this, there have been some success stories.

Since then, services have spent their time rushing to try to put fires out, while many, many people suffer, and also desperately lobbying for resourcing.

This is a case of hi-jack more than anything else.

I agree that governemnts, and agency senior bureaucrats, under pressure from said governments, have a tendency to leap upon this or that theory/model as a one size all fits all solution....and then abandon it equally rapidly for some other savior.


This does not actually mean that the underlying ideas are not useful...it does mean that adopting them fecklessly as a means to save money is bad.

Your sneers at Time Out are silly.

Time Out was NEVER meant to mean a kid was locked up alone for hours!!! Any place/person using it that way is both ignorant and abusive (albeit possiblyinnocently so.) There are quite clear and simple guide-lines for using Time Out. Schools generally do not really have the means of implementing them as they ought to be implemented.

And, while quite sensible used properly with "normal" kids, later research is suggesting strongly that using TO with traumatised and attachment disordered kids is actively unhelpful.

That is the way with research, you know, it advances and we find out more.

Sneering at practices that were quite well supported in their time because further research has shown that a bunch of kids do not benefit is stupid.

We can only reasonably do what makes the best sense at the time.

What is problematic is when people down the line adopt practices that they do not understand, and therefore do not do well and become deeply attached to them, without understanding that the body of knowledge guiding assisting disturbed kids and adults is going to keep moving, and maintaining scepticism as well as being guided by the results with the person you are trying to assist, and modifying as necessary.

Hmmmmm....I don't know that teachers are really properly trained to assist really disturbed kids.

I consider it a normal part of my job to spend lots of time supporting and training teachers. And I most certainly do NOT have all the answers, even after 20 years at it!!!

That's true, dlowan, but we don't have to go from one extreme to the other.
No one said that a teacher should have all the answers. In dealing with autistic
children however, it is necessary that a teacher knows how to handle a difficult
situation. If he/she does not, then it is imperative to call either a better
educated teacher or the principle. To discipline an autistic child in this manner
(time-out room) is inexcusable, even for an untrained teacher.

Dyslexia was called in more often than not, by teachers who needed help and knew he would be the one who would most likely be the one to provide whatever help was needed. The teachers who disliked him, were those who didn't want to learn new ways, but who would continue to do things the old, easier way.

Dys doesn't always take the best care of himself, but he would do anything to protect children, including being threatened by a gun. So dont think he was only complaining, he was always looking out for the children who needed help and offering help to teachers who couldn't get help from their principals or the school system.

Aidan wrote,

"They should be with trained teachers who WANT to work with them."

Aidan and EBrownP, your posts were appreciated by someone who has heard about and seen the results of so-called timeout rooms, including the ugliness and inhumane treatment of children with DD.

Both of my older brothers woere born with Fragile X Syndrome. They were born in the mid 1930's, before mental retardation or learning disabilites or physical "defects" were acknowledged as problems that should be dealt with compassionately, with education programs developed so that they could learn as much as possible. In fact, most of these children were considered subhuman.

One of my brothers, John, was put in a closet for talking too much. It was totally dark and he was so frightended that he wet his pants.

At the end of the day, the teacher and students left, having forgotten John, leaving him locked in the closet. Luckily, my brother Steve was very high functioning and, after not seeing John anywhere, he found a janitor to help him search. They finally heard him crying in his classroom. Steve then walked him home.

Time out rooms are a form of torture, as far as I'm concerned. If, like Aidan said, there was a one on one teacher to remove the student from class and help him or her control his behavior,the best possible solution would be used to the advantage of the child, the class teacher and the other students.

Integrating disabled kids into a regular classroom is, in its best use, an experience that is useful to all students. To show kindness and provide face-saving learning by taking children with disabilities to a separate classroom is the most humane and effective way to teach.

I also agree with the person who said that special programs are often wasted because teachers are not trained in teaching children with special needs. That doesn't mean the the programs should be stopped, only that the programs should be well supervised and funding should be provided to insure these programs are run efficiently, to the best advantage of all students.

Believe me, there are still teachers out there who are just as sadistic as John's teacher, sixty five years ago. I've met some of the during the time I was a tutor. They should never be allowed to teach any child.

I have no answers on this, no expertise, although some reading.

I see it, from afar, as a mess, re systemitizing - figuring out how to deal with the most troubled expediently - and categorizing the young forevermore.

I'd like to see education elevated as a profession, and not have children forevermore trapped in lesson plan modality.

ah, Diane, you know so much.

I know you nag dys to write or record, we are both trying to get him to do a monolog on Denver and music, and much else, but you could too.

You'll have to do with Dys what BBB and I did with her great aunt before she died. We bought a cassette tape recorder and put it in the corner by her chair but out of her eyesight. Once we got her started by asking questions about our family's history, I quietly switched on the recorder and we got several taped hours of our family's history and ancestory, along with some humorous stories from her 99 years of life.

Afterwards, we told her what we'd done and got her permission to share them with others in the family. One of the projects on my "to do" list is to do a transcript of those tapes.

****, that made me laugh! I can just imagine the letter


As for the issue of time out rooms, I don't have an opinion. Speaking about children who don't have the issues raised by dys (and then that's a whole other story), I don't think a time out is a bad thing, unless it has the reputation in the school of something terrible and something to be ashamed of. It's like when we got sent to the principal's office. No big deal. But then, I'm way out of the loop, way out touch with what's going on today, way out of touch with the current psychology, so what do I know?

I still remember the names in my classroom in grade school, the stupid boys. The nuns quieted them. I can just say the names, even now.

Well, it was a whole culture. I can remember one nun with the ruler and the above the ear pulling... I think, Sr. Wilhelmina.

I didn't know that in my grammar school I was living in some kind of cultural scenario.

Some of the boys, I'm sure, had interesting lives. I'd make some bets on a few I remember.

dlowan wrote:



Amen, sister.

I have spent the last year trying to help Mo's school understand that by using time out they are creating more problems than they're fixing.

I've been patient and kind and calm.

I have provided them with lots of information.

I have made myself available to answer any and all questions.

I have a mini-conference with his teacher EVERY SINGLE DAY.

And even then, he still once in a while gets a "time out" and they wonder why his behavior escalates.