The History of Exclusion, Isolation, and Time-Out in Early Childhood

In the article, “‘Cry and You Cry Alone’: Timeout in early childhood settings,” Prochner and Hwang (2008) look at the origins of time-out as social exclusion and a form of punishment. Prochner and Hwang (2008) write:

Yet most children seem to dislike enforced isolation, which may be the point. Punishment highlights for children ‘what adults believe to be painful,’ in this case, the forced withdrawal of social contact for a period of time. Isolation is a kind of mock abandonment/punishment, teaching children that adults can regulate their relationship. This arouses strong feelings in children. (p. 522)

This made me ask: Why would we as teachers ever want to inflict pain on our students? Shouldn’t methods of classroom management, such as the safe seat, be a tool we use to help teach our children?

The safe seat is nowhere near as extreme as the methods of isolation discussed by Prochner and Hwang (2008). However, the above quoted discussion of the relationship between child and adult and how isolation/exclusion affects it made me think about how students who are frequently sent to the safe seat view their teacher. How does sending students to the safe seat or to time-out affect their relationship with the teacher? I could often figure out quickly which students were sent to the safe seat when I entered a room. They were the distracted students who the teacher was constantly badgering to pay attention and stop disrupting the lesson or work time. They were the students who did not like the lesson or activity, the ones that would probably be called “difficult” or “challenging” if the teacher was asked about them.

Trying to put myself in the students shoes, I believe that I would feel attacked by a teacher if I was constantly being told what I was doing wrong. I would also feel like I was a bad student if I was daily being sent to the safe seat or time out chair for misbehaving. How can we change this? How can we use the safe seat in a way that does not send students these messages?

I believe that this all depends on how a teacher introduces the safe seat to the classroom and if her actions reflect that introduction. I again think of my second grade host teacher. She told me, “The safe seat is not a bad thing but a place to calm down.” Her students know that they can move to the safe seat on their own or that she might have to send them there if they are “getting too wild.” I was able to interview two female students in her class. One of the girls told me about a time when she decided to move to the safe seat because she felt distracted at her desk. She told me that her teacher complimented this decision and problem solving that the student was able to handle on her own. If described and used this way, the safe seat is not a punishment for students, but a tool for students to help them as they are learning.