Time-ins instead of time-outs

This article claims to apply the latest brain research to child discipline:

She is part of a progressive new group of scientists, doctors, and psychologists whose goal is ambitious, if not outright audacious: they want to redefine “discipline” in order to change our culture. They want to rewrite, or perhaps more precisely said, rewire how we approach interacting with kids, and they want us to understand that our decisions about parenting affect not only our children’s minds, but ours as well.

So, we’re going to need to toss out our old discipline mainstays. Say goodbye to timeouts. So long spanking and other ritualized whacks. And cry-it-out sleep routines? Mercifully, they too can be a thing of the past. And yet, we can still help our children mature and grow. In fact, people like Bryson think we’ll do it better. If we are going to take seriously what science tells us about how we form relationships and how our mind develops, we will need to construct new strategies for parenting, and when we do, says this new group of researchers, we just may change the world.

They are against spanking, of course, and horrified that spanking is correlated with dark skin, low income, and Republican politics.

They also urge time-ins instead of time-outs, and claim that the stress of putting a kid to bed the wrong way can have long-term consequences. A child having a tantrum at bedtime could be like a soldier getting PTSD.

A century ago, the Freudian psychologists claimed that science proved that much adult neuroses are caused by improper toilet training as a toddler, such as learning too soon or late. Freud's theory was never proved.

I am not sure the modern theories are any more scientific. I have my own common sense opinions about putting a kid to bed, but I cannot prove that there is any long-term advantage. According to the article, this is the biggest conversation topic among parents of toddlers today.