Time out?

[treeholm]

My three children are now wonderful adults between the ages of 22 and 31, and I used time outs with them; however, I did not use a certain number of minutes per age, I told them they needed to sit on the chair or bottom of the stairs until they were "ready to be gentle" or "ready to listen to Mommy." That worked very well, because they had to learn to do the emotional work to get ready to return to the group. They quickly learned that if they came back too soon, I would send them back with the admonishment "you are not ready yet."