I disagree on the restraining. A DHS caseworker and three of my sons therapists told me restraining - holding the child during a temper tantrum or time outs and so on is basically giving the child what they want - moms attention. It may not be good attention but it is still attention to a child and the parent gets frustrated in the process and can end up leading to the parent giving in.

Instead child therapists, teachers, nursery schools and so on around here use sticker charts and reward tickets that can be "redeamed" after the child has 10 for a reward like renting a movie, helping mommy make cookies, an outing to a favorite park, free petting zoo and so on, to teach the child what time out is.

Time outs around here is having the child sit in a chair. The person who puts the child in time out tells the child when you are ready to be out of time out please sit quiet and raise your hand.

Then the person putting the child in time out walks away and gets busy doing other things.

When the child is ready to get down he/she and is raising their hand, The person who put the child in time out sees the hand up and goes to the child

Then asks at their level (using words they understand but keeping it down to a one sentence question- ages 4 and up - What got you put in time out? and how can you do it differently next time? Ages 2 and up -keeping the reason down to only a couple words so the child does not lose interest - I put you in time out because you were hitting. Are you done hitting? Then you may go play.

If the child did their time out without fit throwing they get a sticker or reward ticket to put on their chart. At first the chart goes on the wall where the child can see it while they are in time out (gives them a visual reminder that time out is supposed to be done without throwing a fit.) As they get better at remaining in the chair and calming themselves the chart slowly moves out of their eyesight.

There is no time limit on this type of time out. The child decides when they are ready for time out to be done by raising their hand. This came about because Some people believe it is abusive to keep the child in time out for specific times because some children have short attention spans and others have long attention spans. With this type of time out the child is in control of what happens to them They are only there until they regain control of theirself.

Some kids go in time out and within a minute or two have raised their hand and can say what got them in time out and what they will do differently or that they are done with that behavior that got them there to begin with.

Other times kids are in the time out chair for 5 plus minutes depending on how long it takes them to calm themselves down and decide they are done with time out.

no matter how long the child is in time out even if they are still in time out 15 minutes later it isn't considered abusive because the child is the one saying how long they stay in time out by their behaviour.