Time out help

I am taking care of my friends 5 year old daughter for a while. Her and her ex husband are divorced and she recently discovered that anytime her daughter has been at his house the past two years and a half years, she's been sexually abused by him and his friends.It hit the mother very hard that this happened to the little girl and she is going to get help for depression, before living with her daughter again because she doesn't want the environment to be unstable. Originally she was supposed to be returned to her soon, but it does not look like that will be happening, I will be getting custody for a while.

Her therapist told me I needed to start giving her structure and discipline to make her feel safer. The other day she went outside without permission, which she knows she isn't supposed to do. I put her in a timeout and she would not stay. A 5 minute timeout took 30 minutes because I had to keep resetting the timer. Does anyone have experience with this?

in the parenting program I teach consequences have to be logically connected to the misbehavior for them to work. time outs typically are not connected to misbehavior. if you put a child in time out for being destructive with their toys, they are not going to learn how to play well with their toys because the two are not logically connected. but if you take away the toys every time the child becomes destructive with them, they will learn they only get to play with their toys if theyplay nice. so putting her in time out for not asking to go outside isn't logically connected. not letting her go out next time she asks is. you have either/or consequences and when/then consequences....either you give me the behavior I want or you will get the consequences....when you give me the behavior I want, then you get what you want.... so you tell her when you ask to go outside, then you will be able to go play. when you clean your room, we will read a story. when you finish your bath, we can watch tv. either/or works much the same way. either you stop throwing a temper tantrum or you can go to your room. either you eat your food appropriately or you will have it taken away. either you clean your toys up or you will lose them. in both cases you are giving the child a choice between two things. they get to choose what they want to do. be firm and calm. enforce the consequence the first time you say it. consistency is the most important thing if you want the child to start doing what they are told. good luck and take care.

You could always try going "You're going to have this time out, and you are going to think about why you shouldn't have gone outside without asking me. When you have an answer, you can tell me and we'll talk about it. After we've talked about it then your time out will be over."

It's giving a purpose to the time out. A 5 year old is capable of going "I shouldn't go outside because I might get lost/hurt." or something similar. You can follow up with "That's right, you could, and that would make us both very sad. When I don't know where you are, it scares me because I want you to be safe."

Then it turns the time out into a teaching moment and will help her understand consequences and emotions. If she doesn't have an answer after a while, then you can just share with her how you felt when she didn't listen and explain why that rule is in place.

And, if she has an answer quickly you could possibly bring up the "So you knew that wasn't safe, and you did it anyway? How does that make me feel?" which makes her consider your feelings. If she hasn't got an answer you can then tell her, or if she says that it makes you feel angry, you can correct her and go "No, I'm not angry. I felt scared that I didn't know where you were. How do you want me to feel?".. when she says something like that she wants you to be happy, you can go "That's right! I want us both to feel happy, and I'll feel happy knowing that you're being safe. Do you feel happy having a time out?". She'll say no to that, and you can remind her that she'll be happy if she's being safe too.

I do something similar with my class when they're misbehaving. They have to tell me how I'm feeling and how they feel knowing that I feel that way. They then have to think about how they want to feel, and how they want me to feel - and what the classroom would be like if I was feeling that way. It helps to teach them how their actions affect others, because children don't always have that understanding - it also helps them understand why rules are in place.

I could ask a lot of questions to get a better picture of exactly what happened there but, since I'm not a parent and can't offer all of the detailed advice the others are giving you, all I can offer is my own childhood experience.
I remember that the adults I obeyed were the ones I loved & respected OR feared! And the ones I did NOT obey (like the child in your story) were those that I did NOT love or respect. I don't know how your child feels about you or why she failed to obey your "rules" without a deeper look into the story. IMO, you might have to carefully examine all of the reasons that she disobeyed you and figure out if you have somehow alienated her or lost her respect for you. IMO, just jumping to some kind of punishment or discipline after a kid "misbehaves" is overlooking significant elements of the relationship that mere punishment may not be able to correct. If she does not love and respect you, punishing her will not make her come around even if she begins to obey you OUT OF FEAR and you will find your self having to punish her more and more as her contempt for you grows and grows. As a child, I was willing to do just about anything for those I loved and respected but those who consistently punished me slid further and further away from my heart and trust to where I would not have done anything at all for them except out of fear and even then, only halfheartedly. IMO, many adults FAIL to look at why and how they are inspiring a kid to misbehave and assume that only punishment is needed when punishment is the last thing the misbehaving kid wants but would rather have love, friendship, trust, honor, happiness, comfort, fun and a lot of other positives but cannot tell you in adult words and terms. A lot of my "misbehavior" was meant to get some kind of hopefully positive attention from my parents but often got severely negative attention so I began doing things behind their backs rather than invite their negative attentions. They, not I, often set up the situations that they then decided I needed to be punished over. They simply FAILED to examine their own misbehavior along with mine! I see in strings like this that nobody ever suggests that the adult could be wrong, mistaken or dishonest so everyone leaps in to tell the stressed adult how to CONTROL and DISCIPLINE their misbehaving child without ever considering that the adult might be making a MISTAKE! It seems that everybody ASSUMES that adults are NEVER wrong whereas kids are ALWAYS WRONG but I remember a lot of times when the adults were more than wrong but nobody had the power or courage to call them to account for it - least of all their kids!
Please do not assume that this is an attack on you or your actions. This is just my childhood reality offered here as a possibility for your consideration. If it contains any useful info, use it - if not, ignore it.
Respectfully and hopefully,
jim