Our Stance on Timeouts

Some families are concerned about using the timeout, the final behavior strategy taught to parents in standard Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT). For those families who do not want to use timeouts, we can provide the “older child version” from UC Davis Children’s Hospital that uses an alternative strategy that is effective for children as young as 3 years old.

Or we can provide the PC-CARE parenting protocol, which was developed at UC Davis Children’s Hospital and replaces the timeout with more than a dozen alternative behavior management strategies that are nurturing and effective.

Models posing as a family of mother, father, and school aged daughter and son play a board game together.


For families on the fence about timeouts, keep reading for more information to help you decide whether standard PCIT, the “older child version,” or PC-CARE is best for your family.

We agree that the traditional timeout - where children are sent to their rooms alone for a long time as a punishment for crying, arguing, or minor disruptive behaviors - is neither nurturing nor effective.

Models posing as a happy family unpacks a large teddy bear from a box while they are moving.

That’s why the PCIT timeout is different. It is a therapeutic timeout where the parent stays with the child, the timeout out is only 3 minutes, and is not used for crying, arguing, or minor disruptive behaviors. Instead, parents are given alternative strategies like selective attention to manage minor disruptive behaviors.

Nevertheless, Hamilton Family Counseling acknowledges that the timeout is strong medicine, and so we usually only teach this technique after parents have mastered all of the play therapy skills of PCIT and after all of the softer behavior management skills of PC-CARE are learned.

In fact, not more than a handful of families each year end up needing to learn the timeout strategy at our agency because the play therapy skills of PCIT, “the older child version,” and the PC-CARE behavior strategies are so effective.

Model posing as a mother and her young model son smile as they nuzzle their noses together.

For those families who have been taught the therapeutic timeout, it has been necessary to help the child keep themself and those around them safe without having to resort to spanking or physical punishment.

Let’s Work Together