Remember when your mother used to say, “Go to your room–“? This was a terrible penalty. Now when a mother says the same thing, a kid goes to his room. There he’s got an air conditioner, a TV set, an intercom, a shortwave radio–he’s better off than he was in the first place.–Sam Levenson.
It’s lunch time and George is showing off the food inside his mouth. He’s creating quite a sensation with the other children. You give George a time-out. He takes a seat in the back corner of the room, where nobody can see him, and thinks about what he did and how he can behave better tomorrow at lunch. George is no longer the center of attention. You’ve taken him from a reinforcing situation to a non-reinforcing one. This is time-out.