On Time Out, Camping Out & Controlled Comforting: Working with older children

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Tony emailed me with follow-up about about the sleep techniques post. In the psychiatric residential setting where he worked, both  "camping out" and "controlled comforting" were effective in helping older children to get to sleep. He also addressed the question of, do you talk to a child, when he is in time-out? -gw

It may be of interest that the techniques described for infants ended up being the same ones we used in residential treatment for kids who had never had secure attachments. It worked.

Yes both methods could be effective but they had to be "discovered" for each client. I am not sure that there was a set criteria but I do know that there were general categories of difficulties that led to one or the other.

There was an issue with "time out" with insecurely attached children [at the residential facility] .... The general rule was that children were not talked to when they were in time out. However, it also became clear, over time, that some children were simply too disorganized to be in the room by themselves. With these children staff would go into the room to organize them. The effectiveness of this had to do with the experience of the staff. We had a few staff who were so grounded that when they got close to a child the child just got quieter -- if they had to hold the child it would turn out to be quite brief (as opposed to what would happen with staff who were not that grounded).

In general I had the rule "talk is cheap," and it doesn't buy much when it comes to engaging children. When talk is an extension of a "calm and assertive" presence it usually doesn't have to "say" much - the body, the presence, does the talking.