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Time-Out for Parents: A Guide to Compassionate Parenting
Employing a method of discipline used for children, this Zen guide encourages parents to look inwardly and reflect on their motivations in order to respond to their child's needs from a clearer, kinder perspective. It contains meditative exercises for stressed or disgruntled parents and provides accounts of parent/child interactions. In each one, the self-aware parent describes how they would have reacted before learning to take time-out to discover their own motivations. Then each parent tells how he or she responded to the situation from a clearer, kinder viewpoint.
168 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
3 people are currently reading
104 people want to read
About the author
Cheri Huber
53 books162 followersCheri Huber, author of 20 books, has been a student and teacher of Zen for over 35 years. In 1983, Cheri founded the Mountain View Zen Center, and in 1987 she founded the Zen Monastery Peace Center near Murphys, California. She and the monks at the Monastery conduct workshops and retreats at these centers, other places around the U.S., and internationally.
In 1997, Cheri founded Living Compassion, a nonprofit organization dedicated to peace and service. Living Compassion’s primary work is the Africa Vulnerable Children Project, based in Zambia, where for over a decade they have been working with the people of Kantolomba, beginning the process of turning a slum of 11,000 people into a self-sustaining community.
Cheri also has a weekly Internet based radio show.
In 1997, Cheri founded Living Compassion, a nonprofit organization dedicated to peace and service. Living Compassion’s primary work is the Africa Vulnerable Children Project, based in Zambia, where for over a decade they have been working with the people of Kantolomba, beginning the process of turning a slum of 11,000 people into a self-sustaining community.
Cheri also has a weekly Internet based radio show.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 1, 2021
I have always understood the need to put on my own oxygen mask before assisting others with theirs. It does feel harder to remember that when parenting. This little zen book about learning to feel and express feelings as parents is an essential piece of the parenting puzzle. The more we can help our children figure out life through our own modeling, the better we will all be at staying centered.
August 27, 2012
Written by Zen meditation teachers, this book’s message is both profound and astonishingly simple. It challenges parents to rethink the use of ‘time-out’.
Many of us may associate ‘time-out’ with Supernanny’s ‘naughty step’, although it’s been around a lot longer than her TV show! The authors explain how they frequently encounter adult meditation students who feel ‘bad’ when asked to sit quietly by themselves to meditate because of the negative associations with their childhood time-out experiences.
The authors suggest that instead of using time-out as a behaviour management technique, when our children’s behaviour displeases us, we take a time-out to work out what is going on for us. Attention is shifted away from the child’s outward behaviour and towards the parent’s inner process.
For example, if your child’s ‘whining’ makes you feel cross, step back and consider what is contributing to your reaction. Maybe you learned as a child that it is ‘bad’ to cry or ask for things. Maybe you are just tired and cranky after work. Sometimes, it’s our understanding of a situation that needs to change rather than our children’s behaviour.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t have boundaries. It means re-evaluating the reasons behind our gut responses, and understanding and accepting our children’s feelings as well as our own. The key to compassionate parenting is taking care of our own emotional needs in order that we can take care of our children’s.
The book includes some brief family case studies, which it uses to provides examples of parental time-out and compassionate parenting in practice. It is a very short book (I read it in an hour) with a strong message.
Many of us may associate ‘time-out’ with Supernanny’s ‘naughty step’, although it’s been around a lot longer than her TV show! The authors explain how they frequently encounter adult meditation students who feel ‘bad’ when asked to sit quietly by themselves to meditate because of the negative associations with their childhood time-out experiences.
The authors suggest that instead of using time-out as a behaviour management technique, when our children’s behaviour displeases us, we take a time-out to work out what is going on for us. Attention is shifted away from the child’s outward behaviour and towards the parent’s inner process.
For example, if your child’s ‘whining’ makes you feel cross, step back and consider what is contributing to your reaction. Maybe you learned as a child that it is ‘bad’ to cry or ask for things. Maybe you are just tired and cranky after work. Sometimes, it’s our understanding of a situation that needs to change rather than our children’s behaviour.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t have boundaries. It means re-evaluating the reasons behind our gut responses, and understanding and accepting our children’s feelings as well as our own. The key to compassionate parenting is taking care of our own emotional needs in order that we can take care of our children’s.
The book includes some brief family case studies, which it uses to provides examples of parental time-out and compassionate parenting in practice. It is a very short book (I read it in an hour) with a strong message.
August 16, 2013
Incredibly simple and powerful. I'm not a parent -- I read this book because I was considering giving it to a friend who's about to become a mom -- yet everything in it resonated with me. Gave me a lot of insight about how I was conditioned as a child, how that has caused a lot of suffering, and how I can now parent myself and any children I may have in the future.
June 13, 2012
A very good book to remind us how not to "lose it" as parents with a touch of self-awareness. A must-read for all parents.
December 5, 2014
Very helpful to me. I'm considering doing a re-parenting of myself and this was extremely informative and logical and how to go about such a thing.
July 11, 2013
very simple yet to the point. a good reminder of how much our children absorb from us.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews