Kids sent to 'time out room' in Vancouver schools

For decades, when a child behaves badly he is given a time out and stands in front of the wall. But now a Vancouver school is actually sending children to a time out room, which is actually a closet.

Three elementary schools in Vancouver, British Columbia are using “safe” or “time out” rooms for children who behave badly and interrupt classroom activities. One child advocate, Barb Laird, a retired teacher, said, according to CBC, that one room is actually a closet. “[The rooms] are five feet by five feet. They are closets, like a broom closet.” Laird further added that the she thought the time out room was used in the past but not in modern times but she was wrong. Most misbehaving children are sent to the dark closets alone. Board Chair of the Vancouver School Board Patti Bacchus said they will look into the matter, “It certainly raises concerns for me. But we have a really difficult situation here. We do have a very small percentage of students with extreme behavioral issues.” Bacchus also added that these rooms are used as a last resort but finds that locking up children is an unacceptable practice. Laird concluded, “If you or I, as parents, put our kids in a closet, the ministry [of Children and Family] would be in our house so quickly taking those kids away from us. We would be treated as abusive parents.” The Calgary Herald reports that one foster child in a classroom was forced to go into the closet every other day, even when the foster parents raised their concerns and asked them not to conduct such a punishment. However, the school advised them that the Ministry of Children and Families gave the school permission to do otherwise. This is not the only isolated incident within Canada or the United States. In 2002 in Minnesota, according to the CS Monitor, a special-education student was locked up in a 5-by-6 room because of bad behavior. He was very frustrated so the boy rammed his body against the door and banged his head on cement blocks. Last month, parents accused the Columbia’s Joseph Brown Elementary school of locking up their autistic child, stripped him down to his underwear and secluded him in a dark space. Time out rooms originated back in 1963 as an experiment using an autistic child who was isolated for five minutes to discourage aggressive behavior. It was used to see if a child would calm down for five minutes.