Maybe it's just the environment kids are growing up in these days.

My mom and I were talking about timeouts the other day and she said that when she was growing up there was no such thing. Either you were an obedient kid, or you got spankings. I think that was the pattern with each generation of parenting until somebody cried CHILD ABUSE! when it was really disciplining, and thus the "timeout" was born.

I don't know what kind of kids my nieces and nephews are hanging around with in school, but I can tell they're no good. When a kid comes home yelling cuss words at me and his grandma, it's obvious timeouts won't teach him not to swear at us again. I've seen kids throw toys at other kids to intentionally hurt them. In extreme cases like that, I can't see how isolating a kid for 5 minutes will convince him not to ever do that again.