For years, Caroline Goldman has been praised and vilified for saying what many parents whisper in private: children sometimes need firm, structured consequences. At the heart of the argument sits one controversial tool – the “time-out” – and her latest clarification sheds new light on when it helps, and when it can harm.
The psychologist shaking up ‘positive parenting’
Caroline Goldman is a French child psychologist steeped in a long family tradition of psychoanalysis. Her grandmother went back to university at 67 to study psychology. Her mother became a child psychologist. Conversations around Freud and Winnicott were family routine, not exam prep.
Goldman says this background shaped a strong conviction: early childhood is where most psychological patterns begin, and where change is most powerful. In her private practice, she treats children, but always through their relationships with adults around them. She insists she never “treats a child alone”. Parents, grandparents or other caregivers are always part of the work.
For Goldman, “it takes a village to raise a child” is not a slogan; it is her clinical method.
Over the last decade, she has become a high-profile critic of parts of the French “positive parenting” movement, which has heavily influenced social media advice and parenting books. Her stance, sharpened in her book File dans ta chambre! (“Get to your room!”), triggered fierce reactions, especially when she defended the use of time-out.
Why she says some ‘positive’ messages are harmful
Goldman does not reject warmth or empathy. She rejects the idea that any form of frustration or firm limit is inherently damaging to a child’s brain. She points to a specific type of message she sees circulating: claims that a frustrated child faces “irreversible brain damage” if parents say no or send them away to calm down.
According to her clinical experience, such messaging has a very concrete outcome. Many parents end up paralysed, terrified of doing emotional harm, and gradually give up on exercising authority altogether. In her consulting room, she now sees a growing number of children who, on paper, have everything to be happy – stable homes, affectionate caregivers – yet present with serious behavioural issues.
- Chronic defiance of rules
- Explosive anger in daily life
- Intolerance to frustration
- Provocation and rudeness toward adults
- Agitation that disrupts school and activities
These children face social rejection from classmates, teachers and coaches. Goldman describes a second layer of suffering: anxiety. When children feel that no adult is “stronger” than they are, they conclude that nobody can really protect them.
She reports more children terrified of climate catastrophe, burglars, their parents going out at night, or the idea that everyone they love might die.
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This pattern, she argues, has surged in the last ten years and now makes up more than half of her consultations, as well as those of many professionals she supervises across France.
Her exclusive clarification on time-out
A method she has used for two decades
Goldman has advocated for time-out for around twenty years. By “time-out”, she means sending a child to their room or another quiet space during a crisis of opposition, until calm returns. She insists she has “tested its benefits a thousand times” in practice, and says the scientific literature supports its effectiveness in reducing violent or aggressive behaviour.
In her view, a well-used time-out is not a violent act; it is a way to prevent escalating conflict and physical punishment.
She promotes time-out as a tool for children who are otherwise psychologically healthy but show frequent outbursts, aggression or oppositional behaviour. The aim is not humiliation, but a short separation that allows the emotional temperature to drop and signals that certain actions carry clear, predictable consequences.
Where she draws a red line
Goldman also stresses a crucial caveat that is often missing from public debates: time-out is not suitable for every child, in every situation. She repeatedly warns that the method can be damaging when the underlying problem is misdiagnosed.
Two types of situations are, in her view, high-risk for time-out:
| Child’s condition | Why time-out can backfire |
|---|---|
| Depression | Isolation deepens feelings of abandonment and worthlessness. |
| Psychotic disorders or severe disorganisation | Exclusion may intensify confusion and terror rather than restore boundaries. |
She underlines that in those cases, being “sent away” does not teach self-regulation. It can reinforce despair or fragmentation of the child’s sense of self. Here, close therapeutic work and intense emotional support from parents are needed, not distancing.
Inside her consulting room: parents at the centre
Goldman’s method starts with a three-hour preliminary consultation. She sees the child and both parents together, whenever possible. That length is deliberate. She finds traditional 45-minute slots too short for such a pivotal visit in a family’s life.
During those three hours, she traces the child’s story, relationships with grandparents, daily life, school functioning and emotional patterns. She lets the child draw, talk and play. Then she offers a diagnostic hypothesis and, crucially, “parent guidance” – concrete steps adults can take to improve the situation.
She sees parents not as obstacles, but as the main therapeutic agents: the ones who can repair, reassure and set limits.
If a child is depressed, she encourages parents to increase affection and presence. If limits are weak, she helps them become, as she puts it, “agents of learning frustration”. If the child is narcissistically wounded, she guides parents to act as repairers of that injury. When family structure feels blurred or chaotic, she works with adults to provide clearer boundaries and a stronger sense of belonging.
When parents are absent or overwhelmed, she calls on the wider network: grandparents, godparents, neighbours, any stable adult willing to help. For her, multiple “parental” figures can be a major protective factor for a child.
Facing accusations of guilt-tripping parents
Psychoanalysis often faces a familiar charge: blaming parents for everything. Goldman acknowledges that criticism, but says it does not reflect what she sees in her office. In her experience, most parents already suspect that their emotional states and actions have affected their children. When a therapist names what parents have silently felt – a mother’s prolonged sadness after birth, a father’s lack of support – they usually recognise it rather than feel ambushed.
She adds that involving parents in the “cause” of the problem automatically includes them in the solution. Many feel relieved to learn there is something they can actively do. They are not just spectators of their child’s suffering; they are also key to their child’s recovery.
Responsibility, as she frames it, is shared: adults contributed to the problem, but they are also powerful levers for change.
Goldman does criticise her own field for neglecting one skill: tact. She argues that psychoanalysts are rarely trained in how to deliver interpretations gently and constructively. She has built her own vocabulary and timing to avoid accusations and to restore parents’ confidence:
She often tells them, in essence: you did the best you could with what you had, and sitting here today already makes you excellent parents.
Time-out in real life: when, how and what can go wrong
For parents trying to make sense of the controversy, Goldman’s perspective offers a kind of roadmap. Time-out, as she uses it, is reserved for children whose main difficulty lies in behaviour and frustration tolerance, not in deep underlying despair or psychosis.
A typical scenario could look like this: a seven-year-old repeatedly hits a sibling when a toy is taken away. The parent warns once, then calmly sends the child to their room until they can speak without hitting or yelling. The door stays open, the tone stays firm but not cruel, and the child knows that once calm, they will be welcomed back and can try again.
Risks arise when the method is applied indiscriminately:
- Using time-out for every emotional display, including sadness or fear
- Leaving a child alone for long periods without explanation
- Shouting, shaming or threatening abandonment during the process
- Ignoring signs of deeper distress that go beyond occasional tantrums
In those cases, time-out stops being a learning tool and turns into a form of rejection. The child learns that difficult feelings must be hidden, not managed, and that love is conditional on perfect behaviour.
Key concepts behind the debate
Several psychological ideas sit beneath Goldman’s public interventions. One is frustration tolerance: a child’s ability to handle not getting what they want, when they want it, without falling apart or attacking others. Building this capacity, she argues, prepares children for real life, where peers, teachers and future bosses rarely indulge every wish.
Another is narcissistic injury, which sounds grand but simply describes blows to self-esteem that feel humiliating or annihilating. When these wounds are repeated and unaddressed, children may become either excessively aggressive or excessively withdrawn. Thoughtful limits and clear consequences can, in some cases, protect against deeper narcissistic wounds, because the rules feel predictable rather than arbitrary or vindictive.
Parents reading this debate may feel caught between extremes: never punish versus punish harshly. Goldman’s position sits in a demanding middle ground. She calls for warmth and firm authority to coexist, for parents to be both refuges and reliable rule-setters. Time-out, in her view, belongs in that toolbox – on the condition that adults stay attentive to the child’s overall mental state and to their own way of using power.
Originally posted 2026-03-09 19:41:49.