Giving your kids time-outs has become controversial, to Fireborn's surprise. So we decided to figure out what was so controversial about them? We found that the time-outs experts recommend and the time-outs experts say are hurting your kids are not the same. We also found that if you are giving time-outs as experts recommend, then time-outs are still totally backed by the research and are not hurting your kids. They are actually helping them become good citizens. The problem with time-outs comes when we take shortcuts or mess up giving them.