Time Out

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Since corporal punishment is no longer as acceptable in the modern world, especially not in the West (or at least not in Fiction Land, anyway, as plenty of cultures still practice spanking), misbehaving children (and occasionally pets) will be punished by the following:

Examples of Time Out include:

Anime and Manga

  • Great Teacher Onizuka: Tomoko got sent to the corner, and her classmates kept throwing paper balls at her.

Live-Action TV

  • This is one of Supernanny's forms of discipline: the naughty step (or corner if you're in a bungalow) where children are supposed to sit for one minute per their age (for instance, a 5-year-old sits there for five minutes) to reflect on their actions.
  • Seven of Nine made the Borg twins do this in one Star Trek: Voyager episode.
  • In Summer Heights High, Jonah is sent to the back of the classroom facing away from the rest of the students as punishment. However, he still has to do his work there. He gets threatened with being sent out into the hall after he continues to misbehave.

Newspaper Comics

Western Animation

  • When they are narrating the history of Lisa's first word in The Simpsons, Bart tries to get rid of the baby in many ways, including sending her in the mail, and Homer punishes him this way, even sending Bart to the corner; tough, he is already there.
  • When the Muppet Babies played schoolhouse, Piggy (the teacher) sends Fozzie to the corner for telling jokes, saying that if he wants to tell jokes, he can tell them to the wall. So he does. The wall doesn't like them, either.
  • Recess has this happen to the kids a few times, most notably in "The Box"
  • In Rugrats, Tommy was given five minutes of time-out in the pen after getting into a fight at daycare. Such time-limit seemed harshed, either a daycare worker pointed this out, given Tommy's age, but he did his time as he used this for plotting an escape.