St. Louis mom’s alternative to timeouts turns into multimillion-dollar business

“I thought I was a really great mom with my first kid who turned out to be a really cooperative child. And then I got my strong-willed child, and timeouts were ineffective. They really left us in power struggles,” said Tucker.

So, she moved to time-ins – a way to help kids regulate and learn about their emotions. She saw the difference it made in her own home and wanted to help others ditch timeouts.

“Think about learning to walk. If you fall down, no one punishes you for those months of the year. With social emotional skills, for some reasons as adults, when a child gets it wrong, we think we need to punish.”

4 years ago, she turned the time-in approach into a toolkit. Tucker explained how she needed something in a box with instructions and a video and a community to hold her hand in order to learn how to parent without punishment.

Turns out, parents all around the world really needed it, too. Today, she runs a multimillion-dollar company – Generation Mindful which has sold products to parents and early childhood educators in more than 200 countries. 

Although she offers an online parenting course, SnuggleBuddies stuffed animals, a book called Heart’s Treasure Hunt, Feelings Bingo, and more, she hopes her company can help get rid of timeouts for good.

“And I think because timeouts were invented in the 1950s out of science from studying animals, it picked up, taught to adults and humans to ignore their child when they were not behaving the way they wanted because that’s what animals do.”