Hi Atownsend40....

This is an interesting and actually one that I've been thinking about after an incident that happened to my nephew.  My 4-year-old nephew was sent to the time out corner for misbehaving.  Within minutes of sitting in the time-out chair, he fell asleep.  When we went to see how he was doing about 10 minutes later, he was sound asleep.  Yes, the question is - did he "do" his time-out or "sleep" through it and if he slept through it, does it count or should he get another time out?

Perhaps a better question to ask is "what is the main point of punishment and time out?"  I feel that punishment is a way of emphasizing to the child to not misbehaving in that way again and by "punishing" the child, we hope that the child will have a better memory of what s/he did wrong.  If the child is stress out enough to fall asleep during punishment, the "stress out" will be enough for the child to remember not to misbehave in that way again.

Hope this helps!

Vicki

This is a pretty difficult question to answer without knowing the child's age, misbehavior, and length of punishment (which I am assuming is some kind of time out).  Time out for younger children should last no longer than a minute for every year of age (for example, 3 minutes for a 3 year old).  In this short period of time I wouldn't expect a child to fall asleep, but it might be a good thing if they do as that would give them time to calm down.  Since the child is not being allowed to play, even though they are asleep I would consider it time served.
For older children time out is usually called grounding and lasts for varying periods of time depending on the transgression and the child's age.  One mistake many parents make is over-grounding.  The main effect of grounding wears off within a few days and long grounding leads to resentment and is usually difficult for parents to carry out; both responses decrease the chance that the child will learn better behavior from the over-grounding.  If an older child is grounded for more than an hour at a time and falls asleep during that period I would still consider it punishment since the child is not being allowed to do what they would otherwise be doing.  Again, it gives the child a chance to calm down and be more responsive to discussing the problem.
If you have a specific situation that doesn't fit the above, Just Ask!

Jeanne H. Brockmyer, Ph. D., education.com expert clinical child psychologist