An interesting case,

it looks like one of us.

There is limited functionality

yet it is quite advanced,

perhaps it is in a state of transition.

Clearly, there is a plan for this thing,

a destiny, or failing that,

at least a future. Surely it was created

for a reason.

There appear to be

developmental issues . . .

what is it you are asking me?

There is potential, yes,

the possibility of great evil

or of great benefit.

We could use this thing.

Certainly, we could find a way

to influence it,

And questions of whether we should

are a luxury to be pondered

only after we settle the question of need.

In our calling, however,

There is an imperative

above all others

regardless that it immobilizes,

despite that our plans

come to a halt,

and we are sworn to uphold this:

first, do no harm.

 . . . teach the existing system, the system of total parental control.

In previous decades, or in old-time religious communities, and still in many homes generally, total parental control was or is achieved by outright force and violence, and the parenting advice and the books taught people exactly how to do that, and that it was or is every parent’s duty to do it. Unfortunately for practitioners of this sort of child-rearing, that has gone out of fashion, especially with the police, and now that advice and those books must be provided clandestinely, under cover of darkness. Behind closed doors.

Today’s parenting books, at least in the West, at least the ones that are available in bookstores in broad daylight, are more subtle, but they’re selling the same product: total parental control. Only now the product has evolved, adapted to the environment. Now you get total control of your kids plus you get to avoid embarrassment, shame and incarceration. Forget conspiracy, or being an accessory before or after the fact; they never tell you to hit the kids. It’s all in what they don’t say. They tell you ways to manipulate, ways to make your children feel like they’re making choices, feel like they have some control over their own lives. They tell you how to put your children in situations where they truly have no choice but to do what the parents want, with the added bonus that neither they nor we are aware of the unconscious violence at the core of it.

The older method, the unabashed corporal punishment of children, that was straightforward, simple, even honest.

The new methods are more complex, they are systems, schools of thought, and they are difficult, for good reason. Today’s child-rearing advice and books have a difficult and complex task. They need to show you how to bamboozle your kids while simultaneously bamboozling you that you’re not doing it.

It doesn’t matter that they’re babies, toddlers, or what, that they don’t understand what you’re saying; they will still understand the fact that you’re talking to them, and that’s important. Also, that is what teaching is, it’s when you tell someone something they don’t already understand. I am amazed at the ideas of ‘age-appropriate explanations,’ ‘age-appropriate information,’ and the more street level ‘talking to children on their level.’ These ideas, along with the ‘family entertainment’ phenomenon are in direct opposition to teaching and learning. Anyone practicing these concepts would seem to be working to ensure their children don’t learn. I am very opposed to it, I can’t over-stress it. Knowledge is power, and we need to empower our children; withholding information from a group of people, that is not love, that is something else. Also, you can be certain that if there are things you won’t tell your kids, you can be sure someone else will, and maybe not the way you’d like.

Telling someone something they don’t understand yet, that is what teaching is. Telling someone only what they already know? That is censorship, and not even the good kind, if there is a good kind. (“Family entertainment” is just smart enough for your three year-old, and no-one in your family is in any danger of learning anything from it. It is censorship, and censorship is always a power grab. Those who have created the format for “family entertainment” and convinced us that it’s appropriate for our children are gaining some power over our kids – over us, since kids grow up to be us.)

– here’s part #2:

They Can’t Understand Most of What We Say, Part #2

                Talk, talk, talk. That is the right thing to do. Talking is how we teach, it’s how anyone learns anything when we’re too young to read. It’s how we teach when we’re not trying to also teach power dynamics and some version of ‘might is right.’ There are two ways to teach someone who can’t yet learn in the library or on the internet and they are modelling, that is, teaching by example, and talk. As to teaching by example, that will happen with kids, whether we mean for it to happen or not; they will do what you do, they are watching you. They can’t understand most of what we say when they’re very young, but they can see you. For this reason, as well as many others, don’t punish. Your kids will see it, they will see a large, powerful person imposing unpleasantness (which can mean some nasty, physical stuff, but any unpleasantness is a poor enough example) on a small, powerless person, and that is not the thing we want our children to copy. When you only talk, you are modelling non-violence – that is what we want our little ones to copy. So, talk, only talk, that is the thing to do, and the following possible objections to this advice don’t matter, or at least not enough to do anything different:

                  – they can’t understand most of what we say

                 – it doesn’t always stop the bad behaviour

                 – it doesn’t train them to listen

                The good stuff in many parenting books is very good indeed, especially in parenting books that advocate, as I do, for no punishment of children at all, and some of them are full of real evidence resulting from real scientific research. There is a lot of wonderful advice that I cannot make any complaint about except just that: it can appear to be a lot of information, a great deal of related but assorted ideas that can start to appear too numerous to remember or integrate into the busy lives of us parents. My advice in the face of this may sound too simple to be true, but it isn’t really.

                 Don’t punish. All the rest of the good stuff flows from that.

                 If we don’t punish, we can’t be “controlling.” We can’t be “chaotic,” we can’t even be “permissive.” These are all mistakes that don’t just happen, these are not erroneous situations that arise passively – they are forced. We don’t really need to do a lot to avoid these situations, we don’t even need to learn a lot of new methods; we just need to stop actively, forcibly creating these conditions, that is the key. If we do nothing else right but don’t punish and don’t force our will, our children will be better off than any of us ever were. That’s a big change, don’t get me wrong, but it is one single change, not some complicated new “system.”

                 If we start with that – no punishment – the rest inevitably and naturally follows. When we’ve decided that we’re not going to hurt our children to get our way, we’ll find that we need to befriend them, to bring them on-board with us, that to get cooperation we’ll have to cooperate with them. If we love them, they will love us and want to cooperate, and if we don’t hurt them, they’ll trust us and believe us when we talk. Of course babies and toddlers will make mistakes, but once they can understand what we’re saying and if we don’t terrorize and betray them with punishments, things will just get easier all the way through, as they grow in their ability to think and communicate. The opposite of that is why it’s more difficult when we punish, when make adversaries of our children: things get harder as our adversaries grow in their abilities. If we don’t hurt them, if we do the positive stuff that we need to do to make friends of them, even our teenagers won’t be the bitter monsters many of us have learned to assume they will be.

I said somewhere that the police are never going to stamp out crime, not in any disrespect to them, they are fighting it all day long, they are really trying. They are on the front line, with little time and resources for anything but putting out fires, biggest ones first. Again, no disrespect to the police, but the reason that what they do doesn’t end crime generally is because their tools and the bad guys’ tools are the same tools: force and violence. That is what the police do for us, they are a force for power for us against the forces for power that are against our interests. Long term strategies for reduction of the causes of crime, that’s not really their job.

That is our job. And we’re not holding up our end of the deal.

It is before our kids wind up as a problem for the police to deal with, with, again, the same tools as the bad guys, when they’re at home, when they’re small – that is when a different set of tools needs to be used, not the violence and force. Not punishment. So what I’m saying is, the long term reduction of crime must start in the home, and it requires something other than punishment to produce that result.

Punishments are forced, by definition. How does a person endure a punishment unless he is somehow forced to? And force is violence. A rose by any other name . . .

– here’s part #2:

Our end of the Deal, Part #2 – Teachers

                If you own any of the popular parenting books, get that. If you don’t, go buy one, don’t borrow it. Now, reading the book by some parenting guru, some best-selling authority (the one we had when our kids were young was “kids are worth it!” by Barbara Coloroso), do all the good positive stuff in it and ignore all the crap about discipline and structure.

                That should do it.

                 Look for keywords: discipline, structure, consequences, responsibility, ownership, limits, find the parts with words like that – and rip those pages out. (Actually, on second thought, borrow one. Borrow as many as you can find, buy as many as you can afford, then rip all those pages out and give them back, give the ones you bought to charity . . . ) Of course, ‘punishment’ is on that list, it goes without saying. I want to add ‘boundaries’ to that list, but it’s just possible that some of these books might actually acknowledge the child’s boundaries and suggest that we respect those. If that is the case, then that would be part of the good stuff. So, to the good stuff:

                 Love, of course, hugs, kisses, praise and criticism, attention, stimulation, these are good things, the main things. Secondarily, food, water, shelter, medical care, security, these are also important, but not so much as the first list, the primary things. This second list is often used to support ideas like discipline, and if so, that may contravene the very first thing, love. When you’ve got to punish them in the name of safety, who’s keeping them safe from you? So, love, praise, attention, stimulation, these are the good things, these are what loving parents are supposed to bring to the situation, plus I would add communication, talk, talk, talk. These things are compatible, complimentary things, all part of the natural ‘system’ of child-rearing. Talk is the choice to make, because it’s talk or punish, communication or punishment, you can’t have them both. Anyone who tells you that you can is being less than honest.

                While I think there are some parents who don’t love to visit our house due to the constant mess, there are also many who tell us our place is a peaceful oasis, a zone free of parent-child stress and strife. When the girls were young, I’m happy to say, adults were always delighted to meet and spend time with our unpunished children who would talk with them and not display fear and mistrust, which is just the experience that we once had that started us down this road (See ‘Story 4, The Aha Moment). To repeat something I said somewhere else, it seems that if you don’t punish early, you will never have to. The lines of communication have always been open in my family. We’ve never considered punishing, never had to consider it, not since our younger one – a hyperactive child– was a toddler. Then we considered it, but that’s all, thank goodness. She has always been tougher than us, born that way. I’m pretty sure that if we had picked a fight with her then that she’d have been kicking our asses for years by now.