I know, I know – not cool, not PC. Victims of child abuse have had it very bad, and at the worst possible time in their lives, brutalized and used by the ones who were supposed to be looking after them. I’m not “for” abuse, believe me.

But those people who have suffered extreme abuse, the outright, illegal, everyone-knows-that –is-abuse sort of abuse – those people have at least a chance for clarity. Those people have a chance to say of their abusers that they were wrong, they were the bad ones. Those people have a chance to say “it’s not my fault.”

Taking ‘don’t get me wrong a level deeper,’ I must say, I mean they have a chance, at least some of them. Still, the enemies of clarity are very powerful. Guilt, the mind control that abuse can create, social pressures, religious and cultural biases and injunctions . . . of course victims of abuse are often mired in a fog of uncertainty, which is a big part of their pain. But the cavalry is coming. The support for victims is on the increase, awareness is growing, and many survivors are getting more validation from the enlightened members of our society. If a person living in this kind of pain can find themselves among these elements, around these ideas, they will have a better chance to know that their suffering is not their fault, a much better chance to lay the blame where it belongs.

(Some find this sort of clarity among other victims, some in the roughest neighborhoods and in the poorest demographics find some belonging and solidarity in each other as children and young adults, in times and places where most people get abused. Sad to say, many grow out of it.)

I support this sort of awareness fully, of course.

But what of the rest? What about the people for whom the chance of clarity remains remote? What about the people for whom the abuse is ubiquitous, everywhere, people suffering forms of abuse in times and places where no-one will validate their suffering?

Of course, this has been the case for many, many people, always, suffering the sort of things that we are only now outlawing and beginning to prosecute for, but it must be said: much of what is now thought to be clearly abuse was legal and dare I say, “normal” in the past. Slavery and child slavery, beatings and corporal punishments of the worst sort, all these things have been socially sanctioned in the past and though they are now considered to be immoral and abusive, victims were, uh, unsupported. To say the least.

If our enlightenment is not yet complete, if there is room for improvement still, and if our improved humanity continues to march forward, who will today’s unsupported victims have been, in a better future? Who is suffering today and no-one knows it, so that no-one can care?

Answer?

You and me. The “normally punished” children.

You know it was almost a total experiment, although we were very influenced by a visit just a few hours long once with a family who clearly had no bed-times and whose kids were amazing to us. It really blew our minds. If I were ever to get published, I will dedicate my book to that family. What resulted for us from this experiment was  better than we had ever imagined. We’ve had almost no serious fights with our girls since the younger one’s toddlerhood. We’ve got some laziness, some messiness – but we also have no rebellion, no serious misbehaviours, no drugs, alcohol, pregnancies, and top (really, top, top) grades in school. We had a funeral this weekend, and my teenagers were at the front of the line to give their condolences to the family.

 There is an idea, a good one, I don’t really argue it, that addiction is hereditary, that if the parent is an addict, the child’s chances of being one are increased by something like an order of magnitude. Well – I was quite a pothead when my kids were young. By that theory, I’ve set them up for addiction, but they’re 16 and 19 now, and they are showing no interest in drugs or alcohol. I’m very glad to hear you’re talking to your kids about that stuff, and yes, too many people seem to think that if they don’t talk about it, that the kids will never hear about it. We certainly talk about it here, too, as well as talking about everything else, up to and including sex and death (and we always have).

There’s another idea around addiction, one that gets a little less ink, and that is that smarts has very little correlation with addiction or not, but what does correlate is happiness. That is something that I hope my idea of no punishing at all may address. I feel I’ve proven – to myself at least, I haven’t had anyone else agree that I’ve made the point – that “legitimate” punishment has the same negative effects on us that abuse has been shown to have, and that corporal punishment has been shown to have.

( I spend a lot of time and ink in the book trying to make that case, so I can’t do my reasoning justice in a few lines here . . . )

But a major outcome of all three “levels of abuse” is certainly an impairment in a person’s happiness. This is the secret, I believe, the reason so many seemingly happy, well adjusted people fall prey to addiction and self-destruction – nobody thinks punishing has the damaging effects abuse has, so we all think punished people aren’t damaged and unhappy, or at least if they are, they have no reason to be, no reason the average person can point to. My theory has the potential to explain this mystery, I think. You don’t have to believe to test the idea:

just postulate it, that most people are punished, and that punishing causes the same impairments and damages as abuse – and then see if that might possibly explain the fact that anybody can fall prey to anything, the same sorts of things that abuse victims have a higher incidence of: addiction, self-destructiveness, cognitive impairment, violence . . .

always long on theory, I apologize again.

I am of the opinion that there really can be no punishment or discipline without some sort of violence or at the very least, force. I think many, many of today’s parents feel like you two do, that they want to parent without violence, without hitting, but there’s a trap in that, which you may have felt. It might even be a majority of parents who want that, at least in our part of the world, but I think most are doomed to failure, because of what punishing is, which is, abuse with a reason, and the reason doesn’t change what it is – oh, wait. I’m doing it again, aren’t I?

 I do concentrate on the no punishing thing, my wife’s yelling at me right now, that there’s more to it than just not punishing, she wants me to tell you that we had none of the usual things, no:

–          bedtimes                    – we’d get them up in the morning for daycare/school/work, so they’d naturally get tired and sleep at night. Wifey couldn’t stay awake for them, she sleeps at 9:00 pm, so I’d stay up and wait them out if they weren’t ready to sleep.

–          mealtimes                  – feed them when they’re hungry

–          cribs                         – we had a “family bed,” two queen mattresses on the floor, for years and years

–          toilet training            – they’re human beings. They figured it out at pretty much the normal ages.

–          punishing                 – any way at all. Our kids’ stuff was theirs, and we never took anything away, never confiscated their toys, pacifiers. No timeouts – OK, Wifey took around five timeouts, running away and locking herself in a bedroom out of frustration before she might have a freakout (she says when the kids made her sad). She says they were all during times when both kids were home, that she didn’t leave a kid alone. Of course no hitting. I did allow myself to lose it a little and start yelling at them every now and again after the younger one was at least eight years old. Our house has been a terrible mess all these years, as you can no doubt imagine. It gets frustrating sometimes.

–          forced sharing          – same as confiscation, their stuff is theirs, not ours to take back when we feel like it. No forced friends either. If our kid didn’t like someone’s kid, they could hang with us, they didn’t have to suffer someone they didn’t like alone. That strained some adult relationships.

–          Santa Claus             – and other ’fun lies.’ We told them Santa was a game people played. That strained some inter-family relationships too.

So, I’ll step through your example, step by step:

 –          For example:  Child gets one hour of screen time (ipod) a day

 –          No such rule. I’m embarrassed to say, all the time is screen time in our house. We’re not nearly active enough. It’s all Wifey and I can do to get our one hour walks in three times a week, and almost none of that for far too many years.

–           however said child is caught using the ipod under the covers when he is supposed to be sleeping, in this scenario the child consciously snuck the device into his bedroom without permission when he know that was a no-no.  Not a first offence either. 

–          Again, for us, not applicable. Can’t “hide” in the family bed, there weren’t those sorts of ‘no-nos’ anyway. The kids’ screen time, we were all together for anyway, all in the family/living room or in the family bed. There wasn’t really any unsupervised screen time, we always knew what they were doing. Plus, since there were no punishments to fear, there wasn’t any sneaking or hiding, at all. Of course, no rule to offend, no offence, no first offence, no third strike.

–           Mom and Dad decided to suspend ipod privileges for a period of 2 weeks which by definition is “punishment.”  Curious how you would have handled a similar situation (on the assumption the approached used is not aligned with your blogs).

–          Yes, this is punishment,  and how is it accomplished without force? Do we play “keepaway” all day, or are there more penalties if your kid finds the device and tries to take it? It is my opinion that some things sound like non-hitting punishments, but really, when push comes to shove, it is all eventually dependent upon force. Sorry, it always go to some technical sort of talk around punishing for me.

 I expect that’s maybe long enough for now?

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.