“You can get a child to comply by making it very clear to them that their life will not be worth living if they fail to comply, but to call that their own free choice is perverse, to say the least.”
– Sarah Fitz-Claridge
From the archives: The original post was posted on 17th December, 1994
“I’d like to make a few comments on the coercion issue. I’m very much in agreement with what Sarah said, in general. Obviously, I’m interested in this list [the Taking Children Seriously email-based discussion forum]. I’ve read a number of John Holt books, the latest one of which is Escape From Childhood which discusses this coercion issue very well.”
Quite. Well worth reading. Could be his best book, I think.
“The main thing that I would like to say, is that I’m not seeing this issue quite as clear cut as (it seems like) Sarah is. For example, if my child says that he will not brush his teeth, my reaction is not simply OK, I’m not going to coerce him into it. In that instance, it is his teeth we are talking about.”
As I have attempted to say, just accepting the child’s theory when you yourself have a rival theory is not the idea. The idea is to find a solution to this problem that each of you prefers—a solution you both prefer.
“However, it is my money which pays for his dental visits”
I confess I was rather stunned to see this Libertarian property rights argument coming from you, Michael! Yes, in terms of property rights, you have every right to withhold money from your child (although not in an unlimited fashion, legally) but that does not make it right to do so. By your logic, given that your child owns very little, you could say that you will not give him access to any of your things, your things being your property, perhaps not even feeding him any more.
What I am saying is that this is a fallacious argument. You are using an invalid pseudo-Libertarian argument to “justify” a form of treating children that you had already decided upon. This is a category error: you are trying to justify an educational theory from a piece of economics or a piece of legal theory. This justification that “it is my money and therefore you must do as I say in regard to your teeth or I won’t pay for your dental treatment” can be used by any educational theory, such as that since it is all your money, you won’t buy him any more food. You could take some other behaviour and justify it by exactly the same method—perhaps some behaviour that you agree is admittedly bad for the child. If you admit that there is such a thing as educational theory—that is, the idea that there is a better and a worse way of bringing up children—and you understand that the better and the worse way are both going to be legal, then you’ll see that you can’t deduce a better way to raise children by looking into what is legal or illegal or what you have a right to do in terms of property rights.
“However, it is my money which pays for his dental visits, money which represents my life energy.”
I’d say that it is the child’s money too, in that you have an obligation to take care of the child, and that it is not your life energy anyway.
“In the case of watching television and videos, again, it is not simply that he should have the right to choose to watch television whenever he wants. When the television is on I have to be willing to have that sound in the house in which I exist also. (We live in a small house, in which I spend a fair amount of time in the living room where the TV is.)”
I sympathise with the idea that one is sharing one’s life with one’s children, and that on the whole, life should not be a matter of one person riding roughshod over another, but there are very many ways in which one can become willing to have the sound in the house. For instance, one might enjoy the children enjoying themselves, or one can exercise creativity to solve the problem in a way everyone involved prefers. It should not be the case that this giving-in is the dominant feature of one’s life: if it were, knowledge would not be growing, because one would not be engaged in trying to find solutions everyone involved likes.
“In short, if the decision affects only him, then he has the right to make whatever decision he wants.”
Is there anything that affects only the child, if you say that even his own teeth are your concern?
“Fine. But, if that decision affects other people, then the rights of the other people come into the situation as well.”
I don’t think one stands on one’s rights with one’s friends, and especially not with one’s family, one’s children. You are thinking of all this in terms of rights, which, as I have said, I think is a mistake. One has a “right” to do all sorts of awful things, but that does not make it right to exercise those legal rights.
“There is an expression that says: ‘Your right to swing your arms ends at my face.’ Yes, children should have equal rights with adults, but not rights which take away from my rights which are equal to his. In cases where there is a conflict such as a child wanting to watch television and the parent not wanting the television on, then non-violent, equitable conflict resolution techniques should be employed. In this case, the two involved could ask one another how both can be satisfied. Perhaps the adult could say, I have an errand to do which I was going to do later, so I will do that now and, while I’m gone, you could watch your video. Or, I need to be here now, would you consider watching your video later after I’ve finished with what I’ve done here. Also, I think it’s important to give the child information, such as the consequences of ignoring oral health.”
I agree. The problem is, most parents don’t give their children information but lies. Rather than telling their children that the issue of tooth decay is by no means simple, and that there are complex theories about it which are evolving as knowledge grows in the field of dentistry, they just say, “Your teeth will go black or drop out or you’ll suffer agony as a result of cavities if you don’t follow the dental routine I advocate.” Parents do not form this sort of theory by a truth-seeking process. Rather, I think they are trying to think what they can say that will make the children brush their teeth. These are not the kind of things one would say if one were really interested in the truth.
One does not have to believe the complex medical theories my dentist tells me about: just looking at this from the point of view of the conventional layman’s position, one would, in a truth seeking as opposed to manipulative process, say to a child, “If you don’t brush your teeth, you increase your chances of getting cavities. The cavities, if not treated, will cause toothache. If treated, you get the pain of the treatment, which itself you may or may not want. A lot of people think it worth it. Many people draw the line somewhere. The dentist would have you brush your teeth several times per day and always after meals, but many people find that that interferes with their lifestyle, and they prefer to have the occasional filling. In any case, tooth decay in our culture is a very very rare source of losing teeth. It is gum disease which is important, and that is not important when you are under twenty-five (according to current thinking on this). Now it might be the case that another dentist will come along in five years’ time and argue that tooth decay is very important because gum disease is only ever caused by pre-existing tooth decay, say, and you might want to take that possibility into account when deciding what action to take.”
The point is—the thinking on this is evolving all the time, and we can only go on the best theories we have now. And now, that is not what many parents are saying. There could always be new theories. The theories about any given area will be complex and have caveats, because if something is an obvious and straightforward case, there won’t be any argument over it. Nobody argues about whether one should thrust one’s hand into the fire or not. So the state of the art always has pros and cons, and balances in it, and it has places where a person has to make a decision where no one can decide for him, like whether he likes cream buns enough to want to take the risk of heart disease or whatever. There is no obvious answer to this—or in skiing or rock climbing or hang gliding or parachute jumping—only the individual himself can decide whether he wants to take the risk.
If one were to “explain” the risks associated with skiing in the sort of manipulative way many parents explain dental health, one might say to the child, “Here are the reasons why skiing is a very bad idea. First, breaking your bones is extremely painful; and you might get lost in a white-out and suffer exposure. Then there are avalanches—people have died in avalanches—and unless you are very careful, you could get badly burned in the sun, and of course that causes skin cancer…” That is manipulative and tendentious. The real answer may lead the child to conclude that he won’t go near a ski slope, or it may lead him to conclude that skiing is worth the risks. It will not necessarily lead him to act in accordance with your prior theory, and (in a rational truth-seeking process) nor should you think that that must be the outcome.
“With my child, that information enabled him to make his own decision to brush his teeth by his own free will and volition. I don’t feel that I coerced him there. He doubted the importance of teeth brushing. I informed him of decay and great pain and expense, and he decided to be OK about brushing his teeth.”
“With my child, that information enabled him to make his own decision to brush his teeth by his own free will and volition. I don’t feel that I coerced him there. He doubted the importance of teeth brushing. I informed him of decay and great pain and expense, and he decided to be OK about brushing his teeth.” 
See also:
- Does your child love visiting the dentist?
- What if a child wants to buy something the parent is boycotting for moral reasons?
- “What is the psychological impact of not taking children seriously?”
Sarah Fitz-Claridge, 1994, ‘Whose teeth are they anyway?’, https://takingchildrenseriously.com/whose-teeth-are-they-anyway