coercive control
Criticism scheduling and privacy
Unwanted criticism can cripple thinking, destroying the means of error correction and the growth of knowledge.
Why do you like IFS but not ‘Self-led parenting’?
Coercion, including covert coercion imposed with a soft voice and loving words, is deeply disconnecting, and it certainly does not feel compassionate to the person on the sharp end. What seems to be called ‘Self-led parenting’ is a far cry from the deeply respectful, non-coercive spirit of the Self of IFS when they are talking about adults.
How do you determine what food to give your children?
How do you yourself determine what to eat? It is the same with children. What we eat is determined by a number of things, including what we feel like eating, which may be affected by our ideas about health and other things.
Surely it is not coercive to have a rule that whenever our child goes out, he must first tell us where he is going and for how long? What about being a responsible parent?!
If, to you, being a responsible parent requires coercing your children, unfortunately I think that very conviction may itself cause some of the very catastrophes you hope to avoid. Children no more react well to being coercively controlled than we do. Coercion has unintended consequences that most parents do not take into account.
Is hiding medicine in your child’s food wrong?
What turns taking medicine from something neutral or mildly unpleasant that you are willing to do to help you get better, to something terrifying and traumatic that you would rather die than do, is not actually the horrible taste of the medicine, it is the lack of control, the fear of being forced, the violation of your bodily integrity—which is a violation of your mental integrity, your agency. Something can feel fine if it is voluntary, but extremely traumatic if it is involuntary.
What if your child wants to drive?
If my child wanted to drive, I would find a way to teach her to drive safely and legally, such as on the private farmland of a friend.
Surely it is natural for parents to control their children?
The feeling that ‘how it’s always been’ is right and natural does not mean it is. Many barbaric, highly immoral things felt ‘natural’ and right for centuries before progress was made.
What do you mean by ‘paternalism’?
Paternalism is the idea that certain people or groups need to be controlled (in a benevolent fatherly way) for their own good.
Taking Children Seriously: a new view of children
Taking Children Seriously is a new VIEW of children—a non-paternalistic view: children do not actually need to be controlled for their own good. An Oxford Karl Popper Society talk.
Imposing rules so children feel secure?
A rule imposed on someone for the purpose of helping them to feel secure, is ludicrous. If I expressly don’t want something, yet it is imposed upon me anyway, how does that help me to feel secure? The opposite is the case.
Children do not need what conventional wisdom says they need
None of the reasons why enforcing “clear borders” is good for coerced children carry over in any way to children who are in consensual relationships with their parents. On the contrary, enforcing fixed borders and bottom lines is irrational and coercive, and sabotages the very means by which such children remain happy.
How to make time outs work
Changing the word ‘child’ to ‘wife’ and ‘parent’ to ‘husband’ highlights the reality of what is being advocated and the paternalism in the conventional view of children.
Why Summerhill is not ideal
If you are not free to leave, you are not free, no matter what A. S. Neill thought.
Not riding roughshod but satin-slipper-shod
It is easier to identify coercion that is riding roughshod over a child, than the covert satin-slipper-shod kind.
Unnatural consequences
So-called ‘natural consequences’ are a strategy for coercively controlling children while pretending not to be responsible for and intentionally imposing the coercion.
Kids Are Worth it, by Barbara Coloroso: a book review
This author has some good criticisms of overt coercion but spends about 200 pages advocating more covert coercion. Not Taking Children Seriously.
Getting kids to ‘agree’ to TV limits
Getting children to ‘agree’ to TV limits is coercive, and pretending that it is non-coercive.
How would you like it?
Imagine if your husband denied you dinner because you had not yet completed the chores he had decided you must do before dinner…
Why allow minors to disregard the guidance of their elders?
Does financial supporting our children mean they must obey us? Is it right to expect quid pro quo for our support?
‘Influence’ versus ‘coercion’
If I disagree with the substantive theory assumed by your word choice, you can’t expect me to build that substantive theory into my language, because if I were to, I would be being forced to lie or contradict myself every time I use your term.
Never made to write essays?
If children are not made to write essays, will they ever learn? Does the hoped-for end result justify the coercion? An argument with a coercionist college professor.
Coercion punishes children for reasoning
The problem is that when coercion is used, it really doesn’t matter whether your reasons make sense, or whether the task is the right thing to do. They have to do it regardless. It precisely blocks their thinking in that area.
Parents know that punishment is damaging
We parents delude ourselves that we are doing the right thing, viewing our coercion as ‘necessary’ or ‘unavoidable’.
Questionable motives?
Why it can’t be morally unobjectionable for an adult to engage sexually with a child
Clarification of what I mean by ‘coercion’
Showing the meaning of the word ‘coercion’ rather than explaining it. Show don’t tell, as it were.
Autonomous learning, autonomous life
This 1989 workshop advocated taking children seriously, not just ‘autonomous learning’.