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.
double bind
Identifying coercion is itself a creative task
Overt coercion is less likely to corrupt children’s interpretation of what is happening to them. But given that part of our self respect as parents taking our children seriously comes from being non-coercive, it might well be that the coercion we inadvertently engage in is interpretation-corrupting double binds. So we need to be particularly aware of the subtle mind-messing forms of coercion.
Advice to parents
Parents do not “need to be advised to manipulate their children with guilt, implied threats, and bribes”—they do this anyway. But they do need to be reassured that it is OK, and therefore that it is OK for them progressively to expunge the opposite impulses from their minds.
Fake choices and other covert coercion advocated in Kids Are Worth It
Most parenting books purport to be about how to be a nice parent instead of a nasty one, but under the surface veneer we find the same old rubbish about how to make children do what you want them to do: they do not take children seriously as full people whose lives are their own.
Are time outs time off or serving time?
Time out against someone’s will is nothing like a freely-chosen relaxing time out, and it is dishonest to use one term for the two opposite things.
The One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest school of parenting
Parenting books often advocate being calm and ‘empathetic’ in our coercive control of our children, instead of shouting at them. This makes the coercive control chillingly Nurse Ratched like in its double binding mixed messages.
Time out is not taking time out
There is a difference between sitting on a chair to relax, and enforced sitting on a chair. Or is being strapped in the electric chair also not a punishment?
Common emotional blackmail
Using love as leverage to double-bind children to obey—threatening to withdraw the relationship—is wrong. Children have a right to our love.
How to talk so your kids will be manipulated
The Faber/Mazlish How To Talk So Kids Will Listen books are not taking children seriously: they advocate double-binding and lying to children to manipulate them into going along with the parent’s agenda that is independent of and impervious to the child’s own wishes.