A commitment to figuring it out
We look for solutions that everyone, children included, feel good about. We figure it out! And we relish figuring it out!
no recipe
“If we are fallible and not omniscient, surely it is exaggerating to say it is always possible to solve problems without coercion?”
‘Problems are soluble’ does not mean that knowledge can be created by fiat, or that anyone who fails to interact entirely non-coercively is evil. That is horribly far from how I see it. Solutions are sometimes hard to come by. It is often not obvious how to solve a problem. Truth is not manifest.
“How do you intervene noncoercively when one child is attacking another?”
Meet the aggressor where she is, without resistance, as opposed to disapproving from above; see it from her PoV; what was this about?; what led up to this? How can we proceed positively from here?
“How do you solve problems where there is a conflict of interest?”
We look at our respective reasons for wanting what we initially want, and we create a way to proceed that we all prefer—a new idea that did not exist at the outset.
A mess as a problem
If someone finds a mess problematic, there is a problem to solve. That can’t be done using a mechanical rule.
Stumbling towards taking children seriously
Beginning to think about taking children seriously brings up many hitherto hidden problems. We are all in the same boat. No one has ‘arrived’.
Merely desisting from coercion is not enough
Non-coercion is a necessary but not sufficient condition. We have to be working together to find real solutions to problems, not merely avoiding forcing our views on each other.