not from outside our mind – Taking Children Seriously

The courage to dance

Taking children seriously under scrutiny takes courage and can feel lonely, but someone has to start.

Criticism is not like a fluid you can pour into a mind, and the mind is not like a bucket able to passively receive whatever you want to pour in. As Karl Popper said, there is no such thing as instruction from without.

“If antirational memes are compelling me to coerce my children, what hope is there?!”

There is every reason for hope! And the fact that we have noticed that coercing our children is problematic is progress compared to how things were in the static society of the past. (And hey, maybe the fact that coercionists these days seem to feel more need to justify their advocacy of coercion is itself progress?)

“Why did my mother’s coercive words fly out of my mouth?!”

There are probably antirational memes operating when parents are feeling compelled to go along with the standard coercive approach with their children despite their doubts about its rightness.

“Why do parents coerce their children despite having been through it themselves?”

If parents knew that they could reject the conventional approach and it would not ruin their precious child’s life, many more would do so. If you cannot see that rejecting the status quo is not only right, but also will not have any disastrous unintended consequences, it feels safer to stick with the tradition of paternalistic coercion.

Aunt Cynthia and cleanliness

What makes housework so grim is not the time it takes—it takes little time and can be done while conversing, listening to stuff, etc.—but all the other stuff—the resentment, the coercion, the battling, the idea that if you didn’t make the mess, you shouldn’t clean it up. Stop thinking in terms of trying to get others to do what you want them to do, and you will find that housework is not a problem.

Defining “coercion”, “coercive”, “coerce”

Definitions of words commonly-used on the Taking Children Seriously site: “coercion”, “coercive” and “coerce”.