practicalities
The boy who would not be tamed
Parents can help their child stay the rebel that society needs to stay healthy, by allowing unfettered conversations going wherever the child’s curiosity takes them.
Taking ourselves seriously
Many people undervalue what they want to do compared to what they think other people want them to do. They think that they need to be obedient, without understanding or feeling good about why they have chosen to do so. Doing this to yourself is bad enough. But doing it to someone else, such as your child, is even worse, because now it is not just yourself and your own reason you are violating and harming, it is another person.
Instead of Cry It Out, try bedtime anarchy
Why subjecting your baby to the Cry it Out method is a mistake, and how bedtime anarchy can be delightful.
The can-do attitude versus the can’t-do attitude
We may fear that a given problem requires coercion or self-sacrifice on our part, but if we nevertheless assume that our fear is mistaken and have fun coming up with possible solutions, often, that can-do attitude can make a difference.
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!
What do you mean by non-coercive? What is the difference between coercion and non-coercion?
Non-coercive = embracing others exactly the way they are, and they can change if they want to and they don’t have to. Coercive = trying to control, fix or change others against their will.
How is she sleeping?
Trying to implement ‘expert’ advice that doesn’t feel right to you makes life much harder for you with a new baby. Listening to your own wisdom about the sleep issue can make all the difference.
How do you handle the issue of other people coercing your child?
Other people can behave badly, and we can view it as a problem to solve rather than being horribly distressed, wounded and irredeemably damaged.
Unnatural consequences revisited
How viewing other people as wilful perpetrators embodies the mistaken theory that problems are not soluble, and thus can interfere with problem-solving and result in our beloved children being distressed.
If you are not coercing your child, what do you do instead of coercion?
This question is like a coercively controlling husband asking: “If you are not coercing your wife, what do you do instead of coercion?” A paternalistic husband who controls his wife out of the best of intentions because he honestly believes that it is for her own good, could ask the same question.
At what age should children first leave the house on their own, visit their friend next door on their own, go to the cinema on their own, hitchhike from coast to coast on their own, etc.?
In a relationship characterised by consent, on those occasions when the other person is warning us that our proposed course of action may be unwise, and explaining why, we have every reason to trust that such warnings are not attempts to thwart us and ruin our fun, but are actually important – that it is actually in our best interests to heed the warnings.
Surely children need to learn to deal with restrictions to prepare them for life in society?
How do you distinguish between restrictions on our behaviour that are good for us and those that aren’t? The restrictions on our behaviour that are good for us are ones we agree with. And when we agree with them, they are not restrictions on our behaviour anyway.
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.
What if my child wants me to help her murder someone?
Were such an unlikely issue ever to arise, we would talk about it. And it would be an enjoyable conversation in which I am assuming that my child is well-intentioned. Sometimes a child might be exploring an idea thought-experiment style, or wondering what makes something seem wrong, or why someone might want to do something. Playing with ideas is a joy for all of us, especially children lucky enough to be in an environment in which it is safe to think about and to discuss potentially difficult or controversial issues.
I’m a vegetarian. What if my child wants to eat meat?
Our children are not us. They may well have different ideas from ours. Our ideas might be mistaken. We are fallible. That our ideas feel right does not justify coercing our children. Our children are sovereign beings who do not belong to us but to themselves.
How do you intervene non-coercively 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?
Is coercion always wrong?
It is not that coercion is always wrong. Self-defence and the defence of others is right. Otherwise evil could win. But when we do intervene to stop one child attacking another, that is a damage limitation exercise, to try to preserve any knowledge creating going on.
What if my child wants to buy every toy in the shop, and does not consult me?
The purpose of such what-if questions is to justify coercion, but when you ask the same question about an adult, it is shocking, because we all take adults seriously.
What do you have against gentle coercion?
If the coercion is as soft and gentle as you think it is, how is it having its intended effect of forcing the child to obey you? You see the soft gentleness of a velvet glove; your child sees the iron fist inside. It is the iron fist that is doing the work. It is the iron fist that is the underlying reality, the coercive substance under the surface velvet.
Do children not taught that they can’t always get their own way become entitled and inconsiderate?
We parents sometimes imagine that we can teach our children to be sensitive to others’s wishes by being utterly insensitive to theirs, but actions speak louder than words, and our children are more likely to be kind and thoughtful if we have been kind and thoughtful to them.
How can I tell if a proposed solution is a real solution?
Does the proposed solution spark joy? Is everyone beaming? Are our eyes all shining? Do you see delight? Joy? Animation? Skipping? The odd cartwheel, perhaps? Is it a “YES!!!!” all round? That suggests you have created a real solution.
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.
If I am not allowed to coerce my child, surely I am being coerced myself?
Assuming you are happily married, would you ever be thinking: “If I am not allowed to coerce my wife, surely I am being coerced myself?”?! No! Never! Not even in your worst moment ever! You take your wife seriously. You are not trying to train or change or improve your wife. You are not trying to win at her expense. You want both of you to win! You love her just as she is. You two solve problems together rather than coercing each other.
Does Taking Children Seriously mean children always getting their own way?
It means children AND parents ‘getting their own way’ – such a joy for all of us.
Which parenting style is Taking Children Seriously? Authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, or uninvolved?
Taking Children Seriously is not permissive, uninvolved, authoritarian or authoritative. Those approaches coerce children instead of taking them seriously as full people whose lives are their own.
Children fending for themselves like adults?!
Children very much need our love and protection, our care and attention, fun and play, support and vast amounts of engagement with their ideas and interests. They are not born able to survive and thrive without us. Only in the case of children do people think that needing support, protection, assistance, information and other things implies not having the same freedom, rights, respect and control over their lives as others.
What is Taking Children Seriously?
Taking Children Seriously is a new VIEW of children – a non-paternalistic view: like other groups of human beings, children are people, not pets, prisoners or property. Full people whose lives are their own, not a different kind of person – full, equal humans who should no more be coerced and manipulated and moulded and shaped by others than we adults should be.
Why does parenting feel so hard?
What most parents think they need to do as parents – moulding and shaping their children – is an impossible task. No wonder parenting is a nightmare for so many parents! But there is an alternative!
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.
The Taking Children Seriously survey
The survey showed that favouring coercion over any one issue is not a good predictor of favouring coercion over any other issue, even an issue that the majority considers more important. The fact that so many parents believe that so many others have got their priorities the wrong way round is very hard to explain in the conventional terms of ‘strict’ vs. ‘lenient’ enforcement of a larger or smaller core of objectively important things. Most of us can see quite easily the irrationality of many other people’s justifications for coercing children. But it is in the nature of irrationality that we cannot see our own.
Practical Taking Children Seriously
Three examples of explicitly coercive and implicitly coercive approaches, and Taking Children Seriously approaches to sample problems. Each scenario is also followed by a list of possible solutions as well as some suggestions on how one might prepare for solving such problems in the future.
Ideas for parent whose toddler does not want to go to sleep
Lots of practical ideas for sleep-deprived parents whose young child is wide awake 24/7 (or so it seems!), and who do not want to resort to coercing their child.
Housework help for a harried mother
How do real-life parents gracefully navigate housework and chores in a home that seems endlessly messy or disorganised?
Taking sick children seriously
We parents often think we have a good reason not to take our child seriously, but when our actions are not consistent with our seemingly good reason, what is really going on?
Requiring children to do chores
Professor David Deutsch on why making children do chores is immoral.
The importance of video games
Videogame players are learning not just knowledge of the overt subject-matter of the game, but inexplicit knowledge that applies in all creativity in the world. In a way, they are (mainly inexplicitly) learning how the universe works.
Creativity and untidiness
Professor David Deutsch explains why he says that he could not be very productive without also being untidy.
Both coercion and “doing nothing” are mistakes
Children have to do what they themselves think is right, with no pressure whatsoever – that’s what non-coercion amounts to – but they also have a right to be told morality as best we see it.
It is impossible to control for all the variables in any experiment involving human psychology
No sample can be large enough to control for all the variables in any experiment involving human psychology, because the variables include the ideas in people’s minds, and he number of possible ideas that a single mind could hold is far greater than the number of people on Earth.
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…
The mistaken belief that we have to doooo something
If parents don’t “do something”, like impose a penalty or bribe to change their child’s behaviour, will the child continue hitting forever? No!
Autonomous learning, autonomous life
This 1989 workshop advocated taking children seriously, not just ‘autonomous learning’.