Having the freedom to learn from our mistakes is important for children too, not just us. Recalling coercive interference from our own childhood can spur us on to keep taking our children seriously as best we can.
Practical suggestions about a child not wanting to wear a prescribed eyepatch.
How the word ‘respect’ led this parent to Taking Children Seriously
The experience of someone new to Taking Children Seriously, from first scepticism to later taking their children seriously.
Parents call punishments ‘natural consequences’ when they are unwilling to accept responsibility for the unhappiness that is being caused, but accepting responsibility may be a necessary step to solving such problems.
Adults often discount children’s ideas with ad hominem psychologising, dehumanising them as though they do not exist as people.
How scientism allows one to escape from the merely human arena of morality with a single bound. Parents’ disputes with their children are over a moral issue—what they should do, or what should be done to them. While professionals may have some expertise over factual issues, that does not entitle them to pose as authorities on the moral issue. To assume that it does is anti-rational. It is scientism.
How a post on misc.kids (a newsgroup) led to this parent exploring Taking Children Seriously.
Once one begins to see how extremely general this notion of conjecture and refutation is, then it begins to seem much more likely that learning always follows that pattern.
Creativity, knowledge, happiness, unhappiness and coercion: how we parents inadvertently kill our children’s creativity.
Expressions of approval are inherently manipulative the approval is designed to manipulate the child into meeting your own standard.
When people ask about a child staying at a friend’s house with no parents, do they want not only to know how they might handle it, but why that way, and why not the conventional way. Those whys are philosophy—ideas. That is why we get philosophical.
The societal pressure on parents to control and coerce their children can be immense.
A lack of forcefulness is not a negative characteristic unless you find yourself sacrificing your own desires. You respect your children and take their desires seriously. You need to be sure to respect yourself and your own desires as well.
Taking children seriously is such a joy compared to the constant battle or successfully suppressed children of conventional parenting.
A discussion about the rightness of coercing other creative rational beings.
American children should be prepared for the playmate who reaches into his parents’ drawer and comes out with a loaded gun
Traditional education can be looked at a massive, standardized operation aiming to stuff the allegedly passive bucket minds of children.
An argument that the mere fact that something is legal does not make it right or best. Many different things are perfectly legal; not all of them are good.
Does financial supporting our children mean they must obey us? Is it right to expect quid pro quo for our support?
Parents discuss children’s rationality.