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.
thought experiment
If coercion has impaired my ability to correct errors, is taking children seriously even possible?
Focus on having fun playfully solving whatever problem you have in the present moment, and move forward from where you are now. Notice just how brilliant and amazing you are and how much you have achieved, alleged impairments notwithstanding!
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 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.
Oh, how we delude ourselves—blindspots!
We all have blind spots. We all delude ourselves. This is especially common when it comes to parenting, because of all the antirational memes operating in this sphere.
Children’s legal status: a defence
Further arguments in this thought experiment about children’s legal status
‘Influence’ versus ‘coercion’
If I disagree with the substantive theory assumed by your word choice, you can’t expect me to build that substantive theory into my language, because if I were to, I would be being forced to lie or contradict myself every time I use your term.