top-down
“Equal relationships with our children?! How are parents and children are equals?!”
Children are no less creative and rational than adults, whether or not they yet have the explicit language in which to express themselves.
“What is wrong with loving limits for children?”
Adding “loving” to “limits” does not make the limits noncoercive, it just adds confusing mixed messages to the coercion. The parents are coercing the child while acting as though that is not what they are doing. They are pretending that they are not responsible for the distress they are in fact causing.
“Do children taken seriously ever ask permission?”
Children being taken seriously are not subject to an authority from whom they need permission, so they no more ask permission than we do.
“How can we express approval when our children do something good without manipulating them by implying that we would disapprove if they had made a different choice?”
The kind of expressions of approval that are not manipulative are the ones that bubble out of you without any forethought. Anytime you are wondering if what you were planning to say might be coercive approval, it probably is. Is what you are saying the kind of thing you would naturally say to an equal, a friend, or your boss, say? Or does the idea of saying this to your boss seem highly inappropriate?
“How is the word ‘parenting’ not taking children seriously?”
Why is it that there is a word “parenting” but no word “childing”? Because in our culture, children are not taken seriously. Words like “parenting” embody the idea of hierarchical, top-down paternalistic/authoritarian parent-child relationships in which the parent is actively doing to the child and the child is passively done to. The parent is actively moulding and shaping the child from above.
“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.
“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.
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.
Punishment as a teaching tool
Punishment has a very high risk of destroying not only the desire, but also the ability to learn.
Not riding roughshod but satin-slipper-shod
It is easier to identify coercion that is riding roughshod over a child, than the covert satin-slipper-shod kind.
The language of parental power plays
Saying “Sand is not for throwing” is a euphemism for “I have made the rule that you may not throw sand, and I am going to enforce it.” This euphemistic construction is ubiquitous: “Food is not for throwing” (“I have made the rule that you may not throw food, and I am going to enforce it.”); “Hitting is not appropriate,” (“I have made the rule that you may not hit, and I am going to enforce it.”).
Expressing approval vs expressing appreciation
Expressions of approval are inherently manipulative the approval is designed to manipulate the child into meeting your own standard.