Listen, by Patty Wipfler: the missing connection
On Patty Wipfler’s book, Listen: Five simple tools to meet your everyday parenting challenges, and on taking connection seriously
treating children as though they do not exist as people
(NOT) listening to children
Taking children seriously means taking a child’s wish/decision to go to school seriously too.
Choosing to go to school or Iraq
Lots of things ‘suck’ for most people, but very few things suck for everyone. People are very, very different, and there is a danger in just assuming that a child is acting out of desperation when in fact they are quite healthily pursuing their own ends. The danger is that one will then, in effect, be refusing to help them pursue these ends, and, in effect, start to undermine them by constantly seeking alternatives and constantly acting on the assumption that there must be something wrong with them, or with the alternatives that you are providing for them, if they persist in wanting this.
We lost our internet account
Children’s behaviour is not random. It is meaningful. Therefore there was a reason for this incident.
“He would say that, wouldn’t he?”
Adults often discount children’s ideas with ad hominem psychologising, dehumanising them as though they do not exist as people.
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.
Why allow minors to disregard the guidance of their elders?
Does financial supporting our children mean they must obey us? Is it right to expect quid pro quo for our support?
Running into the street
About the worry that a very young child’s brain and cognitive function and reason might be insufficient to prevent them inadvertently killing themselves by running into the road.