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by Christian D. Larson
Promise Yourself
To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.
To talk health, happiness and prosperity to every person you meet.
To make all your friends feel that there is something in them.
To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.
To think only of the best, to work only for the best, and to expect only the best.
To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.
To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile.
To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others.
To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear,
& too happy to permit the presence of trouble.
To think well of myself & to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud word, but in great deeds.
To live in the faith that the whole world is on my side, so long as I am true to the best that is in me.
A middle school mom, Ann Wentworth of Fon du Lac Wisconsin wants these books banned from her daughter’s school district. She’s petitioned the school (at the expense of local taxpayers) and lost the first request for censorship. She keeps adding books to her list. I imagine every time she reads one it ends up going on her list. I’ve read a lot of these books and, she’s right, they suck. But they’re not written for me, a 35 yr old mom. They’re written for adolescent girls. There’s talk of losing virginity, which is what the mom finds so offensive. Psychologically speaking, the characters are somewhat realistic and struggle with the same things other adolescent girls struggle with. I think this woman must have some kind of weird relationship with her daughter that they can’t just discuss the character’s decisions and move on. She’s become attached apparently to the idea that these books will be the downfall of society and must be removed from her daughter’s library. I can’t imagine how embarrassed that young girl must feel, to have her mother parading around like she’s the literary police and all. I wonder if this ridiculous event will drive an even bigger wedge between her & her daughter. Perhaps I’m being cynical to question her relationship with her daughter, but this action seems so extreme. ASKING for censorship? It’s just insane. Maybe I’ll go petition for removal of all books that imply “learning comes from schools” or perhaps let’s petition to get rid of history books that only tell half the story, or perhaps we should petition to censor books that teach false science, about medicine or maybe the religious should petition for removal of the science books that make fun of evolution. Perhaps we should seek removal of all the books that teach kids about college planning, because it’s really NOT all it’s cracked up to be. Perhaps we should remove all the books about vampires because they might play biting games or fall in love with vampires.
For every book on the shelf, there is SOMEONE who isn’t going to like it.
To assume that the readers will develop an unhealthy lifestyle, habit, belief or fixation is really to give the books way more power than is necessary.
If her daughter goes out & has premarital sex, will it be because she read the stupid Sisterhood books? Or will it be because teens are horny, full of hormones and surrounded by people who have told them lies all their life, about everything?
When people are influenced by literature is it because they read the book or is it be because the book spoke to a certain part of themselves, calling forth ideas and thoughts that were already part of the reader?
If this woman would talk to her daughter about these books, instead of talking to the school board, she may find that her daughter thinks they’re stupid, or that her daughter thinks about sex constantly and wants some real guidance, or perhaps her daughter is indifferent. Maybe she’ll finish the entire series simply because she can’t stand to miss the conclusion, and not because she identifies sexually with the characters.
Anyway- these are the books that Ann Wentworth wants banned, enjoy.
“One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies ” by Sonya Sones
“Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants ” by Ann Brashares.
“The Second Summer of the Sisterhood  ” by Ann Brashares.
“Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood  ” by Ann Brashares.
“Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood  ” by Ann Brashares.
“Get Well Soon ” by Julie Halpern.
“What My Mother Doesn’t Know ” by Sonya Sones.
Five Reasons to Stop Saying “Good Job!”
By Alfie Kohn
Hang out at a playground, visit a school, or show up at a child’s birthday party, and there’s one phrase you can count on hearing repeatedly: “Good job!” Even tiny infants are praised for smacking their hands together (”Good clapping!”). Many of us blurt out these judgments of our children to the point that it has become almost a verbal tic.
Plenty of books and articles advise us against relying on punishment, from spanking to forcible isolation (”time out”). Occasionally someone will even ask us to rethink the practice of bribing children with stickers or food. But you’ll have to look awfully hard to find a discouraging word about what is euphemistically called positive reinforcement.
Lest there be any misunderstanding, the point here is not to call into question the importance of supporting and encouraging children, the need to love them and hug them and help them feel good about themselves. Praise, however, is a different story entirely. Here’s why.
1. Manipulating children. Suppose you offer a verbal reward to reinforce the behavior of a two-year-old who eats without spilling, or a five-year-old who cleans up her art supplies. Who benefits from this? Is it possible that telling kids they’ve done a good job may have less to do with their emotional needs than with our convenience?
Rheta DeVries, a professor of education at the University of Northern Iowa, refers to this as “sugar-coated control.” Very much like tangible rewards – or, for that matter, punishments – it’s a way of doing something to children to get them to comply with our wishes. It may be effective at producing this result (at least for a while), but it’s very different from working with kids – for example, by engaging them in conversation about what makes a classroom (or family) function smoothly, or how other people are affected by what we have done — or failed to do. The latter approach is not only more respectful but more likely to help kids become thoughtful people.
The reason praise can work in the short run is that young children are hungry for our approval. But we have a responsibility not to exploit that dependence for our own convenience. A “Good job!” to reinforce something that makes our lives a little easier can be an example of taking advantage of children’s dependence. Kids may also come to feel manipulated by this, even if they can’t quite explain why.
2. Creating praise junkies. To be sure, not every use of praise is a calculated tactic to control children’s behavior. Sometimes we compliment kids just because we’re genuinely pleased by what they’ve done. Even then, however, it’s worth looking more closely. Rather than bolstering a child’s self-esteem, praise may increase kids’ dependence on us. The more we say, “I like the way you..” or “Good ______ing,” the more kids come to rely on our evaluations, our decisions about what’s good and bad, rather than learning to form their own judgments. It leads them to measure their worth in terms of what will lead us to smile and dole out some more approval.
Mary Budd Rowe, a researcher at the University of Florida, discovered that students who were praised lavishly by their teachers were more tentative in their responses, more apt to answer in a questioning tone of voice (”Um, seven?”). They tended to back off from an idea they had proposed as soon as an adult disagreed with them. And they were less likely to persist with difficult tasks or share their ideas with other students.
In short, “Good job!” doesn’t reassure children; ultimately, it makes them feel less secure. It may even create a vicious circle such that the more we slather on the praise, the more kids seem to need it, so we praise them some more. Sadly, some of these kids will grow into adults who continue to need someone else to pat them on the head and tell them whether what they did was OK. Surely this is not what we want for our daughters and sons.
3. Stealing a child’s pleasure. Apart from the issue of dependence, a child deserves to take delight in her accomplishments, to feel pride in what she’s learned how to do. She also deserves to decide when to feel that way. Every time we say, “Good job!”, though, we’re telling a child how to feel.
To be sure, there are times when our evaluations are appropriate and our guidance is necessary — especially with toddlers and preschoolers. But a constant stream of value judgments is neither necessary nor useful for children’s development. Unfortunately, we may not have realized that “Good job!” is just as much an evaluation as “Bad job!” The most notable feature of a positive judgment isn’t that it’s positive, but that it’s a judgment. And people, including kids, don’t like being judged.
I cherish the occasions when my daughter manages to do something for the first time, or does something better than she’s ever done it before. But I try to resist the knee-jerk tendency to say, “Good job!” because I don’t want to dilute her joy. I want her to share her pleasure with me, not look to me for a verdict. I want her to exclaim, “I did it!” (which she often does) instead of asking me uncertainly, “Was that good?”
4. Losing interest. “Good painting!” may get children to keep painting for as long as we keep watching and praising. But, warns Lilian Katz, one of the country’s leading authorities on early childhood education, “once attention is withdrawn, many kids won’t touch the activity again.” Indeed, an impressive body of scientific research has shown that the more we reward people for doing something, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward. Now the point isn’t to draw, to read, to think, to create – the point is to get the goody, whether it’s an ice cream, a sticker, or a “Good job!”
In a troubling study conducted by Joan Grusec at the University of Toronto, young children who were frequently praised for displays of generosity tended to be slightly less generous on an everyday basis than other children were. Every time they had heard “Good sharing!” or “I’m so proud of you for helping,” they became a little less interested in sharing or helping. Those actions came to be seen not as something valuable in their own right but as something they had to do to get that reaction again from an adult. Generosity became a means to an end.
Does praise motivate kids? Sure. It motivates kids to get praise. Alas, that’s often at the expense of commitment to whatever they were doing that prompted the praise.
5. Reducing achievement. As if it weren’t bad enough that “Good job!” can undermine independence, pleasure, and interest, it can also interfere with how good a job children actually do. Researchers keep finding that kids who are praised for doing well at a creative task tend to stumble at the next task – and they don’t do as well as children who weren’t praised to begin with.
Why does this happen? Partly because the praise creates pressure to “keep up the good work” that gets in the way of doing so. Partly because their interest in what they’re doing may have declined. Partly because they become less likely to take risks – a prerequisite for creativity – once they start thinking about how to keep those positive comments coming.
More generally, “Good job!” is a remnant of an approach to psychology that reduces all of human life to behaviors that can be seen and measured. Unfortunately, this ignores the thoughts, feelings, and values that lie behind behaviors. For example, a child may share a snack with a friend as a way of attracting praise, or as a way of making sure the other child has enough to eat. Praise for sharing ignores these different motives. Worse, it actually promotes the less desirable motive by making children more likely to fish for praise in the future.
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Once you start to see praise for what it is – and what it does – these constant little evaluative eruptions from adults start to produce the same effect as fingernails being dragged down a blackboard. You begin to root for a child to give his teachers or parents a taste of their own treacle by turning around to them and saying (in the same saccharine tone of voice), “Good praising!”
Still, it’s not an easy habit to break. It can seem strange, at least at first, to stop praising; it can feel as though you’re being chilly or withholding something. But that, it soon becomes clear, suggests that we praise more because we need to say it than because children need to hear it. Whenever that’s true, it’s time to rethink what we’re doing.
What kids do need is unconditional support, love with no strings attached. That’s not just different from praise – it’s the opposite of praise. “Good job!” is conditional. It means we’re offering attention and acknowledgement and approval for jumping through our hoops, for doing things that please us.
This point, you’ll notice, is very different from a criticism that some people offer to the effect that we give kids too much approval, or give it too easily. They recommend that we become more miserly with our praise and demand that kids “earn” it. But the real problem isn’t that children expect to be praised for everything they do these days. It’s that we’re tempted to take shortcuts, to manipulate kids with rewards instead of explaining and helping them to develop needed skills and good values.
So what’s the alternative? That depends on the situation, but whatever we decide to say instead has to be offered in the context of genuine affection and love for who kids are rather than for what they’ve done. When unconditional support is present, “Good job!” isn’t necessary; when it’s absent, “Good job!” won’t help.
If we’re praising positive actions as a way of discouraging misbehavior, this is unlikely to be effective for long. Even when it works, we can’t really say the child is now “behaving himself”; it would be more accurate to say the praise is behaving him. The alternative is to work with the child, to figure out the reasons he’s acting that way. We may have to reconsider our own requests rather than just looking for a way to get kids to obey. (Instead of using “Good job!” to get a four-year-old to sit quietly through a long class meeting or family dinner, perhaps we should ask whether it’s reasonable to expect a child to do so.)
We also need to bring kids in on the process of making decisions. If a child is doing something that disturbs others, then sitting down with her later and asking, “What do you think we can do to solve this problem?” will likely be more effective than bribes or threats. It also helps a child learn how to solve problems and teaches that her ideas and feelings are important. Of course, this process takes time and talent, care and courage. Tossing off a “Good job!” when the child acts in the way we deem appropriate takes none of those things, which helps to explain why “doing to” strategies are a lot more popular than “working with” strategies.
And what can we say when kids just do something impressive? Consider three possible responses:
* Say nothing. Some people insist a helpful act must be “reinforced” because, secretly or unconsciously, they believe it was a fluke. If children are basically evil, then they have to be given an artificial reason for being nice (namely, to get a verbal reward). But if that cynicism is unfounded – and a lot of research suggests that it is – then praise may not be necessary.
* Say what you saw. A simple, evaluation-free statement (”You put your shoes on by yourself” or even just “You did it”) tells your child that you noticed. It also lets her take pride in what she did. In other cases, a more elaborate description may make sense. If your child draws a picture, you might provide feedback – not judgment – about what you noticed: “This mountain is huge!” “Boy, you sure used a lot of purple today!”
If a child does something caring or generous, you might gently draw his attention to the effect of his action on the other person: “Look at Abigail’s face! She seems pretty happy now that you gave her some of your snack.” This is completely different from praise, where the emphasis is on how you feel about her sharing
* Talk less, ask more. Even better than descriptions are questions. Why tell him what part of his drawing impressed you when you can ask him what he likes best about it? Asking “What was the hardest part to draw?” or “How did you figure out how to make the feet the right size?” is likely to nourish his interest in drawing. Saying “Good job!”, as we’ve seen, may have exactly the opposite effect.
This doesn’t mean that all compliments, all thank-you’s, all expressions of delight are harmful. We need to consider our motives for what we say (a genuine expression of enthusiasm is better than a desire to manipulate the child’s future behavior) as well as the actual effects of doing so. Are our reactions helping the child to feel a sense of control over her life — or to constantly look to us for approval? Are they helping her to become more excited about what she’s doing in its own right – or turning it into something she just wants to get through in order to receive a pat on the head
It’s not a matter of memorizing a new script, but of keeping in mind our long-term goals for our children and watching for the effects of what we say. The bad news is that the use of positive reinforcement really isn’t so positive. The good news is that you don’t have to evaluate in order to encourage.
After close observation of their own children, with a combined age of 61 years, observations of many other children in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Israel, Greece, Italy, Swiss, France, Holland, Belgium, England, Scotland, and the Bahamas, and numerous reports throughout recorded history, the authors have determined that a widely-distributed behavioral disorder has somehow been overlooked by psychiatrists. They have labeled this disorder “CHILD”1. Just like “ADD”, “ADHD”, and “Asperger’s Syndrome”, CHILD is not based on any medical evidence or test whatsoever, but it should nonetheless be a useful diagnosis for mental health professionals, school administrators, and parents.
Symptoms
Stage 1:
cries when left alone at night
cries when put into car seat
cries when being diapered or dressed
cries when hurt
naps too long (or) does not nap long enough
potty-training does not go smoothly
poor hand-eye coordination
fussy when teething
clingy during times of family stress
dribbling
Stage 2:
tantrums when frustrated
incoherent babbling
climbs onto dangerous areas
enters roads without looking
fussy when hungry
insists on favorite cup at meals
refuses all vegetables
clingy following a parent’s return from a trip
clingy following a move
clingy following birth of sibling
clumsiness with frequent dropping and spilling
continues unwanted behavior even when told to stop
punishment doesn’t work
Stage 3:
sudden unexpected movements
irrational fears that don’t respond to logic
funny noises, sudden shrieks, inappropriate giggling
talks to dolls and stuffed animals
may have imaginary playmates
fidgets when bored; unable to sit still
runs and climbs; always on the go
insists on wearing favorite clothing
does not come promptly when called
tells silly jokes
embarrasses parents in public
interrupts when parent is on the telephone
grumpy when tired
angry when losing a game
dawdles when hurried
fights with siblings
insists on own way of doing things
punishment doesn’t work
Stage 4:
prefers playing to doing chores
stammers when nervous
doesn’t listen to reason
selectively forgetful
talks excessively (or) does not talk enough
ignores direct questions
sudden, energetic behavior
self-centered, egocentric behavior
walks away when parent lectures
sullen when mistrusted
forgets to say “please” and “thank you” despite repeated reminders
grumpy when ill
resists structured teaching; prefers own way of learning
punishment doesn’t work
Etiology
The causes of this disorder are not yet clear, but the authors suspect that the primary cause is premature birth, i.e. birth prior to age 20. This is probably inevitable, as a 20-year gestation would be stressful for the human female.
Prevention
This disorder is not preventable; it appears to be universal among low-age populations. However, there are several approaches that can minimize behavioral difficulties:
cosleeping
carrying in the first years
breastfeeding with child-led weaning
eye contact
gentle touch and hugs
respectful listening
undivided attention
validation of feelings
empathy
trust
avoidance of punishment
natural learning
Prognosis
The prognosis is excellent, as this disorder subsides over time, provided the preventative measures listed above are taken. Drugs are not recommended.
“While intelligent people can often simplify the complex, a fool is more likely to complicate the simple.”
– Dr. Gerald Grumet
Thoughts on Punishment
by Sidney Craig, Ph.D.
The most commonly used and socially acceptable parental response to a display of “irrational” behavior (a temper tantrum, for example) is to punish the child for it. Most parents operate according to the widely held belief that the child will not repeat a form of behavior for which he has been administered a dose of pain. This technique has a kind of surface validity, because very often in the face of repeated punishment and threats of punishment a child will abandon a particular form of behavior. When the offensive form of behavior diminishes in frequency, the parent is reassured that he is following the proper philosophy and fulfilling his duty both to the child and to the broader society.
But unfortunately the problem is more complex. Irrationality has an inner, experiential, unobservable quality as well as an outer, observable behavioral manifestation. When the parent punishes the child, all that the child does is to eliminate the overt evidence of his irrational needs, desires, and way of thinking. Punishment does not change in any manner whatsoever the underlying thought processes that produced the unacceptable behavior originally. The “badness” has merely gone underground.
When a parent depends to a great extent on disapproval and punishment as the means of dealing with their child’s unacceptable behavior, a long-term process of building anger within the child takes place. Gradually and imperceptibly, over a period of years, angry feelings are growing and competing with loving feelings for control of the child’s personality. The parent remains unaware that there is anything to be concerned about because outwardly, in response to punishment, the child is behaving dutifully, and is gradually eliminating all the ways in which “poorly trained” children act. But after years in a “latency” period, the irrational anger that has been accumulating comes to outweigh the power of loving feelings to restrain them. When this occurs, the outward behavior of the child changes radically. A typical delinquent picture then emerges, reflecting the intense angry feelings “inside.” Even at this point it cannot be said that the child does not love his parents. He still loves them and at times may act very lovingly. But the angry feelings predominate and determine the major portion of the child’s behavior.
The change from good to bad behavior is often sudden, occurring most frequently when the child approaches adolescence. For this reason, parents are likely to blame the change on chance coincidences, not recognizing that they are witnessing the fruition of a lifelong process. Some parents review their own behavior and conclude that they had not been punitive enough, believing that if they had just been tougher, they would have gained complete control over the child’s bad impulses. And some people blame drugs, as if the use of drugs, rather than being symptomatic of a person “sick” with rage, had caused the child’s behavior to change.
Parents who assess the situation in this manner are merely deceiving themselves. They are either unaware of or are refusing to recognize the long-term deterioration in their relationship with their child. If parents can recognize and acknowledge the threat that punishment presents to the parent-child relationship, they can take steps while their child is still young to protect the relationship.
There is no “speedy” way to train children to behave properly. What appears to be rapid training must always depend on the fear of pain, and fear of pain achieves only one end: it empties the “love bank”*, setting the stage for later difficulty.
The Case Against Time-out
by Peter Haiman, Ph.D.
For generations, parents have sought a reliable and dependable way to handle childhood misbehavior. The most recent and popular discipline technique is time-out. Although time-out is better than spanking, it is not an appropriate way for parents to cope with the misbehavior of their children. Moreover, the use of time-out can create subsequent childhood behavior problems. These problems can affect the well-being of the child and severely strain the parent-child relationship.
Child Behavior – A Symptom
The behavior of children has a legitimate cause. Childhood behavior is determined, for the most part, by how children feel about the current state of their physical and psychosocial needs. Needs are strong in every child, and children are, by nature, sensitive to their own needs. If one or more of their needs are not met, children will soon feel uncomfortable.
Children will cry out when they feel uncomfortable. An infant or toddler’s cry announces feelings of frustration. These cries have evolved as a survival mechanism. They attract parental attention. The purpose of a cry is to obtain the kind and quality of parental love and care that will properly attend to unmet needs and, therefore, establish feelings of security in the child. The misbehavior of older children and adolescents is a cry for help announcing that their needs are frustrated.
Cries and misbehavior from children and adolescents are, in a way, very much like a sore throat, stuffed up nose, aching muscles, or a fever. All are symptoms. All have causes. A medical practitioner knows that when the virus or bacteria that is causing physical symptoms is eliminated, the noxious feelings will be quelled. Similarly, when parents correctly diagnose and provide remedies that address the needs of children and adolescents, the symptoms of crying or misbehavior will also disappear.
The frustration of important needs does not feel good at any age. However, children can become quite upset and demanding when their needs are not met. Their often intense outbursts stem, in part, from their dependent nature. Unlike most adults, young children lack the ability to meet their own needs. They are physically unable to do most self-care tasks. By nature, they also have strong emotional needs and vulnerabilities. Moreover, unlike most adults, young children are unable to tolerate frustration well. In addition, infants, toddlers, and many preschool-aged children are unable to identify the frustrated needs that are making them upset. This makes it impossible for most young children to tell their parents what is bothering them and why they are often unable independently to get their needs fulfilled.
Time-out
When time-out is used, parents first firmly demand that their child stop misbehaving and be quiet. The child is then usually required to go and sit alone in a room, away from parents, and admonished not to come out of the room until they are sure that they can control their behavior. Being placed in time-out prolongs the time that a child must endure the frustrated need that caused their misbehavior. Thus, unmet normal needs become increasingly uncomfortable as the time-out continues. Young children depend upon, want to be with, love, and need their parents.
What exacerbates this increasingly uncomfortable state of being frustrated is the fact that the child must be alone, away from the parents who they must rely upon to meet their needs, This enforced separation from their basic source of comfort, security, and well-being adds considerably to the woe of a child. Moreover, being alone in time-out can create additional disturbing feelings that the child must endure. Painful emotions like fear and worry often develop. A frustrated child who must sit quietly and alone in time-out frequently becomes angry. Although the youngster dare not express this anger when in time-out, the child often expresses it by becoming angry and defiant sometime after being released from time-out. The practice of separating a child in time-out from parents can in itself become the cause of future misbehavior, because being alone and in time-out increases the frustrations felt by a child who is already frustrated.
Interpersonal dilemmas and conflicts are best resolved when each individual has sufficient opportunity to talk to and be heard by the other person. Modeling, initiating, and practicing the process of open dialogue is essential if a youngster is to learn healthy problem solving. Does time-out lend itself to this process? Helping children talk about how they feel, combined with parental patience, is required if children are to develop the ability to verbalize their feelings and needs rather than act them out.
Lifelong Effects of Frequent Time-out
For the frustrated and uncomfortable child, time-out offers enforced silence and the feeling of being rejected by one’s parents. A youngster who misbehaves and then is given time-out feels hurt. This hurt, combined with the frustration that caused the youngster to misbehave, gives birth to anger. And discipline practices like time-out, which create hurt and anger, can harm a child.
A serious cost of being given time-out in childhood is the lesson that one should bottle up uncomfortable emotions. Upset in time-out and unable to express distressing feelings, youngsters desperately need to stop the painful feelings going on inside them. To cope, children learn to ignore and/or distract themselves from the energy of their hurt and angry feelings. Thus, children learn to repress their painful feelings. In the process, nervous habits emerge such as thumb sticking, fingernail biting, hair pulling, skin scratching, tugging at clothes, self-pinching, and many other similar behaviors. The purpose of these behaviors is to ward off uncomfortable feelings and, in identification with their parents’ criticism of them, to punish themselves. These defense strategies serve to release anger and ignore uncomfortable feelings.
As a result, being unaware of true feelings can often become a characteristic feature of a person’s life. This reduces a person’s self-awareness and can affect the quality of life throughout an entire lifetime.
Developing the Well-behaved Child
Parents can develop a well-behaved, self-disciplined child best by responsively and continuously meeting their child’s developmentally normal needs and drives; by demonstrating and articulating humane values in day-to-day interactions with their youngster; and by exposing their child to life experiences that strengthen and reinforce these values. Troubled and spoiled children are created when parents do not meet their child’s normal needs and drives consistently and appropriately.
What are the basic, normal childhood needs? If a child is physically healthy, well nourished, satisfactorily exercised, and not tired, the youngster’s physical needs are being met. A youngster who has received sufficient and continuous satisfying attention, affection, and recognition from parents and other adults and children to whom the child is emotionally attached, the child’s social and emotional needs are fulfilled. If a child’s normal curiosity, exploratory nature, and intrinsic interests are regularly allowed opportunities to unfold and develop, the intellectual needs of that child will be satisfied. When young children are given opportunities, within a securely supportive and trustworthy environment, to become increasingly more independent, make choices, and meaningfully participate in decision making, their normal need to exercise some control over their life and to express their own will are being appropriately addressed.
It is very important for parents and parents-to-be to learn the developmentally normal characteristics’ of each stage of early human development. It is also important to recognize a virulent myth that still exists in our society: that fully meeting a child’s needs will spoil the child. The research literature clearly says that the opposite is true. The well-disciplined child is created when parents appropriately fulfill the needs of childhood and adolescence.
Children Don’t Really Misbehave
by Thomas Gordon, Ph.D.
Most parents and teachers think of children as either “behaving” or misbehaving. ” This labeling of behavior as “good” and “bad” begins when the child is quite young. In our [P.E.T. and T.E.T.] training programs we try to help parents see that children don’t really misbehave.
Interestingly enough, the term is almost exclusively applied to children – seldom to adults. We never hear people say:
a.. ”My husband misbehaved yesterday.”
b.. “One of our guests misbehaved at the party last night.”
c.. “I got so angry when my friend misbehaved during lunch.”
d.. “My employees have been misbehaving lately.”
Apparently, it’s only children who are seen as misbehaving – no one else. Misbehavior is exclusively parent and teacher language, tied up somehow with how adults have traditionally viewed children. It is also used in almost every book on parenting I’ve read, and I’ve read quite a few.
I think adults say a child misbehaves whenever some specific action is judged as contrary to how the adult thinks the child should behave. The verdict of misbehavior, then, is clearly a value judgment made by the adult – a label placed on some particular behavior, a negative judgment of what the child is doing. Misbehavior thus is actually a specific action of the child that is seen by the adult as producing an undesirable consequence for the adult. What makes a child’s behavior misbehavior (bad behavior) is the perception that the behavior is, or might be, bad behavior for the adult. The “badness” of the behavior actually resides in the adult’s mind, not the child’s; the child in fact is doing what he or she chooses or needs to do to satisfy some need.
Put another way, the adult experiences the badness, not the child. Even more accurately, it is the consequences of the child’s behavior for the adult that are felt to be bad (or potentially bad), not the behavior itself.
When parents and teachers grasp this critical distinction, they experience a marked shift in attitude toward their children or students. They begin to see all actions of youngsters simply as behaviors, engaged in solely for the purpose of getting needs met. When adults begin to see children as persons like themselves, engaging in various behaviors to satisfy normal human needs, they are much less inclined to evaluate the behaviors as good or bad.
Accepting that children don’t really misbehave doesn’t mean, however, that adults will always feel accepting of what they do. Nor should they be expected to, for children are bound to do things that adults don’t like, things that interfere with their own “pursuit of happiness.” But even then, the child is not a misbehaving or bad child, not trying to do something to the adult, but rather is only trying to do something for himself.
Only when parents and teachers make this important shift – changing the locus of the problem from the child to the adult – can they begin to appreciate the logic of non-power alternatives for dealing with behaviors they don’t accept.
 Check this magazine out, sign up for the free issue. it’s brand new from Sarah Parent from Clan of parents and Barb Lundgren of Rethinking Education, the annual Texas Unschooling Convention.
In the first issue, there were stories from people of all walks of life, from a teenage girl to a 60 yr old lady, all of whom changed their lives by making one decision and sticking with it. It’s inspirational, motivational and absolutely awesome. Check it out.
Rethinking Everything Magazine
The Uncle Eric books are praised for teaching financial literacy. As an unschooling mom, I know that my financial knowledge leaves a lot to be desired, so instead of waiting until my kids are old enough and then forcing them to read these books, I am working through them myself. The workbooks, I am finding, present thoughtful questions that are worthy of consideration, but I’m not actually writing the answers. In the past, I may have felt that I was cheating, but that’s not really the case. The idea that we must write the answers is laughable now.
I find it distracting that the books are written as a set of letters to Chris, apparently the author’s nephew. He addresses Chris by name far too often, who would ever do that in a letter? “Chris, do you think that sounds natural, Chris?”
Anyway, I’m starting with “Personal, Career and Financial Security” because there’s a list int he books that says it’s first and I’m a sucker for that. I want to completely understand the world of economics and finances and how it’s impacted by politics. I heard that these books present politics in a way that helps you understand the perspective of each party without bias. We’ll see. So far the examples in the book, being sports-related and sailing-related, aren’t visuals I can picture, but that’s OK because I don’t really need visuals. We’ll see. I will add more about this subject as I read more.
Suite101.com: Financial planning for teens
I think by now every unschooler knows of Dayna Martin’s YouTube video series, but there are a lot more videos by and about unschoolers that you can enjoy online. Check out this article with Unschooling videos by parents, kids and educators. Also, check out these Unschooling Playlists for hours and hours of unschooling videos on YouTube.
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