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Parent-Child Negotiations



 
 
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  #11  
Old June 9th 04, 02:52 AM
Kane
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Parent-Child Negotiations

On Tue, 8 Jun 2004 06:38:59 -0700, Doan wrote:


Let me ask you, LaVonne. You were spanked as a child, right? Did

you
learn to hit?


Of course she did. Then she learned not to. Some never do learn not
to.

Using that logic, if you take toys away from your child,
the child will learn to rob and steal??? :-)


Actually, for a logic impaired person you do pretty well at times.

So tell me, are there do people that steal? Where did they actually
learn to?

From whom did you learn to lie to yourself about your motives?

The pretense you are neutral and simply want people to choose for
themselves is patently false to any reader that cares to google a bit
of your posting archives. At some point, as a child, some adult very
likely said one thing to you but did another. Your posts are ripe with
it.

But, by golly, boy genius, in this, you are correct.....that is ONE of
the ways a child IS taught to steal and rob if it is used as a
punishment, rather than simply teaching how to use his toys (without
using them to hit for instance) and how to put them away.

The entire punishment model if fraught with just such risk of teaching
a lesson you don't KNOW you are teaching, that you will blame the chid
for later, and swear that the only way to deal with it is to
punish...and the child will fight that because YOU TAUGHT HIM ONE
THING AND NOW ARE TRYING TO UNTEACH IT....hence, you, and folks with
your faulty logic will have to be more severe..........OR

You can start waking up now and thinking some of this through, and
figuring out that YOU teach your child everything they know, sans
instinct, about how to operate in the world, and ALL of the social
skills.

Assume that when a child "misbehaves" either you have taught them to
do that behavior (and you probably won't even remember doing it) and
patiently explain you have something NEW to teach them.....completely
avoiding the control battles.

Doan, you are always, as a bright intelligent person, just one step
away from the answers, just as you did with this one, but it's old
story...

I bet you I can state one step away from but you cannot touch me.

Of course there is a door between us.

All YOU have to do to touch me, that is learn and wake up, is open the
damn door, instead of playing games that keeps the door shut to you.

If you cracked some books on learning theory and worked to put away
your biases about the need for force to make people do things....you
might begin to understand why so many of us make the claims we do here
that YOU think are impossible, apparently.

Doan


I'm very serious. As for the question to LaVonne. My guess is ALL
those who were spanked as children, and punished much, had to mature
to the point, and often with great pain and struggle, cast off that
early experience and get to REAL logic, and recognize they had been
conditioned, not lovingly taught.

It's not easy. It takes courage. Sometimes it takes risk. It feels
like one has no place to stand at times.

Like, if I can't punish what CAN I do?

Best wishes,

Kane


On Mon, 7 Jun 2004, Carlson LaVonne wrote:

Nathan,

On the other hand, a two-year-old has few bargaining tools. He or

she
is physically tiny, compared to his/her parents. This little child

is
just beginning to understand case/effect, and only in immediate
situations. When this little child begins to understand

cause/effect,
the spanked child learns to hit. The non spanked child learns

other
ways to handle anger.

LaVonne

Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

I'd like to expand a little on the issue of parents and children

trying to
negotiate mutually satisfactory solutions to problems. For truly

fair
negotiations to take place, three things must be true. First,

both parties
must be able to negotiate from positions of reasonable strength.

Second, it
must be accepted that there are some absolutes that are not part

of the
negotiation process. And third, the parties negotiating must not

use
extraneous issues to threaten each other.

In regard to the first point, the nature of the parent-child

relationship is
such that the parents get to decide how much negotiating power

their
children will have. At one extreme, if parents say, "Do this or

else," they
give their children no negotiating power. At the other extreme,

if parents
refuse to put their foot down at all, they keep no real

negotiating power
for themselves. So the trick is for parents to find a place in

between that
gives their children enough negotiating power but not too much.

In my view, the best types of negotiations are aimed at dealing

with the
issues the parents consider truly important while providing as

much
flexibility for the children as possible within that context.

For example,
suppose a little girl keeps running late because she can't decide

what to
wear to school and Mom, who is busy getting ready for work

herself, keeps
having to take time out of her own preparations to deal with the

issue. The
important thing for Mom is that the problem of running late be

solved, not
exactly how the problem is solved. Further, the solution doesn't
necessarily have to be 100% foolproof. If Mom has to get

involved and hurry
her daughter up every now and then, it's probably not the end of

the world.

From that understanding of the problem, the mother and daughter

could get
together and try to find a way to solve the problem. It doesn't

matter
which of them proposes the solution that they ultimately decide

together
would work best. What matters is that the problem be solved.

And if Mom
has misgivings about her daughter's preferred solution, she might

accept it
on only a provisional basis, with the understanding that if it

doesn't work,
they'll have to change to something else. With a little luck

that will give
the daughter some extra incentive to make her preferred solution

work.

Regarding the second issue, it would be highly improper for a

child who is
caught shoplifting to be able to demand something from his or her

parents in
negotiations in exchange for not shoplifting anymore. When

something is
wrong, you don't do it, and you don't expect to get any special

reward or
compensation for not doing it. The lesson that some things in

life are
non-negotiable is a vital one for children to learn.

On the other hand, if parents want to label something

non-negotiable, they
need to be able to defend why they view it in non-negotiable in

ways that
have as little as possible to do with "because I said so." And

if they use
reasons rooted in their religion, they would be wise to also

provide the
strongest reasons they can that are not rooted in their religion

as
additional reinforcement. If children understand why their

parents hold a
particular belief, and if the parents' behavior is consistent

with what they
say, children can respect their parents for standing up for what

they
believe is right even if the children disagree. (That is

especially true
when the parents and children have a strong relationship in

general.) But
if parents just say, "That's non-negotiable," without providing

any real
explanation, the risk of anger and resentment is vastly greater.

Finally, if either side brings extraneous matters into a

negotiation as a
way of threatening the other, that upsets the balance in the

negotiations.
Such behavior is a way of trying to bully the other side into

accepting a
win-lose solution, and thus violates the spirit of trying to find

a solution
that both sides truly consider acceptable. That also means

parents who are
looking for win-win solutions need to try to avoid invoking their

parental
authority any more than they feel like they have to.

Now, what does this have to do with the issue of punishment in

general and
of spanking in particular? If win-win solutions can be found

within the
context of these types of negotiations, it is often possible to

avoid the
need for threats and punishment entirely. That is especially

true for
children whose sense of honor is strong enough that just

reminding them of
what they agreed to is enough for them to comply with their part

of an
agreement.

On the other hand, not all children will necessarily comply with

an
agreement just because they agreed to it. In those cases, the

possibility
of punishment may be needed as an enforcement provision in

agreements,
especially if a child wants to be allowed to push to the

outermost limits of
what the parents feel like they can accept. (For example,

parents might
feel safe allowing a child to stretch a 9:00 bedtime a great

deal, but be
unwilling to accept a 9:30 bedtime unless it will be enforced

pretty
strictly.) If all goes well, the child's knowledge that

deliberately
violating the agreement will result in the punishment coupled

with parental
understanding toward accidental violations could still make

actual
punishment unnecessary. But for the possibility of punishment to

mean
something, parents have to be willing to punish if a child pushes

too far.

Note that if a child has made an agreement and agreed to what the

punishment
will be if the agreement is violated, it is much harder for the

child to
resent being punished for violating the agreement as "unfair" and
"arbitrary" than if the rule and punishment were imposed

unilaterally by a
parent, or especially if the child were punished without really
understanding what the rule was (especially in practice) before

the
punishment took place. Those kinds of distinctions are extremely

important
in understanding how punishment affects children.

Also, consider situations where negotiations fail, either because

no common
ground acceptable to both the parents and the child exists or

because the
common ground cannot be found in the amount of time available to

look for
it. If parents refuse to allow the child to proceed with a

solution the
parents view as unacceptable, the need for threats and punishment

might
still be averted if the child is willing to defer to the parents

and live
with a solution that the child does not really consider

acceptable. But if
the child refuses to defer to the parents' authority and judgment

out of
respect, the threat of punishment (and, if necessary, the

actuality of
punishment) are all the parents have left to prevent the child

from doing
something they cannot accept in good conscience. Punishment

might not
provide a long-term solution, but it at least has a chance of

solving the
problem in the short term. And in the longer term, parents can

hope that as
the child gets older, he or she will come to recognize that the

parents were
right after all, at least enough to make a solution that both

sides can
agree on possible. (Or, in some cases, the problem might solve

itself as
the child becomes mature enough to be allowed to do things the

parents did
not consider it safe to allow earlier.) Such situations are not

ideal, but
considering that we live on Earth, not in Heaven, always having

ideal
solutions available would be a bit much to hope for.

As one last interesting point regarding negotiated solutions,

consider the
possibility of negotiating what form of punishment should be used

in
situations where punishment is required. From a parent's

perspective, the
punishment needs to be serious enough to achieve the parent's

goals (which
are often short-term in nature, or "serially short-term" - that

is, solvable
over an extended period of time through a series of short-term

solutions).
In some cases, parents consider it desirable to disrupt the

child's
activities (for example, to keep the child away from "the wrong

crowd"), but
often, such disruption is considered undesirable. Parents may

also feel a
need to consider how punishing one child might impact others.

For example,
how do you ground one child from watching television without

having an
impact on the lives of the child's siblings? After all, the

siblings might
very well want to play with the child who is being punished and

watch
television at the same time.

From a child's perspective, the important points are how

unpleasant the
punishment will be and how much the punishment will interfere

with the
child's doing things he or she enjoys. Some children may view

physical pain
as radically worse than other forms of unpleasantness, but many

do not.
Children may also consider how different forms of punishment

would affect
their friends, and the possible embarrassment if their friends

find out
about their having gotten in trouble.

Of all forms of punishment, corporal punishment can concentrate a

given
amount of unpleasantness into the shortest amount of time.

That's probably
one of the reasons why some people object to it so strongly: the

pain of a
child crying from a spanking is a lot easier to see than the same

total
amount of unpleasantness spread over a week or two of being

grounded. We
can empathize with the pain of the spanking, but it is much

harder to
capture the sense of time needed to empathize with the grounding

-
especially for people who haven't actually experienced being

grounded for an
extended period of time.

Yet ironically, depending on the personalities and the situation

involved,
the same concentration of unpleasantness into a short period of

time that
makes spanking so objectionable to some outside parties can

sometimes make
it a preferred form of punishment for both parents and children.

It's over
with quickly, and they can get on with their lives.

Which raises an interesting problem for those who support win-win

solutions
but oppose spanking. If parents are going to punish a child, and

the child
would rather be spanked than punished in some other way, does

that not make
spanking the child a win-win solution to the problem of how to

punish the
child (or at least the closest thing to a win-win solution

available)?

Nathan




  #12  
Old June 9th 04, 03:14 AM
Kane
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default How Children REALLY React To Control

On Tue, 8 Jun 2004 01:38:42 -0700, Doan wrote:


From the thomas gordon's website:

"Reviews of Research of the P.E.T. Course
There have been two extensive reviews of P.E.T. course evaluation

studies.
The first, by Ronald Levant of Boston University, reviewed 23

different
studies. The author concluded that many of the studies had

methodological
discrepancies. Nevertheless, out of a total of 149 comparisons

between
P.E.T. and control groups or alternative programs, 32% favored

P.E.T., 11%
favored the alternative group, and 57% found no significant

differences."

I have found that people that come from a strong belief in punishment
have a very difficult time with the concept that one can go about
human affairs virtually devoid of punishment as a tool.

It confounds their beliefs. You may have noticed this in international
affairs, as the epitome of the punisment mindset. I certainly have.

When I taught PET I saw a lot of that very thing...a belief in
punishment, even extending to things very far removed from dangerous
to one's self or others.


That conditioned mindset in folks sharpened my skills as a teacher.
What I learned to do was use the principles of PET as my teaching
method. The participants then had not only first hand experience by my
example and their participation.....THEY felt the result the child
would feel.

One day I might use them here. Or have I already?

The point here is not blindly believe to any book or philosoply but

learn
and filter out what is applicable to you and what is not. Hey, even
Dobson recommended Thomas Gordon. :-)


Even Dobson can't spend all his time torturing children and be
believable enough to seel books. He has his public and his publisher
to consider. {;-

Do you really think that people who debate you here just blindly, out
of some Disney "Zippidy Do Dah" syrupy, emotional, thoughtless grab at
a picnic of life chose this or other non punitive parenting methods?

It took me years to even hear of it, and I struggled to stay away from
punishment with my own children...lacking a repertoire. It taught me a
great deal about patience....but PET turned the corner for me. For the
first time there were the very tools I had been looking for. I read it
standing at a supermarket book stand cover to cover...it was that
striking...but then one has to be looking.

And I put PET, Thomas Gordan, and his trainers to the test, not on
children, but on adults first, and allowed the methods to be used on
me by other parents learning.

The results you see above in that survey are remarkable. In a
population that is 90% spanked, if you are to be believed, THAT MANY
got it?

Damn, man. It took far more than that to get people to believe the
world was round, even with the circumnavigation of the globe.

Spanking is GONE GONE GONE, if that many are getting it. Wave goodbye.

Doan


And I'm quit curious what a "comparison" is. Who did the comparing?
People that had attended and applied a number of programs and
alternatives? Or a panel of "experts?"

I suspect that, just by the language of the claim (look familiar to
you at all, Doan?) that this is a weasel research.

But I still like that that percentage got it, even with the deck
stacked, very likely, by the research, and the fact that 90% of the
population are spanked, and probably 99.99999% were punished fairly
regularly.

You have succeeded in brightening my day.

Wanna talk about my citing of Singapore police claims about youth
crime in the past few weeks? Or didn't you lie? Could it simply have
been a mistake.

Unlike you, I don't need the ego boost of calling others liars when
they have NOT attempted to deceive.

Did you make a mistake, or did you attempt to deceive?

Kane





On 8 Jun 2004, Chris wrote:


How Children Really React to Control

by Thomas Gordon, Ph.D.


When one person tries to control another, you can always

expect
some kind of reaction from the controllee. The use of power

involves two
people in a special kind of relationship - one wielding power, and

the
other reacting to it.

This seemingly obvious fact is not usually dealt with in

the
writings of the dare-to-discipline advocates. Invariably, they

leave the
child out of the formula, omitting any reference to how the

youngster
reacts to the control of his or her parents or teachers.

They insist, "Parents must set limits," but seldom say

anything
about how children respond to having their needs denied in this

way.
"Parents should not be afraid to exercise their authority," they

counsel,
but rarely mention how youngsters react to authority-based

coercion. By
omitting the child from the interaction, the discipline advocates

leave
the impression that the child submits willingly and consistently to
adults' power and does precisely what is demanded.

These are actual quotes from the many power-to-the-parent

books
I've collected along the way:

"Be firm but fair."
"Insist that your children obey."
"Don't be afraid to express disapproval by spanking."
"Discipline with love."
"Demonstrate your parental right to lead."
"The toddler should be taught to obey and yield to

parental
leadership."

What these books have in common is advocacy of the use of
power-based discipline with no mention of how children react to it.

In
other words, the dare-to-discipline advocates never present

power-based
discipline in full, as a cause-and-effect phenomenon, an
action-and-reaction event.

This omission is important, for it implies that all

children
passively submit to adult demands, perfectly content and secure in

an
obedient role, first in relationships with their parents and

teachers and,
eventually, with all adult power-wielders they might encounter.

However, I have found not a shred of evidence to support

this
view. In fact, as most of us remember only too well from our

childhood, we
did almost anything we could to defend against power-based control.

We
tried to avoid it, postpone it, weaken it, avert it, escape from

it. We
lied, we put the blame on someone else, we tattled, hid, pleaded,

begged
for mercy, or promised we would never do it again.

We also experienced punitive discipline as embarrassing,
demeaning, humiliating, frightening, and painful. To be coerced

into doing
something against our will was a personal insult and an affront to

our
dignity, an act that devalued the importance of our needs.

Punitive discipline is by definition need-depriving as

opposed to
need-satisfying. Recall that punishment will be effective only if

it is
felt by the child as aversive, painful, unpleasant. When

controllers
employ punishment, they always intend for it to cause pain or

deprivation.
It seems so obvious, then, that children don't ever want punitive
discipline, contrary to what its advocates would have us believe.

No child
"asks for it," "feels a need for it," or is "grateful for it." And

it is
probably true, too, that no child ever forgets or forgives a

punitive
parent or teacher. This is why I find it incredible that the

authors of
power-to-the-parent books try to justify power-based discipline

with such
statements as:

* "Kids not only need punishment, they want it."

* "Children basically want what is coming to them, good

or
bad, because justice is security."

* "Punishment will prove to kids that their parents

love
them."

* "The youngster who knows he deserves a spanking

appears
almost relieved when it finally comes."

* "Rather than be insulted by the discipline, [the

child]
understands its purpose and appreciates the control it gives him

over his
own impulses."

* "Corporal punishment in the hands of a loving parent

is
entirely different in purpose and practice [from child

abuse]....One is an
act of love; the other is an act of hostility."

* "Some strong-willed children absolutely demand to be
spanked, and their wishes should be granted."

* "Punishment will make children feel more secure in

their
relationship."

* "Discipline makes for happy families; healthy
relationships."

Could these be rationalizations intended to relieve the

guilt that
controllers feel after coercing or committing acts of physical

violence
against their children? It seems possible in view of the repeated
insistence that the punishing adult is really a loving adult, doing

it
only "for the child's own good," or as a dutiful act of "benevolent
leadership." It appears that being firm with children has to be

justified
by saying, "Be firm but fair"; being tough is acceptable as long as

it's
"Tough Love"; being an autocrat is justifiable as long as you're a
"benevolent autocrat"; coercing children is okay as long as you're

not a
"dictator"; and physically abusing children is not abuse as long as

you
"do it lovingly."

Disciplinarians' insistence that punishment is benign and
constructive might be explained by their desire that children

eventually
become subservient to a Supreme Being or higher authority. This

can only
be achieved, they believe, if children first learn to obey their

parents
and other adults. James Dobson (1978) stresses this point time and

time
again:

* "While yielding to the loving leadership of their

parents,
children are also learning to yield to the benevolent leadership of

God
Himself."

* "With regard to the specific discipline of the

strong-willed
toddler, mild spankings can begin between 15 and 18 months of

age....To
repeat, the toddler should be taught to obey and yield to parental
leadership, but that end will not be accomplished overnight."


It's the familiar story of believing that the ends justify

the
means. Obedience to parental authority first, and then later to

some
higher authority, is so strongly valued by some advocates of

punitive
discipline that the means they utilize to achieve that end are

distorted
to appear beneficial to children rather than harmful.

The hope that children eventually will submit to all

authority is,
I think, wishful thinking. Not all children submit when adults try

to
control them. In fact, children respond with a wide variety of

reactions,
an assortment of behaviors. Psychologists call these reactions

"coping
behaviors" or "coping mechanisms".

The Coping Mechanisms Children Use

Over the years I have compiled a long list of the various

coping
mechanisms youngsters use when adults try to control them. This

list comes
primarily out of our Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.) and

Teacher
Effectiveness Training (T.E.T.) classes, where we employ a simple

but
revealing classroom exercise. Participants are asked to recall the
specific ways they themselves coped with power-based discipline

when they
were youngsters. The question yields nearly identical lists in

every
class, which confirms how universal children's coping mechanisms

are. The
complete list is reproduced below, in no particular order. Note how

varied
these recurring themes are. (Can you pick out the particular coping
methods you employed as a youngster?)

* Resisting, defying, being negative

* Rebelling, disobeying, being insubordinate, sassing

* Retaliating, striking back, counterattacking,

vandalizing

* Hitting, being belligerent, combative

* Breaking rules and laws

* Throwing temper tantrums, getting angry

* Lying, deceiving, hiding the truth

* Blaming others, tattling, telling on others

* Bossing or bullying others

* Banding together, forming alliances, organizing

against the
adult

* Apple-polishing, buttering up, soft-soaping,

bootlicking,
currying favor with adults

* Withdrawing, fantasizing, daydreaming

* Competing, needing to win, hating to lose, needing to

look
good, making others look bad

* Giving up, feeling defeated, loafing, goofing off

* Leaving, escaping, staying away from home, running

away,
quitting school, cutting classes

* Not talking, ignoring, using the silent treatment,

writing
the adult off, keeping one's distance

* Crying, weeping; feeling depressed or hopeless

* Becoming fearful, shy, timid, afraid to speak up,

hesitant
to try anything new Needing reassurance, seeking

constant
approval, feeling insecure

* Getting sick, developing psychosomatic ailments

* Overeating, excessive dieting

* Being submissive, conforming, complying; being

dutiful,
docile, apple-polishing, being a goody-goody,

teacher's pet

* Drinking heavily, using drugs

* Cheating in school, plagiarizing

As you might expect, after parents and teachers in the

class
generate their list, and realize that it was created out of their

own
experience, they invariably make such comments as:

"Why would anyone want to use power, if these are the
behaviors it produces?"

"All of these coping mechanisms are behaviors that I

wouldn't
want to see in my children [or my students]."

"I don't see in the list any good effects or positive
behaviors."

"If we reacted to power in those ways when we were

kids, our
own children certainly will, too."

After this exercise, some parents and teachers undergo a
180-degree shift in their thinking. They see much more clearly

that power
creates the very behavior patterns they most dislike in children!

They
begin to understand that as parents and teachers they are paying a
terrible price for using power: they are causing their children or
students to develop habits, traits, and characteristics considered

both
unacceptable by most adults and unhealthy by mental health

professionals.





For more information about Parent Effectiveness Training and
Teacher Effectiveness Training, contact Gordon Training

International:

USA
Gordon Training International
531 Stevens Avenue West
Solana Beach, CA 92075
Telephone (858) 481-8121
E-mail:
Website:
http://www.gordontraining.com




  #13  
Old June 9th 04, 03:32 AM
Kane
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default How Children REALLY React To Control

On Tue, 8 Jun 2004 10:41:06 -0500, "Nathan A. Barclay"
wrote:


"Chris" wrote in message
...

How Children Really React to Control

by Thomas Gordon, Ph.D.


snip

The Coping Mechanisms Children Use

Over the years I have compiled a long list of the various

coping
mechanisms youngsters use when adults try to control them. This

list comes
primarily out of our Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.) and

Teacher
Effectiveness Training (T.E.T.) classes, where we employ a simple

but
revealing classroom exercise. Participants are asked to recall the
specific ways they themselves coped with power-based discipline

when they
were youngsters. The question yields nearly identical lists in

every
class, which confirms how universal children's coping mechanisms

are. The
complete list is reproduced below, in no particular order. Note how

varied
these recurring themes are. (Can you pick out the particular coping
methods you employed as a youngster?)


The more I think about this exercise, the more it looks like

something
deliberately contrived to generate a particular emotional reaction.


You are correct. That IS the point. To explore the actual experiences
of people, not create, as you seem to be doing below, move away from
the real and into the theoretical.

To teach someone about how others experience things it is useful to
point out their own experiences that may be similar.

An
objective analysis


Again, a jump away from the point of training people to use and
develop their capacity for empathy. PET is based on empathy as ONE of
its principles. There are others of course.

would try to pin down how control by adults is likely to
affect individual children.


You seem to be missing something. The exercise was with a room full of
people, so in fact one would have a rich producting of of just what
you ask for. Usually such exercises result in long lists of wall
posted newsprint display of the group's responses.

And one would then know how individual people in this group were
effected by adult controls.

This exercise, instead, creates an amalgam of
negative effects across all the people in the group, a combination

that will
almost certainly be significantly longer and uglier than a typical

child is
likely to exhibit.


It IS ugly. That IS the point. And of course the many will have more
kinds of experiences and reactions. That isn't a fault, it's an
eye-opener. One finds out rather quickly that not only are there many
effects, but that there are some one an personally identify with.

Worse, a person might add something to the list because
it happened once or twice, but have others end up thinking it

happened on a
much more regular basis.


What would be the problem? It isn't a frequency issue. The purpose is
to identify different effects by adult control over children.

I'm not saying that efforts to control children through force don't

have
negative consequences, or that parents should adopt a dismissive

attitude
toward the risk of such consequences.


I'm not sure then what your point would be. The exercise is a class
room exercise. Classrooms are for learning. Information is needed to
learn.

But it is important not to blow the
risks out of proportion either.


It isn't a listing of risks. It's a listing of effects.

If parents want to do a risk/benefit
analysis regarding whether the risk involved in exerting their

authority in
certain types of situations is likely to be greater or less than the
benefits, they need an accurate appraisal of the risks, not an

exaggerated
one.


Gordon wasn't promoting, in this exercise, a risk analysis of
punishment. Just a review of the fact there is some negative effect.
In fact it IS up to the participant to judge the risk/benefit
themselves and reject or accept.

The problem in this society is that the risk/benefit of punishment is
rarely even looked at, or if done, because of long taught,
conditioned, societal values, the risk will be rated low and the
benefits relatively high for punishment.

The unchallenged belief in punishment as a way of controlling
relationships has consequences we see around us all the time. Divorce
rates, school dropout rates, crime rates, failures in international
diplomacy, job failures.

When human interactions fail to produce wanted results one can pretty
well count on one of the parties at least, coming from a punishment
model.


Nathan


Kane
  #14  
Old June 9th 04, 11:35 AM
R. Steve Walz
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default How Children REALLY React To Control

Chris wrote:

How Children Really React to Control

by Thomas Gordon, Ph.D.

When one person tries to control another, you can always expect
some kind of reaction from the controllee. The use of power involves two
people in a special kind of relationship - one wielding power, and the
other reacting to it.

This seemingly obvious fact is not usually dealt with in the
writings of the dare-to-discipline advocates. Invariably, they leave the
child out of the formula, omitting any reference to how the youngster
reacts to the control of his or her parents or teachers.

They insist, "Parents must set limits," but seldom say anything
about how children respond to having their needs denied in this way.
"Parents should not be afraid to exercise their authority," they counsel,
but rarely mention how youngsters react to authority-based coercion. By
omitting the child from the interaction, the discipline advocates leave
the impression that the child submits willingly and consistently to
adults' power and does precisely what is demanded.

These are actual quotes from the many power-to-the-parent books
I've collected along the way:

"Be firm but fair."
"Insist that your children obey."
"Don't be afraid to express disapproval by spanking."
"Discipline with love."
"Demonstrate your parental right to lead."
"The toddler should be taught to obey and yield to parental
leadership."

What these books have in common is advocacy of the use of
power-based discipline with no mention of how children react to it. In
other words, the dare-to-discipline advocates never present power-based
discipline in full, as a cause-and-effect phenomenon, an
action-and-reaction event.

This omission is important, for it implies that all children
passively submit to adult demands, perfectly content and secure in an
obedient role, first in relationships with their parents and teachers and,
eventually, with all adult power-wielders they might encounter.

However, I have found not a shred of evidence to support this
view. In fact, as most of us remember only too well from our childhood, we
did almost anything we could to defend against power-based control. We
tried to avoid it, postpone it, weaken it, avert it, escape from it. We
lied, we put the blame on someone else, we tattled, hid, pleaded, begged
for mercy, or promised we would never do it again.

We also experienced punitive discipline as embarrassing,
demeaning, humiliating, frightening, and painful. To be coerced into doing
something against our will was a personal insult and an affront to our
dignity, an act that devalued the importance of our needs.

Punitive discipline is by definition need-depriving as opposed to
need-satisfying. Recall that punishment will be effective only if it is
felt by the child as aversive, painful, unpleasant. When controllers
employ punishment, they always intend for it to cause pain or deprivation.
It seems so obvious, then, that children don't ever want punitive
discipline, contrary to what its advocates would have us believe. No child
"asks for it," "feels a need for it," or is "grateful for it." And it is
probably true, too, that no child ever forgets or forgives a punitive
parent or teacher. This is why I find it incredible that the authors of
power-to-the-parent books try to justify power-based discipline with such
statements as:

* "Kids not only need punishment, they want it."

* "Children basically want what is coming to them, good or
bad, because justice is security."

* "Punishment will prove to kids that their parents love
them."

* "The youngster who knows he deserves a spanking appears
almost relieved when it finally comes."

* "Rather than be insulted by the discipline, [the child]
understands its purpose and appreciates the control it gives him over his
own impulses."

* "Corporal punishment in the hands of a loving parent is
entirely different in purpose and practice [from child abuse]....One is an
act of love; the other is an act of hostility."

* "Some strong-willed children absolutely demand to be
spanked, and their wishes should be granted."

* "Punishment will make children feel more secure in their
relationship."

* "Discipline makes for happy families; healthy
relationships."

Could these be rationalizations intended to relieve the guilt that
controllers feel after coercing or committing acts of physical violence
against their children? It seems possible in view of the repeated
insistence that the punishing adult is really a loving adult, doing it
only "for the child's own good," or as a dutiful act of "benevolent
leadership." It appears that being firm with children has to be justified
by saying, "Be firm but fair"; being tough is acceptable as long as it's
"Tough Love"; being an autocrat is justifiable as long as you're a
"benevolent autocrat"; coercing children is okay as long as you're not a
"dictator"; and physically abusing children is not abuse as long as you
"do it lovingly."

Disciplinarians' insistence that punishment is benign and
constructive might be explained by their desire that children eventually
become subservient to a Supreme Being or higher authority. This can only
be achieved, they believe, if children first learn to obey their parents
and other adults. James Dobson (1978) stresses this point time and time
again:

* "While yielding to the loving leadership of their parents,
children are also learning to yield to the benevolent leadership of God
Himself."

* "With regard to the specific discipline of the strong-willed
toddler, mild spankings can begin between 15 and 18 months of age....To
repeat, the toddler should be taught to obey and yield to parental
leadership, but that end will not be accomplished overnight."

It's the familiar story of believing that the ends justify the
means. Obedience to parental authority first, and then later to some
higher authority, is so strongly valued by some advocates of punitive
discipline that the means they utilize to achieve that end are distorted
to appear beneficial to children rather than harmful.

The hope that children eventually will submit to all authority is,
I think, wishful thinking. Not all children submit when adults try to
control them. In fact, children respond with a wide variety of reactions,
an assortment of behaviors. Psychologists call these reactions "coping
behaviors" or "coping mechanisms".

The Coping Mechanisms Children Use

Over the years I have compiled a long list of the various coping
mechanisms youngsters use when adults try to control them. This list comes
primarily out of our Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.) and Teacher
Effectiveness Training (T.E.T.) classes, where we employ a simple but
revealing classroom exercise. Participants are asked to recall the
specific ways they themselves coped with power-based discipline when they
were youngsters. The question yields nearly identical lists in every
class, which confirms how universal children's coping mechanisms are. The
complete list is reproduced below, in no particular order. Note how varied
these recurring themes are. (Can you pick out the particular coping
methods you employed as a youngster?)

* Resisting, defying, being negative

* Rebelling, disobeying, being insubordinate, sassing

* Retaliating, striking back, counterattacking, vandalizing

* Hitting, being belligerent, combative

* Breaking rules and laws

* Throwing temper tantrums, getting angry

* Lying, deceiving, hiding the truth

* Blaming others, tattling, telling on others

* Bossing or bullying others

* Banding together, forming alliances, organizing against the
adult

* Apple-polishing, buttering up, soft-soaping, bootlicking,
currying favor with adults

* Withdrawing, fantasizing, daydreaming

* Competing, needing to win, hating to lose, needing to look
good, making others look bad

* Giving up, feeling defeated, loafing, goofing off

* Leaving, escaping, staying away from home, running away,
quitting school, cutting classes

* Not talking, ignoring, using the silent treatment, writing
the adult off, keeping one's distance

* Crying, weeping; feeling depressed or hopeless

* Becoming fearful, shy, timid, afraid to speak up, hesitant
to try anything new Needing reassurance, seeking constant
approval, feeling insecure

* Getting sick, developing psychosomatic ailments

* Overeating, excessive dieting

* Being submissive, conforming, complying; being dutiful,
docile, apple-polishing, being a goody-goody, teacher's pet

* Drinking heavily, using drugs

* Cheating in school, plagiarizing

As you might expect, after parents and teachers in the class
generate their list, and realize that it was created out of their own
experience, they invariably make such comments as:

"Why would anyone want to use power, if these are the
behaviors it produces?"

"All of these coping mechanisms are behaviors that I wouldn't
want to see in my children [or my students]."

"I don't see in the list any good effects or positive
behaviors."

"If we reacted to power in those ways when we were kids, our
own children certainly will, too."

After this exercise, some parents and teachers undergo a
180-degree shift in their thinking. They see much more clearly that power
creates the very behavior patterns they most dislike in children! They
begin to understand that as parents and teachers they are paying a
terrible price for using power: they are causing their children or
students to develop habits, traits, and characteristics considered both
unacceptable by most adults and unhealthy by mental health professionals.

For more information about Parent Effectiveness Training and
Teacher Effectiveness Training, contact Gordon Training International:

USA
Gordon Training International
531 Stevens Avenue West
Solana Beach, CA 92075
Telephone (858) 481-8121
E-mail:
Website:
http://www.gordontraining.com

---------------------------
ABSO-****ING-LUTELY!!
Steve
  #15  
Old June 9th 04, 11:44 AM
R. Steve Walz
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default How Children REALLY React To Control

Doan wrote:

From the thomas gordon's website:

"Reviews of Research of the P.E.T. Course
There have been two extensive reviews of P.E.T. course evaluation studies.
The first, by Ronald Levant of Boston University, reviewed 23 different
studies. The author concluded that many of the studies had methodological
discrepancies. Nevertheless, out of a total of 149 comparisons between
P.E.T. and control groups or alternative programs, 32% favored P.E.T., 11%
favored the alternative group, and 57% found no significant differences."

---------------------------------
All this means is the for most purposes, programs similar to this are
simularly effective, so you're lying like the **** you always are.


The point here is not blindly believe to any book or philosoply but learn
and filter out what is applicable to you and what is not. Hey, even
Dobson recommended Thomas Gordon. :-)
Doan

------------------------------------
No, you vicious ****, again what you're trying to pass off is the
individualized permission to "hey, if you think for a moment that
PET doesn't work "for you" just shuck it and start hitting again!",
which is nothing more than your usual excuse for your violent anti-child
perversion!!
Steve




On 8 Jun 2004, Chris wrote:


How Children Really React to Control

by Thomas Gordon, Ph.D.


When one person tries to control another, you can always expect
some kind of reaction from the controllee. The use of power involves two
people in a special kind of relationship - one wielding power, and the
other reacting to it.

This seemingly obvious fact is not usually dealt with in the
writings of the dare-to-discipline advocates. Invariably, they leave the
child out of the formula, omitting any reference to how the youngster
reacts to the control of his or her parents or teachers.

They insist, "Parents must set limits," but seldom say anything
about how children respond to having their needs denied in this way.
"Parents should not be afraid to exercise their authority," they counsel,
but rarely mention how youngsters react to authority-based coercion. By
omitting the child from the interaction, the discipline advocates leave
the impression that the child submits willingly and consistently to
adults' power and does precisely what is demanded.

These are actual quotes from the many power-to-the-parent books
I've collected along the way:

"Be firm but fair."
"Insist that your children obey."
"Don't be afraid to express disapproval by spanking."
"Discipline with love."
"Demonstrate your parental right to lead."
"The toddler should be taught to obey and yield to parental
leadership."

What these books have in common is advocacy of the use of
power-based discipline with no mention of how children react to it. In
other words, the dare-to-discipline advocates never present power-based
discipline in full, as a cause-and-effect phenomenon, an
action-and-reaction event.

This omission is important, for it implies that all children
passively submit to adult demands, perfectly content and secure in an
obedient role, first in relationships with their parents and teachers and,
eventually, with all adult power-wielders they might encounter.

However, I have found not a shred of evidence to support this
view. In fact, as most of us remember only too well from our childhood, we
did almost anything we could to defend against power-based control. We
tried to avoid it, postpone it, weaken it, avert it, escape from it. We
lied, we put the blame on someone else, we tattled, hid, pleaded, begged
for mercy, or promised we would never do it again.

We also experienced punitive discipline as embarrassing,
demeaning, humiliating, frightening, and painful. To be coerced into doing
something against our will was a personal insult and an affront to our
dignity, an act that devalued the importance of our needs.

Punitive discipline is by definition need-depriving as opposed to
need-satisfying. Recall that punishment will be effective only if it is
felt by the child as aversive, painful, unpleasant. When controllers
employ punishment, they always intend for it to cause pain or deprivation.
It seems so obvious, then, that children don't ever want punitive
discipline, contrary to what its advocates would have us believe. No child
"asks for it," "feels a need for it," or is "grateful for it." And it is
probably true, too, that no child ever forgets or forgives a punitive
parent or teacher. This is why I find it incredible that the authors of
power-to-the-parent books try to justify power-based discipline with such
statements as:

* "Kids not only need punishment, they want it."

* "Children basically want what is coming to them, good or
bad, because justice is security."

* "Punishment will prove to kids that their parents love
them."

* "The youngster who knows he deserves a spanking appears
almost relieved when it finally comes."

* "Rather than be insulted by the discipline, [the child]
understands its purpose and appreciates the control it gives him over his
own impulses."

* "Corporal punishment in the hands of a loving parent is
entirely different in purpose and practice [from child abuse]....One is an
act of love; the other is an act of hostility."

* "Some strong-willed children absolutely demand to be
spanked, and their wishes should be granted."

* "Punishment will make children feel more secure in their
relationship."

* "Discipline makes for happy families; healthy
relationships."

Could these be rationalizations intended to relieve the guilt that
controllers feel after coercing or committing acts of physical violence
against their children? It seems possible in view of the repeated
insistence that the punishing adult is really a loving adult, doing it
only "for the child's own good," or as a dutiful act of "benevolent
leadership." It appears that being firm with children has to be justified
by saying, "Be firm but fair"; being tough is acceptable as long as it's
"Tough Love"; being an autocrat is justifiable as long as you're a
"benevolent autocrat"; coercing children is okay as long as you're not a
"dictator"; and physically abusing children is not abuse as long as you
"do it lovingly."

Disciplinarians' insistence that punishment is benign and
constructive might be explained by their desire that children eventually
become subservient to a Supreme Being or higher authority. This can only
be achieved, they believe, if children first learn to obey their parents
and other adults. James Dobson (1978) stresses this point time and time
again:

* "While yielding to the loving leadership of their parents,
children are also learning to yield to the benevolent leadership of God
Himself."

* "With regard to the specific discipline of the strong-willed
toddler, mild spankings can begin between 15 and 18 months of age....To
repeat, the toddler should be taught to obey and yield to parental
leadership, but that end will not be accomplished overnight."


It's the familiar story of believing that the ends justify the
means. Obedience to parental authority first, and then later to some
higher authority, is so strongly valued by some advocates of punitive
discipline that the means they utilize to achieve that end are distorted
to appear beneficial to children rather than harmful.

The hope that children eventually will submit to all authority is,
I think, wishful thinking. Not all children submit when adults try to
control them. In fact, children respond with a wide variety of reactions,
an assortment of behaviors. Psychologists call these reactions "coping
behaviors" or "coping mechanisms".

The Coping Mechanisms Children Use

Over the years I have compiled a long list of the various coping
mechanisms youngsters use when adults try to control them. This list comes
primarily out of our Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.) and Teacher
Effectiveness Training (T.E.T.) classes, where we employ a simple but
revealing classroom exercise. Participants are asked to recall the
specific ways they themselves coped with power-based discipline when they
were youngsters. The question yields nearly identical lists in every
class, which confirms how universal children's coping mechanisms are. The
complete list is reproduced below, in no particular order. Note how varied
these recurring themes are. (Can you pick out the particular coping
methods you employed as a youngster?)

* Resisting, defying, being negative

* Rebelling, disobeying, being insubordinate, sassing

* Retaliating, striking back, counterattacking, vandalizing

* Hitting, being belligerent, combative

* Breaking rules and laws

* Throwing temper tantrums, getting angry

* Lying, deceiving, hiding the truth

* Blaming others, tattling, telling on others

* Bossing or bullying others

* Banding together, forming alliances, organizing against the
adult

* Apple-polishing, buttering up, soft-soaping, bootlicking,
currying favor with adults

* Withdrawing, fantasizing, daydreaming

* Competing, needing to win, hating to lose, needing to look
good, making others look bad

* Giving up, feeling defeated, loafing, goofing off

* Leaving, escaping, staying away from home, running away,
quitting school, cutting classes

* Not talking, ignoring, using the silent treatment, writing
the adult off, keeping one's distance

* Crying, weeping; feeling depressed or hopeless

* Becoming fearful, shy, timid, afraid to speak up, hesitant
to try anything new Needing reassurance, seeking constant
approval, feeling insecure

* Getting sick, developing psychosomatic ailments

* Overeating, excessive dieting

* Being submissive, conforming, complying; being dutiful,
docile, apple-polishing, being a goody-goody, teacher's pet

* Drinking heavily, using drugs

* Cheating in school, plagiarizing

As you might expect, after parents and teachers in the class
generate their list, and realize that it was created out of their own
experience, they invariably make such comments as:

"Why would anyone want to use power, if these are the
behaviors it produces?"

"All of these coping mechanisms are behaviors that I wouldn't
want to see in my children [or my students]."

"I don't see in the list any good effects or positive
behaviors."

"If we reacted to power in those ways when we were kids, our
own children certainly will, too."

After this exercise, some parents and teachers undergo a
180-degree shift in their thinking. They see much more clearly that power
creates the very behavior patterns they most dislike in children! They
begin to understand that as parents and teachers they are paying a
terrible price for using power: they are causing their children or
students to develop habits, traits, and characteristics considered both
unacceptable by most adults and unhealthy by mental health professionals.





For more information about Parent Effectiveness Training and
Teacher Effectiveness Training, contact Gordon Training International:

USA
Gordon Training International
531 Stevens Avenue West
Solana Beach, CA 92075
Telephone (858) 481-8121
E-mail:
Website:
http://www.gordontraining.com


  #16  
Old June 9th 04, 11:58 AM
R. Steve Walz
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default How Children REALLY React To Control

Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

There is a difference between a "punitive" parent or teacher and one who
occasionally makes reasonable use of punishment.

---------------------
Nope. Wrong is wrong. It is wrong to punish a child for anything
that is not criminal, that would be his right to do is he were an
adult, namely any circumstance in which you want to control a
child's actions.

But punishment is alright to use in ONE and ONLY ONE circumstance,
where a child is being criminal to other children or to adults
without them first having been and done so to him. This is rare,
and even so comes from some kind of emotional abuse and is the
child's personal compensation for it. Whether it is bullying or
destructive behavior, it has to be stopped because it cannot be
allowed to succeed in a civilied society. Even then, note that
we do not even punish adults corporally for this, instead we
isolate and restrict them in jails and prisons, and we do not
inflict bodily pain calling it "cruel and unusual".


One of my best friends in
elementary school was my fourth grade teacher (who I first became friends
with when I was in second grade and stayed friends with until she left the
school sometime when I was in junior high). Teachers in my school did spank
occasionally, and one time she paddled me on the hand (her normal method of
using corporal punishment - this was in the mid 1970's, by the way). I was
embarrassed to get in trouble with her, and I was afraid my getting in
trouble like that might hurt the way she felt about me, but I don't remember
ever holding it against her. And as I said, we remained friends long after
I left her class.

-----------------------
Nonsense, that was your self-deception, you actually repressed your
hatred of her action out of fear and it migrated to elsewhere in your
psyche to live again as your sick desire to torture children's hands.

It is the very reason that you are right here right now quite guiltily
and neurotically trying to defend yourself from the poster's obvious
attack on your sick little perversion.


From my experience (and I think anecdotal evidence I've seen from others
tends to back me up),

--------------------
This is illicit in reasoned exchange, anecdote, yours or others,
are irrelevant and undocumented.


what is really important is how the use of authority
fits into the overall relationship. If an adult exercises authority in a
way that exhibits a lack of concern for a child's needs or desires, the
child probably will react to punishment from that person in much the way Dr.
Gordon describes. If an adult normally cares about what a child needs and
wants and generally exercises authority only for reasons that the child can
respect (if not necessarily always agree with), occasional instances of
punishment are far less likely to cause any significant harm to the
relationship.

-----------------------------------
Nonsense, wrong assaults on children, if rare, simply become more
shocking and formative to the child. If not rare, they merely serve
to engrain the compensatory behaviors that those first shocking
occasions first gave rise to.
Steve
  #17  
Old June 9th 04, 12:18 PM
R. Steve Walz
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default How Children REALLY React To Control

Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

"Chris" wrote in message
primarily out of our Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.) and Teacher
Effectiveness Training (T.E.T.) classes, where we employ a simple but
revealing classroom exercise. Participants are asked to recall the
specific ways they themselves coped with power-based discipline when they
were youngsters. The question yields nearly identical lists in every
class, which confirms how universal children's coping mechanisms are. The
complete list is reproduced below, in no particular order. Note how varied
these recurring themes are. (Can you pick out the particular coping
methods you employed as a youngster?)




The more I think about this exercise, the more it looks like something
deliberately contrived to generate a particular emotional reaction.

----------------------
Quite right, to generate an awareness of the results of one's actions
in another person, something that is systematically avoided and even
denied by the opposing philosophies. We ARE, after all, interested in
the actual cause and effect upon children's minds and behaviors!!


An
objective analysis would try to pin down how control by adults is likely to
affect individual children.

-----------------------
It is disingenuous and has abusive motives to even try to find some
group of children for which abusive punishment might be suitable, and
it does nothing but point up the desperate neurotic origin of your
sick little perversion. Child torturing has never been effective, all
it does is act as a compensation for your own early abuse.


This exercise, instead, creates an amalgam of
negative effects across all the people in the group, a combination that will
almost certainly be significantly longer and uglier than a typical child is
likely to exhibit.

---------------------
Nonsense, these are what is felt, not necessarily "exhibited". YOU
don't like the anti-behaviorist emphasis on invisible internal
processes, you would like to claim the human mind is some "black box",
one that cannot BE understood, when each of us is totally aware of
what everything another does to us and how it affects us, IF WE ADMIT
and accept it to awareness instead of repressing it and substituting
your "anti-self" abusive philosophy for it. Yes, behaviorism is nothing
more than a mean-spirited and itself a neurotic symptom-ridden illness
that rejects feeling response and the sanctity of the self.


Worse, a person might add something to the list because
it happened once or twice, but have others end up thinking it happened on a
much more regular basis.

------------------------
You're merely afraid of being taken to task for ALL your crimes, like
a criminal in the dock.


I'm not saying that efforts to control children through force don't have
negative consequences, or that parents should adopt a dismissive attitude
toward the risk of such consequences. But it is important not to blow the
risks out of proportion either.

-------------------
In other words you want to establish permissive excuses for crimes
against children so that your own crimes can be excused, and even
so that you can avail yourself of them when again when you need your
next "fix" of compensatory viciousness for your neurosis that was
caused by YOUR OWN abuse as a child.


If parents want to do a risk/benefit
analysis regarding whether the risk involved in exerting their authority

--------------------
"Exerting 'their' authority", nooooooooooo.

You misunderstand, this whole exercise is intended to show you that
authority is NOT yours, that the entire notion of parental "authority"
is entirely ILLEGITIMATE, and that use of it always comes to NO GOOD.

We realize that your loss of authority will be discomforting to you,
because of your desperate need to feel power after having been so
abused and your power so stolen from you as a child, but allowing you
to pass on this violence to yet another generation would be a very
wrong thing to do.

Instead we have to stop the abuse of this generation, even if it
deprives you former victims of your compensatory outlet, because
THAT IS HOW THE SICKNESS IS TRANSMITTED generation to generation!


in
certain types of situations is likely to be greater or less than the
benefits, they need an accurate appraisal of the risks, not an exaggerated
one.
Nathan

-------------------------------------
Nonsense, you're fishing for an excuse to abuse.
Steve
  #18  
Old June 9th 04, 01:55 PM
Nathan A. Barclay
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default How Children REALLY React To Control


"Kane" wrote in message
om...
On Tue, 8 Jun 2004 10:41:06 -0500, "Nathan A. Barclay"
wrote:


The more I think about this exercise, the more it looks like
something deliberately contrived to generate a particular
emotional reaction.


You are correct. That IS the point. To explore the actual experiences
of people, not create, as you seem to be doing below, move away from
the real and into the theoretical.

To teach someone about how others experience things it is useful to
point out their own experiences that may be similar.

An
objective analysis


Again, a jump away from the point of training people to use and
develop their capacity for empathy. PET is based on empathy as ONE of
its principles. There are others of course.


I view empathay as both extremely valuable and potentially dangerous.
Without empathy, true objectivity is impossible because a person doesn't
really understand the consequences of an action if he can't empathize with
those who will be affected by those consequences. But when empathy is
overly focused on one particular aspect of a situation, causing other
aspects of the situation to be ignored or given less weight than they
deserve, that excessive focus can be extremely dangerous.

Yes, it is valuable for parents to empathize with how their children are
likely to feel about assertion of parental authority, and to understand how
their children might react. But parents also have to take a larger and
longer view, to consider (and empathize with) the consequences if they fail
to exert their authority. What will it do to the child's future if they do
not intervene? What dangers will the child's behavior present to the child
or to others? How would their child's behavior affect other children, both
now and in the future? And, for that matter, how would their child's
behavior affect them (the parents)?

As I said, parents need to empathize. But if they get so caught up in
empathizing with one aspect of the overall situation that they ignore other
aspects, they are likely to make worse choices than they would if they
empathize but also look at the overall picture objectively. I view empathy
as a part of objectivity, not a replacement for it.

would try to pin down how control by adults is likely to
affect individual children.


You seem to be missing something. The exercise was with a room full of
people, so in fact one would have a rich producting of of just what
you ask for. Usually such exercises result in long lists of wall
posted newsprint display of the group's responses.

And one would then know how individual people in this group were
effected by adult controls.


If the exercise is conducted in such a way that each person's list is seen
separately, that would indeed portray what reactions individual children
went through, although the question of how often the various reactions
occurred would remain. And if that is the way the exercise is conducted in
the classes, then the problem of not providing an idea of how many different
reactions individual children tend to go through would not apply in that
context.

snip

Worse, a person might add something to the list because
it happened once or twice, but have others end up thinking it
happened on a much more regular basis.


What would be the problem? It isn't a frequency issue. The purpose is
to identify different effects by adult control over children.


I assume you're aware that people with agendas frequently manipulate their
choice of what information to present and how to present it in order to make
their viewpoint look as strong as possible. My concern is that Dr. Gordon
seems to be doing that here, calling attention to what can go wrong without
encouraging people to examine the entire context. To the extent that he
includes the possibility of children's reacting by behaving at all, he
portrays it in a negative light ("Being submissive, conforming, complying;
being dutiful, docile, apple-polishing, being a goody-goody, teacher's
pet"). Further, he encourages people to focus on how many of the coping
behaviors they exhibited, not on how common or serious they were (especially
in contrast with the total length of childhood). So the exercise seems
aimed more at causing people to form a negative opinion of the use of
authority than at causing them to objectively evaluate how the risks and
benefits of using authority balance against each other.

snip

The problem in this society is that the risk/benefit of punishment is
rarely even looked at, or if done, because of long taught,
conditioned, societal values, the risk will be rated low and the
benefits relatively high for punishment.


I'm inclined to strongly agree that society (or at least a very large part
of it) tends to underestimate the risks and overestimate the effectiveness.
But I think Dr. Gordon's article errs in the opposite direction.

The unchallenged belief in punishment as a way of controlling
relationships has consequences we see around us all the time. Divorce
rates, school dropout rates, crime rates, failures in international
diplomacy, job failures.


This accusation has some validity, but it ignores other, more important
causes.

It seems to me that the biggest factor in the divorce rate is that we as a
society have largely replaced, "for better, or for worse... til death do you
part" with "until you get tired of that person or find someone you'd rather
be with." Yes, situations where spouses' desire to punish each other drives
them farther apart are a contributing factor. But I think lack of
commitment - both on a personal level and as part of the legal concept of
what marriage is - is the deeper problem. (And I would point out that
society's belief in punishment is probably weaker now than it was before the
divorce rate started skyrocketing, not stronger.)

With dropout rates, I think the biggest problem is a lack of choice in our
education system. When families have little or no choice regarding what
kind of school a child will go to, and what is available is not a good fit
for the child, that creates serious problems. Of course if the child reacts
to those problems by getting bored or frustrated and misbehaving, and is in
turn punished for that misbehavior, that makes the situation even worse.
But if families could (and would) choose schools that were a better fit for
their children, and if children who are considering dropping out had the
option of changing to a type of school that fit their needs and desires
better instead, that would deal with the problem a whole lot closer to its
source.

The people most likely to be criminals are those who suffered abusive
treatment as children (and by "abusive," I refer to more than just what
legally qualifies as abuse). When parents yell or punish because they are
angry rather than because they make a calm, rational decision that a child's
behavior warrants a particular punishment, the damage can be enormous. And
if parents take out anger or frustration they get from elsewhere on their
children, the situation is even worse. Portraying the crime rate as a
result of excessive belief in punishment when the things criminals went
through as children are so disproportionately likely to involve a lot more
than just punishment is highly misleading.

I'm not trying to say that "the unchallenged belief in punishment" doesn't
cause problems in all of these areas. A lot of people do seriously
overestimate how much punishment can accomplish and underestimate the
importance of other things. But I think you're painting a highly misleading
picture when you blame belief in punishment for issues that have other
important causes and contributing factors.


  #19  
Old June 9th 04, 02:27 PM
Nathan A. Barclay
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default How Children REALLY React To Control


"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...
Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

There is a difference between a "punitive" parent or teacher and one
who occasionally makes reasonable use of punishment.

---------------------
Nope. Wrong is wrong. It is wrong to punish a child for anything
that is not criminal, that would be his right to do is he were an
adult, namely any circumstance in which you want to control a
child's actions.


I won't quote your whole message, but I find your faith in your own
infallibility both obnoxious and insulting - especially when you try to tell
me I'm wrong about my own life just because my reactions don't fit your
prejudice. That reflects a degree of prejudice that would probably make a
brick wall easier to have an intelligent debate with. I doubt that you
would be any more likely than a wall to even consider changing your mind,
and at least a wall wouldn't insult me along the way.


  #20  
Old June 9th 04, 03:15 PM
Nathan A. Barclay
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default How Children REALLY React To Control


"R. Steve Walz" wrote in message
...

Nope. Wrong is wrong. It is wrong to punish a child for anything
that is not criminal, that would be his right to do is he were an
adult, namely any circumstance in which you want to control a
child's actions.


I think I'll respond to this point after all, if only for the benefit of
anyone else who might be interested in the issue.

Adults face consequences for far more than just criminal offenses. For
example, an adult who is obnoxious to his boss or is unwilling to do his job
can generally expect to get fired. That, in turn, can result being unable
to buy food, pay the rent, and so forth - especially if a person keeps being
obnoxious or lazy and getting fired.

The idea of firing children from their "job" of being their parents'
children because they behave obnoxiously, or because they refuse to do a
reasonable share of work around the house, or some such would be completely
impractical - not to mention reprehensible in the eyes of most civilized
people. Therefore, parents are given authority to punish children in other
ways that are far less damaging than throwing the children out on the street
would be.

In other cases, actions that parents punish children for involve a danger to
the child. I suppose one could argue that if a five-year-old girl wants to
go wandering through a dangerous part of town alone at night, it is her life
at stake and thus should be her choice. But most people take the view that
a five-year-old girl doesn't understand the risks well enough to be ready to
make that choice for herself. Therefore, we give parents authority to make
and enforce rules to protect their children's safety.

Do some parents abuse their power? Yes. Do some parents do too much
threatening and not enough discussing and explaining and looking for
compromises and alternatives? Yes.

But by and large, the system works. And throwing it out before we're
positive that we have something that will work better in the real world,
with real parents and real children, would be foolish. To the best of my
knowledge, even societies that seek to abolish corporal punishment
invariably allow other forms of punishment.

Nathan


 




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