but it sounds like it...

Whenever I suggest any form of 'step away from behaviourism's ineffective tool set' I receive this response:

"We're just supposed to let kids walk all over us, and have a completely disordered and chaotic life?!?!"

Which is the kind of mental leap that has always piqued by attention.

What does their mental map of the world have to look like, if to them 'don't threaten, punish, nag, criticise, blame, shame, complain about, or bribe kids' automatically means 'adults lose all authority, and there is no way at all to guide children or correct their mistakes.'

Obviously, from here, I'm going to lay the path through 'the rest of the world' outside those two 'inevitable' outcomes... but I first want to slow down for a moment and notice what I'm doing.

I'm not saying, 'they're wrong' or, the more often used shorthand for 'I don't understand their worldview,' which is, 'they're crazy'... I'm saying that I don't share their absolutist view of This, and if not This, then automatically and unwaveringly That... and that their worldview involved isn't a super-accurate map of reality.

One aspect of the framework I'm operating with these days is that 'stress' is a pretty good indicator of 'misalignment between reality and the internal map of reality.'

Reactions like that above are pretty clear indicators of a stress response. But if I suppose they're not, and the excitement causing the multiple exclamation points and question marks is just passion, or something... it is a very clear indication of something the speaker holds as both obvious and true.

Notice, please, that I'm not saying that they're not obvious or true, just that I can be fairly confident in saying that the speaker believes.

Suppose we start with this, instead:

"You're thinking that if I take these tools out of your hands, you'll have no other way to help your children toward productive, respectful adulthood?"

Essentially, "I see the worldview you're working from..." where I wonder to myself...

"How can I intervene in this person's stream of understanding of the world to see what I can see?"

What I Can See

Respect for children is not permissiveness. Far from it, in fact.

Respect for children involves some of the most unwavering adherence to reality, so it can sometimes come across as both cold and harsh to people unfamiliar with the idea.

The premise is this one: reality doesn't negotiate. At all.

Reality being as you hope or expect doesn't mean you're a good person, and it doesn't let you off the hook if you're devious enough to get away with it (whatever 'it' may be)... partly because reality isn't here for us, or because of us. We aren't the centre of it anywhere outside our own minds.

When we can see that reality is, regardless of us (or any other object or creature, anywhere in the universe,) we can sometimes find it bleak, even frighteningly impersonal.

Or beautiful.

What I found, and like to share with others, is that life is genuinely precious in all its forms, especially human life.

This naturally extends to babies and children. They're alive, which makes them both valuable and worthy of respect because they're alive.

Respect In Action

Okay, cool, but what's that got to do with not controlling your kid?

Well, everything.

Here's the premise from my worldview:

You cannot respect someone upon whom you use tools to manipulate. Manipulation is inherently disrespectful.

This is easy to tell, based on how you, dear reader, feel about discovering you've been manipulated. Swindled by a scam, or catching someone in a lie, or suddenly realizing your favourite social media algorithm is very effectively keeping you engaged long after you would happily turn it off.

While our whole culture has a foundation of dismissing and devaluing children, we easily forget that they feel identically when they discover they're being manipulated. Even before they discover the insult, they respond to it –as expected– with anger, confusion, resistance.

And there is where reality pokes in, again: the outcome of manipulative parenting tactics shows up in the nature of children. That is: parents can tell themselves convenient stories about how those tactics are necessary, inevitable, or the child's choice, but the reality of a child's reaction tells a different story.

Children are not affected by the intent of a parent as much as they are by the actions of a parent. Children's behaviour is the result of the environment they're truly in, not the one their parents are aware of, or like to think they're creating.

Which means the question is no longer,

"How do I make my child behave?"

It becomes,

"In what reality is my child learning to live?"