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Old June 8th 04, 07:45 AM
Chris
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Default Parent-Child Negotiations

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.

Hi Nathan. Welcome back. Your previous message did not propagate to
my site. I found it on Google and wrote a longish response this morning
before work only to lose it due to a computer glitch. Sorry, but I can't
promise I will rewrite it due to the pressure I am under this semester
teaching 13 credits at three different schools. I am glad you are back,
though, since you are a member of an increasingly rare breed: an
intelligent, articulate, nonflamey prospanker with whom one may have a
courteous exchange of views.

With regard to your three points, I question your assumptions. You
make mutual rulemaking between parents and children sound like class
struggle, like labor negotiating with management, or rival warlords
carving up respective spheres of influence. In a loving relationship of
any kind, both parties either win more intimacy, harmony and joy with one
another, or both lose. "Strength" is not the issue here. In this kind of
negotiation the aim is for everyone to win not because everyone's
"strength" is "reasonable" but because it is in the common interest of
everyone for there to be no losers in the negotiation.

In regard to your second point, yes there are certainly some things
which aren't going to be negotiable. Safety issues in particular come to
mind; also financially related issues.

Regarding your third point about parties to the negotiation
"threatening" each other with extraneous issues, you are back to your view
of parent/child negotiation sounding a lot more like a parlay between
adversaries than a mutually rewarding process of processing away conflicts
in a loving relationship. And given the fact that your point in all of
this is to defend the use of physical pain on children by parents, I find
your concern about "threatening" rather ironic.

Punishment and threats of punishment do nothing to enhance
cooperative win/win methods of discipline and do everything to undermine
it and render it unworkable. You invoke the need for "consequences" if a
child doesn't keep their end of a bargain. What you seem to miss it that
there is a natural consequence built in to the breaking of a promise to a
loved one, regardless of the ages and nature of the relationship of the
interactants. One damages the harmony of ones relationship with a special
and important figure in one's life, loses some of their trust and regard,
and sacrifices the harmony of one's relationship with them. Children
certainly do sometimes engage in behaviors which have this effect, but
when they do there is always a reason. It behooves parents to uncover the
reason by means of I messages, active listening etc. and deal with the
underying cause rather than mindlessly punish the surface behavior.

Win/win cooperative methods of discipline are not an abstract concept
not yet tried in practice, nor are they anything new. Thomas Gordon's
classic, "Parent Effectiveness Training," has been in print for four
decades now and many thousands of families have used this sort of approach
successfully.

Chris