Parent-Child Negotiations

So Nathan, you admit that you did some of the things on the list of
childhood responses to punitive control. Note the confidence with which I
predicted that you did some of them. So did I. So did everyone subjected
to punitive control as children. These are not normal inevitable
childhood behaviors. They are understandable responses of humans of any
age to coercion and needn't be a part of anyone's childhood.

I fail to see how you can blithely assert that punitive control "by
and large works well" when every single child subjected to it exhibits at
least several of the undesirable side effects on the list. If win/win
cooperative methods of discipline resulted in such a list of side effects,
with at least some of them manifesting in every single child raised in
this manner, surely you would never accept the assertion that "by and
large" win/win methods work well, nor should you.

My response to your recent posts boils down to two main points. The
first is the above point that punitive control carries a host of
undesirable side effects and hence does not "by and large work well."
The second is that you fail to acknowledge that the disruption of the
harmony of the parent/child relationship which is a natural consequence of
a child failing to live up to agreements they have made, constitutes a
"consequence" in its own right. By ignoring this fact you then leave the
way open to arguing that there has to be a "consequence" and that only
punishment will suffice. Your reasoning is sound, but follows from a
faulty assumption.


Chris

In alt.parenting.spanking R. Steve Walz wrote:

: You need to be professionally tortured till you shut your ****ing
: vicious little ********.

This sort of language is completely uncalled for, Steve.

Are you *trying* to embarrass the rest of the antispank side with
your rude, obscene messages?

If not, then please leave the obscene flame posts to those who have
nothing else to offer. Antispankers have the momentum of history on our
side and virtually all of the available science on our side. We don't
need to fling abuse at those who disagree with us, because we have the
stronger position in this debate. Mudslinging is the last resort of those
who have run out of arguments. We haven't, so let's not.

Chris

On 12 Jun 2004, Chris wrote:

In alt.parenting.spanking R. Steve Walz wrote:

: You need to be professionally tortured till you shut your ****ing
: vicious little ********.

Note that verbally abusive Steven is a product of the child discipline
technique which you claim "by and large works well."

Chris

On Sat, 12 Jun 2004, Doan wrote:

On 12 Jun 2004, Chris wrote:

In alt.parenting.spanking R. Steve Walz wrote:

: You need to be professionally tortured till you shut your ****ing
: vicious little ********.

Note that verbally abusive Steven is a product of the child discipline
technique which you claim "by and large works well."

Chris

LOL!

Doan

On 12 Jun 2004, Chris wrote:

In alt.parenting.spanking R. Steve Walz wrote:

: You need to be professionally tortured till you shut your ****ing
: vicious little ********.

This sort of language is completely uncalled for, Steve.

Are you *trying* to embarrass the rest of the antispank side with
your rude, obscene messages?

If not, then please leave the obscene flame posts to those who have
nothing else to offer. Antispankers have the momentum of history on our
side and virtually all of the available science on our side. We don't
need to fling abuse at those who disagree with us, because we have the
stronger position in this debate. Mudslinging is the last resort of those
who have run out of arguments. We haven't, so let's not.

Chris

Good move, Chris. Now, let's see how the "never-spanked" Steven response.
Is he smarter than Kan0 or will he be just as stupid and response with
a "**** you, Chris"? Only time will tell. ;-)

Doan

"Chris" wrote in message
...

I fail to see how you can blithely assert that punitive control "by
and large works well" when every single child subjected to it exhibits at
least several of the undesirable side effects on the list.

"Well" is not the same thing as "perfectly," and "by and large" indicates
that there are exceptions. The fact is that those symptoms do not stop most
people from becoming honest, productive citizens who are generally inclined
to respect the rights of others. Whatever the faults of current parenting
methods, they haven't stopped us from building the wealthiest, most
technologically advanced society in the history of mankind.

Could we do better? Definitely. In spite of our disagreements regarding
how far it probably makes sense to go in eliminating punishment, we both
agree that society would be better off if more parents relied less on
punishment and more on positive techniques.

On the other hand, have you compared typical American parenting among those
who make use of punishment with how ancient Sparta treated its sons?

If win/win
cooperative methods of discipline resulted in such a list of side effects,
with at least some of them manifesting in every single child raised in
this manner, surely you would never accept the assertion that "by and
large" win/win methods work well, nor should you.

Whether or not I would accept the assertion would depend on how common and
serious the side effects were, and on how well the children tended to
function as adults. And if the wealthiest, most technologically advanced
society on the planet had been using mostly such techniques from its
inception, I would have a hard time arguing that such techniques were
failing miserably, whatever my thoughts about the possibility of doing
better.

My response to your recent posts boils down to two main points. The
first is the above point that punitive control carries a host of
undesirable side effects and hence does not "by and large work well."
The second is that you fail to acknowledge that the disruption of the
harmony of the parent/child relationship which is a natural consequence of
a child failing to live up to agreements they have made, constitutes a
"consequence" in its own right.

On the contrary, I have acknowledged that it is a consequence. What you
refuse to acknowledge is even the slightest possibility that children's
desire to violate an agreement might sometimes outweigh their desire to
avoid that consequence.

By ignoring this fact you then leave the
way open to arguing that there has to be a "consequence" and that only
punishment will suffice. Your reasoning is sound, but follows from a
faulty assumption.

Quoting from what I wrote in an earlier message (with a slight correction in
wording): "With negotiated settlements, the child does have to give up
something he or she didn't want to, so whether or not a possibility of
punishment is needed depends on whether or not the child is willing to abide
by the agreement without that possibility. [i]f the child abides by the
agreement strictly on his or her own, or if just reminding the child of the
agreement and of why keeping the agreement is important is enough, there is
no need to bring up the issue of punishment. But if the child is not
willing to abide by the agreement voluntarily, punishment may be necessary."

In other words, parents can start off assuming that the child will keep his
or her agreements without the need to bring up a possibility of punishment.
If that works out, wonderful. But if violations of agreements become a
significant problem, some kind of additional consequence is needed if the
agreements are to work. (Steve, what do you think about the relationship
between this issue and Breach of Contract in adult law?)

Doan wrote:

On Sat, 12 Jun 2004, R. Steve Walz wrote:

Doan wrote:

On Fri, 11 Jun 2004, R. Steve Walz wrote:

Doan wrote:

On 10 Jun 2004, Kane wrote:

Chris has been running away from me since the Straus et al (1997) debacle.
----------------
No, we simply stand back when you ****, and you **** everywhere
we take you, like a baby with projectile diarrhea.

The only "****" on this newsgroup I see is
-------------
You. Go the **** away, or grow a brain and use it.
Steve

LOL! Speaking like a "never-spanked" kid with a "****" coming out of his
mouth. Tell me, do all "never-spanked" grow up to be like you?

Doan
-----------------
You're the only one with mouth-****.
Steve

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

(And before you talk about how
wonderfully children who are raised with freedom will invariably treat
others,
--------------------------
They will treat others as those others deserve to be treated.

Look at where treating each other the way you think the other deserves to be
treated is taking you and Doan. A society where everyone took that kind of
view would almost certainly self-destruct through a cycle of treating each
other worse and worse. Being able to disagree with people but still treat
them in a civil way is an extremely important skill in preserving
civilization.

look at how you're treating me. That alone proves that it doesn't
always work.)
------------------------------
Don't posture and pretend like a little manipulative ****.
Disagreeing with you isn't any "crime"!!

I've committed no crime against you,

That's my point. There is more to maintaining a civilized society than just
not committing crimes against each other.

I have told you the Truth, just
one you simply don't like, and I have told you what I think of you,
nothing more.

Nothing more? How many times did you tell me what you think of me? Just
enough for me to know, or do you keep making an ongoing effort to be
insulting?

Trying to hurt people with words is not something that we generally consider
serious enough to constitute a crime, but it is nonetheless a way of hurting
people. In my view, the difference between what you are doing and assault
and battery is far more a matter of degree than a matter of basic kind.

Perhaps more importantly, what would you think of a parent who told his
child what he thinks of him in the manner you're telling me what you think
of me? If your standard for how adults should treat children is that it
should be the same as how adults are expected to treat each other, consider
the implications of how you are treatimg me in that context.

As for whether or not what you've told me is Truth, you believe that it is
and I believe that most of it is not. Unfortunately, you seem to be missing
another useful skill in maintaining civilization, the skill of
distingusihing between personal beliefs and that which can be clearly
proven.

(By
"unacceptable," I am referring to matters serious enough that
the parents believe they ought to be non-negotiable or negotiable
only within certain boundaries, not just to actions parents would
prefer not to accept.)
--------------------
If you cannot convince your children of that by reason and logic,
then you're merely wrong in your beliefs.

Let me get this straight. If parents and children disagree, it is
automatically the parents, the people who have lived more than twice as
long and generally have a significantly higher level of maturity, that
are
wrong? I don't see that as making any sense at all.
----------------------------------
If you and the person you're pushing around and bullying disagree,
then yes, it is your fault because YOU'RE pushing them around.

Re-read what you wrote earlier: "If you cannot convince your children of
that by reason and logic, then you're merely wrong in your beliefs." That
is a very different thing from saying that parents are wrong in making and
enforcing rules based on their beliefs.

People who care about each other want each one of them to all
get what they each separately and differently want,

In general, that is true. But when you love someone, and that person
wants something that you know will be bad for them, you will generally
hope that they do NOT get what they want. For example, if your children
would decide that they wanted to take a dangerous illegal drug, would
you
want for them to get the drug or want for them not to get it? If you
would
want them to get it, I have the same contempt for you that you have
toward parents who spank.
--------------------------
If your "children" are sufficiently able to research, inquire, and
obtain a drug against your desires, then no coercion of any kind
is likely to do more than endanger you if you try to get in their
way physically. It isn't likely to be a situation in which they
are unaware of your opinion. The most constuctive thing you can
do is to maintain civility with them so that you have their ear
and then you can tell them of your worries, and any information
about the drug that you might give them. Still, if you DID have
a friendship relationship with them, one devoid of any coercion,
ONLY THEN would you even be LIKELY to know of their drug use
ANYWAY! Any coercive relatiionship you have with them will serve
to prevent you even being ALLOWED by them to know of their drug
use. As a parent *I* would rather be uncoercive and KNOW what my
kids were interested in, and be able to speak with them without
being ignored and dismissed, than to coerce them and lose that
knowledge entirely!!

First of all, you completely missed the fact that I was using a fairly
extreme situation to provide a clear counterexample against your claim that
if parents love their children, they will want for their children to get
what the children want. I was illustrating an entire category of situations
that you had been ignoring, and wasn't really trying to find one of the
cases from that category where coercion would be most effective.

I'm curious: when you were a child, how much did you tell your parents about
things you did that you knew they wouldn't approve of? And to your
knowledge, how much did your own children tell you about it when they did
things they they knew you wouldn't approve of? The idea that non-coercive
parents will know more about what's going on sounds good in theory, but if
children's desire to avoid parental disapproval shuts down communication
anyhow, the choice you are presenting is a false one.

Again, respect and pragmatism is the watchword.
Coercion never works, it only blinds you and separates you
from them as their enemy.

You keep using the word "pragmatism," but in situations where parents expect
coercion to work, coercion is in fact pragmatic.

Unfortunately, your model of human relationships seems to allow only for
the type of love that gives people what they want without regard to
whether or not it is good for them, not for the type of love that causes
parents to want to make sure their children will NOT get what they want
if it is bad for them.
-----------------------------
Our kids were raised without coercion, and they never did anything
without talking to us about it. If we had been coercive, they would
have gone into secrecy and we'd have been shut out. And since they
had no worry that we'd act to stop them, they ALSO TOOK OUR ADVICE,
JUST AS IF THEY WERE ADULT FRIENDS OF OURS!! They had no impression
that we were simply dishonoring them and attempting to control them,
so they trusted us!!

You make it sound as if your children always did what you thought they
should in every single instance.

but I don't view it as
realistic to expect all relationships to consistently measure up
to that ideal.) If the parents generally give in first, the result
is
in the direction of the stereotypical spoiled brat who knows
that if he or she doesn't cooperate, harmony will still probably
come when the parents give up.
----------------
A child wanting what they want for themselves is NOT a "spoiled"
or any kind of "brat"

Who ever said that merely wanting something makes a child a a brat?
---------------
You did. Above. You implied that demanding one's own freedom made
a child a "spiled brat" merely because that demand disturbed your
high-handed notion of harmony!

I implied that creating disharmony and making it impossible for parents to
get harmony back without giving in to the child's desires makes a child
something in the direction of a spoiled brat. That involves more than
merely "wanting something."

There
are two basic categories of behavior that I associate with the
"spoiled brat" stereotype. One is the use of tantrums or similar
types of psychological coercion to get what they want. (I see
nothing inherently wrong with, "Please, please, please can I have
that?" although it can become psychologically coercive if a child
persists after being told no in the hope that a parent will agree
just so the child will stop asking.)
------------------
Children only throw tantrums when they believe that you're not on
THEIR side. If they believe you would get something for them if you
could, because you showed interest in what they wanted, then they
would never get that frustrated. You just have to prove to them
that you are as much on their side as on your own.

I won't try to quote your explanation about what you did in your family, but
I'm always impressed by that kind of example of parental creativity. It's
the sort of way of heading off problems that I wholeheartedly approve of,
assuming parents are willing to invest the time and effort required. And I
absolutely love the way it helped the kids get what they wanted and taught
them about managing money wisely at the same time.

On the other hand, I'm less convinced that expecting all parents to live up
to the standard of alertness, creativity, and energy you set would be
reasonable or realistic. In an essentially symmetric relationship of
adults, the time and money people spend helping each other is likely to more
or less balance out. But in a parent-child relationship, especially with
young children, parents have to provide far more help in satisfying the
children's needs and desires than the children could possibly provide in
satisfying the parents' needs and desires. The asymmetric nature of the
situation makes it a good bit harder for parents to come up with the time
and energy to do things for their children than it would be if the children
could give the parents a comparable amount of help in return.

Which means that you have a technique that worked well for you, and could
presumably work similarly well for other parents who are willing to put in
the time and effort (give or take a bit, depending on the children's
personalities and how good the parents are at implementing the technique),
but that is no more than a partial solution for those who aren't willing or
able to invest as much effort in satisfying their children's desires.

And I might add that if parents make a habit of giving in to children's
desires before they start throwing a tantrum, they are spoiling thier kids
just as much as they would if they waited for their child to throw the
tantrum. In essence, the risk of a tantrum coerces parents into acceding to
their children's wishes whether the parents want to do so or not. If the
parents don't mind having that happen, and view the risk of possible future
adjustment problems if the kids have a harder time getting what they want
later in life as acceptable, that's not a problem. But I see no basis for
creating a legal or moral requirement for parents to give children what they
want or find a suitable substitute in order to avert tantrums.

You indulge
in paranoid fantasy that children don't WANT you to be happy

On the contrary, I made it very clear to Chris that that was NOT my
assumption. Suppose a child would like to make his parents happy, but
to
do so would require not doing something that the child believes (not
necessarily correctly) will make him happy. Further suppose the parents
have a good reason not to want the child to do what the child thinks
will
make him happy - whether because they expect the long-term negative
impact to outweigh the short-term happiness benefit, or because of a
danger involved, or because of harm it would cause someone else
(albeit not to a point of criminal behavior). That is the type of
situation
I'm trying to address.
------------------------------------------
This all sounds like blabber. Why not give an example and I'll tell
you how a sensible parent SHOULD behave?

Suppose a four-year-old needs to go to daycare so his parents can go to
work, but the child refuses to go?

This is as it should be, because actually, in real human life, you
cannot control any other living person but YOURSELF, and
pretending that you can or should, and that others should obey
you, is LUNACY!!!

Perfect, total, complete control over another human being is impossible.
-------------------
No. You absolutely REQUIRE another's assent and cooperation or else
you are achieving nothing. NO "control" of another is possible, as
you cannot control their body.

You can play word games all you want, but from a practical perspective, if
one human being could not achieve significant control over another, slavery
would never have existed.

But in situations where a person knows that misbehavior will be caught
and punished (for example, if a parent counts to three to get a child to
do something or stop doing something), the level of control can be quite
high. Obviously, as the risk of a child's getting caught and punished
declines, so does the amount of control that can be exerted through
punitive techniques.
----------------------------
That sort of attitude of high-handed mind-control toward a child
is nothing but a desperate mental illness, a perversion, a sickness!

You make me want to vomit.

That violates even the Geneva Convention for the Treatment of
Prisoners. If you treat a child that way you are systematically
creating nothing but a bullying monster with demons inside.

If the Geneva Convention allows a prison guard to punish a prisoner for
refusing to cooperate in a particular situation, or for refusing to stop an
impermissible action, I don't see how it could possibly violate the
Convention for a guard to count to three to give the prisoner a chance to
reconsider instead of punishing the prisoner immediately.

But your attitude, if I understand it correctly,
seems to be that children are entitled to those things for free with
absolutely no return obligations whatsoever to their parents, and
that parents must go beyond those things if they want to offer their
children something in negotiations.
------------------------
Precisely, a parent can do a great number of extra things for and
with a child to help them in their numerous quests. These are the
things that FRIENDS do for one another, even if one owes the other
some money.

This interpretation distorts the balance of power very heavily in favor of
the children compared with the normal balance of power in relationships
between adults. With adult roommates, behaving in a way that does not
bother your roommate too much (for example, not playing the stereo too loud
and not making too much of a mess in shared areas) is part of the basic
deal. So is doing one's share of the chores, in whatever manner they are
divided. A roommate that does not do his part to make the relationship work
can be thrown out, or can have his roommate leave him to pay the rent and
bills himself.

But your philosophy tells children that they should be able to expect
something in return for even those kinds of basics. That creates an
asymmetric relationship, not a symmetric one.

On Sat, 12 Jun 2004, R. Steve Walz wrote:

Doan wrote:

On Sat, 12 Jun 2004, R. Steve Walz wrote:

Doan wrote:

On Fri, 11 Jun 2004, R. Steve Walz wrote:

Doan wrote:

On 10 Jun 2004, Kane wrote:

Chris has been running away from me since the Straus et al (1997) debacle.
----------------
No, we simply stand back when you ****, and you **** everywhere
we take you, like a baby with projectile diarrhea.

The only "****" on this newsgroup I see is
-------------
You. Go the **** away, or grow a brain and use it.
Steve

LOL! Speaking like a "never-spanked" kid with a "****" coming out of his
mouth. Tell me, do all "never-spanked" grow up to be like you?

Doan
-----------------
You're the only one with mouth-****.
Steve

You didn't answer my question! You spewed more "****", instead! ;-)

Doan

Nathan A. Barclay wrote:

"Chris" wrote in message
...

I fail to see how you can blithely assert that punitive control "by
and large works well" when every single child subjected to it exhibits at
least several of the undesirable side effects on the list.

"Well" is not the same thing as "perfectly," and "by and large" indicates
that there are exceptions. The fact is that those symptoms do not stop most
people from becoming honest, productive citizens who are generally inclined
to respect the rights of others. Whatever the faults of current parenting
methods, they haven't stopped us from building the wealthiest, most
technologically advanced society in the history of mankind.
----------------------------
Shows nothing. The more severe the abuse and dishonoring, the worse the
result. This system doesn't work, we have tons of crippled people, and
it can easily be asserted that we'd have done LOTS BETTER as a society
by now if we had abandoned abuse and coercion, since it stands in the
way of creativity in children and the adults they become, and that it
wastes the child's time when they can be focusing on their plans for
their life, instead of battling asshole parents and being delayed in
their own personal sel-regulatory self-organized learning of life skills
for themselves!!

Authoritarianism turns out vengeful reactive kids who waste their
young adulthood reacting to their abuse as if the society had done
it to them!!


Could we do better? Definitely. In spite of our disagreements regarding
how far it probably makes sense to go in eliminating punishment, we both
agree that society would be better off if more parents relied less on
punishment and more on positive techniques.

On the other hand, have you compared typical American parenting among those
who make use of punishment with how ancient Sparta treated its sons?
------------
Worse crimes don't justify these.


If win/win
cooperative methods of discipline resulted in such a list of side effects,
with at least some of them manifesting in every single child raised in
this manner, surely you would never accept the assertion that "by and
large" win/win methods work well, nor should you.

Whether or not I would accept the assertion would depend on how common and
serious the side effects were, and on how well the children tended to
function as adults. And if the wealthiest, most technologically advanced
society on the planet had been using mostly such techniques from its
inception, I would have a hard time arguing that such techniques were
failing miserably, whatever my thoughts about the possibility of doing
better.
-------------------
EVERY instance of coercion of kids causes revenge formation and delays
their personal development and makes them antisocial. ALL antisocial
behaviors come from this cause! How HUGE IS THAT????


My response to your recent posts boils down to two main points. The
first is the above point that punitive control carries a host of
undesirable side effects and hence does not "by and large work well."
The second is that you fail to acknowledge that the disruption of the
harmony of the parent/child relationship which is a natural consequence of
a child failing to live up to agreements they have made, constitutes a
"consequence" in its own right.
---------------
THAT failure of "harmony", such a smarmy term, is due ONLY to the
PARENTS' reaction and attitudes, so have PARENTS change THAT!


On the contrary, I have acknowledged that it is a consequence. What you
refuse to acknowledge is even the slightest possibility that children's
desire to violate an agreement might sometimes outweigh their desire to
avoid that consequence.
-----------------------
The child makes no such agreement, except perhaps under duress and
without choice, that asserion is smarmy and fully dishonest on your
part.


wording): "With negotiated settlements, the child does have to give up
something he or she didn't want to, so whether or not a possibility of
punishment is needed depends on whether or not the child is willing to
[]
no need to bring up the issue of punishment. But if the child is not
willing to abide by the agreement voluntarily, punishment may be necessary."
----------------
No actual RIGHT, and kids MUST be understood as feeling they have RIGHTS
and responding PRECISELY as though they do, can be given up
or bargained away, and even trying to do that is illicit under our
Constitution for a REASON!


In other words, parents can start off assuming that the child will keep his
or her agreements without the need to bring up a possibility of punishment.
If that works out, wonderful.
------------------
All you are doing here is complicating abuse with intimidation and
coercion of motive. This is entirely dishonest and illicit in any
relationship that you expect to be viable. Doing any of this with
an adult will get you injured, killed, or arrested, thus it is
altogether illicit with a child or teen.


But if violations of agreements become a
significant problem, some kind of additional consequence is needed if the
agreements are to work. (Steve, what do you think about the relationship
between this issue and Breach of Contract in adult law?)
-------------------
ANY coerced contract IS A NULL contract, LAW 101.
Steve