Our family moved last year from Seattle to Los Angeles.
We had lived in La-La Land once before, and, while LA seemed funny and somewhat strange then (valet parking at take-out restaurants, people with cars both larger and nicer than their homes), it has been a whole new trip as a parent.
When we moved to LA, I had been to preschool only once before I learned two things about parenting here: 1) children here do not drink juice. 2) Non Violent Parenting is the preferred method of mothering.
Giving up apple juice seemed like it might be tough, but I was on board with a “no” to violence. Sounds great, right? Hard to find a parent to stand up and argue for more violence in parenting.
I certainly would like to be less frustrated as a parent—who doesn’t want to learn to be less crazy? I will even admit to once spanking one of my children (who shall remain nameless as I believe he/she has no memory of this) in a moment of weakness and frustration that I immediately regretted. (This nameless child insisted on repeatedly smacking its sibling in the face with a fork at mealtime over several days).
So, I eagerly pulled up a chair at our preschool to listen to the guest lecturer as she asked us all to commit ourselves to the principles of Non-Violent parenting:
#1: Children deserve to be listened to and respected.
Yup.
#2 Children should not feel afraid of or threatened by their parents.
No, they shouldn’t.
#3 Children should never be coerced to do things against their will.
Well…..Here’s where we start to fall down the rabbit hole.
I immediately thought back (guiltily) to the spanking/fork incident. Was there coercion involved there? Clearly. The fork stabber did not want to relinquish control of the fork, despite numerous threats (see, I really need this class, as I am violent on two counts now, spanking, and threatening). I physically pried the fork from this child’s hand, thereby splattering us both with ketchup.
Was that all? No. The fork stabber was then coerced to apologize to the victim. And coerced to pick up the food that had landed all over the floor in the midst of the fork attack.
I raised my hand. “What if a child is hurting another child and does not want to stop?” I asked our lecturer. “Is it okay to coerce them then?”
“No,” She replied. “This child is needs attention. The appropriate response is to hug the child, and read to them until he/she has enough attention to stop.”
Now I know that Seattle is no hot bed of conservativism, but this sounds not only wacked but also wildly inaccurate to me. If my fork stabber had been read to and hugged (all the while still swinging at the unfortunate sibling), I have no doubt that my little Psycho would have been grinning and singing “nya-nya nya nya-nya” while the victim howled at the injustice of it all. And I am also sure that the stabbing would have re-commenced at the next mealtime—if only to ensure another reading of the horrifically written “Thomas and the Broken Track.”
So. While I believe in the founding principles of non-violence, and I will work to embrace many of them, not everything about this style is going to work for me. I hope I won’t be ostracized by the other preschool moms. We all have to do what we can to make it through the best we know how.
I have since vowed to be sure that my children are listened to, respected, and are not afraid of me. I will try not to shout or get angry. I will certainly not spank my kids again. But I will, at times, coerce them to behave more appropriately, especially when I feel that a lesson about kindness to others is needed.
As a compromise to LA, I’ve decided that maybe we’ll trying cutting out the apple juice for a while.
Posted on May 24th, 2005 by Allison
Filed under: Daily Life, Guilt and Getting Over It, The Urban Parent
Hi Allison, I think we might have been exposed to some of the same pre-school gurus in LA, (where we recently moved from to Seattle). I am now on my second pre-schooler, having a ten-year-old as well, and I’ve noticed a couple of things about this game. One is that we as parents are vulnerable, we want advice on how to do this enormous job — and the vacuum can often be filled with those who enjoy having power over us, while making us nervous about using our power as parents over our children. The other thing I saw in LA was how parenting advice changed fashion during the course of my own parenting. What was gospel during child #1 was passe by child #2, and by the very same experts. I’m not kidding! Okay, the no juice thing is excellent, backed up by science. And I don’t think a lot of us are parenting with violence — but the deep dark secret of many of my mommie friends is that almost all of us has at one time or another taken an involuntary swipe at one of our darlings. It has happened, from a slap on the toosh to a rough push-away. They seem not to be too traumatized by it (though I know one 8-year-old who uses a one-time-only spanking as ammunition to make her mom feel guilty!) I think the temptation to let one child dominate and bully another in order to get attention is ten times worse, though, and it sounds like you do, as well. I’m with you. Our job as parents is to raise children who can do something with their need for attention besides manipulate us. Obviously, there are ways to do this without us becoming the bullies. But perhaps the virtues of structure, limits, rules, consequences and all the other tools in our arsenal are just too boring for the experts and their audiences. After all, once you start enforcing the rule of law on your children in effective ways that get good results, you stop needing permission from experts. Right?