Unschooling Blog, Vol. 15: Peaceful Parenting in Two Takes (Share yourself, and a response is guaranteed)
Hunting fukinoto in Tainai, Japan.
Two Episodes, one day.
- Waking up without momma.
My wife had to go to a part time gig early today, so by the time my son woke up, she was gone. He still "breastfeeds" every morning for comfort, so upon waking this morning, he was pretty shaken to see she was gone. He broke down.
He cried and cried and said "pai pai" (basically the Japanese kid's word for "boobies"). He was inconsolable. I held him and he hugged me, his hot tears falling on my bare shoulders and chest. Then he would push me away and lay on his back kicking and punching the blankets in a semi-slow, half-despondent, half-grumpy rhythm.
Nothing I said worked.
Mommy will be back soon. She didn't leave you without telling. She woke you up and you had pai pai, but you just don't remember.
(crying)
Mommy is just at work. She loves you so much. It's the same as when she goes to the store down the street! No different!
(crying)
Finally, I shared myself.
You know, when daddy was small, I used to get really lonely for my mommy too, when she was gone, and I would cry and cry.
(crying stops. eye contact.)
I know you miss mommy, but we both love you so much, and she is coming right back. Why don't we play? What do you want to play?
He then answered "Tomica Sound Town," stood up and began setting up the cars and play town. Then he started smiling and bouncing around.
- Taking "no" as an answer.
In the interest of getting out of the house, after we played cars and messed around on the Nintendo 3DS, we hopped in the car to go hunt fukinoto (butterbur) in the mountains just northeast of us. We stopped at a 7/11 on the way to get some lunch.
Daddy, I want these candies!
Not now, buddy. We need to eat lunch first.
NO!
We can't get the candies now. We'll get them on the way back.
NO!
I want you to be healthy, so we need to eat healthy food.
NO!
(runs to other side of store with candies in hand and hides. I pick him up and carry him back)
Can you tell me why you are saying no? I really want to understand.
No.
I understand "no," but what do you mean? Can you tell me how you feel? Why you keep saying no?
(takes a moment to think, then lowers himself from my arms and puts candy back on shelf).
Okay, buddy, let's go get our lunch.
We ended up getting and sharing the candies after fukinoto-hunting on the way back home.
Takeaway.
So what did it? What defused and brought peace into both of these situations? Well, I think it was empathy and providing space for my son to be understood, and to have a real voice.
Oftentimes kids won't even utilize that space. They, exactly like adults, just want to know it is there. Respect. They want to feel heard, valued and respected as individuals with individual wills, wants, desires, thoughts, feelings, and wishes. To know they matter.
I was recently told in a Facebook conversation that my son is probably a spoiled brat because I don't spank him. I was also told that he must be "special" and easy to parent, because most kids would go wild under my "permissive" style. I had to laugh.
Raising a child peacefully, in an open and empathic environment of communication takes 10,000 times more effort and energy than striking a child to bring about some Pavlovian result.
Love is always the 🔑, and it always will be.
Thank you for reading. If you missed the last Unschooling Blog Post, you can find it here.
~KafkA
Graham Smith is a Voluntaryist activist, creator, and peaceful parent residing in Niigata City, Japan. Graham runs the "Voluntary Japan" online initiative with a presence here on Steem, as well as Facebook and Twitter. (Hit me up so I can stop talking about myself in the third person!)
Great story and examples!
It's pretty funny how so many people think that not spanking leads to wild children. My three aren't spanked and are usually quite well behaved.
Now my eldest boy is naturally of a stubborn, defiant nature and we have our struggles. However, I feel sure that being heavy-handed with him would have resulted in an angry child who would have acted out much more than the average child. Spanking would have only been semi-effective until he was stronger than me (which he already is at 12-yrs-old.) Than he would have rebelled and our relationship would sour. Instead, I have shown him respect since he was small, and he in turn respects me and likely won't even go through the expected "teenage rebellion" years.
People seem to expect teenagers to be a terror -- but I don't see that as an inevitability.
Agree 100%, and it's such a breath of fresh air to be connected to people who get this!
I have heard people say stupid things, like how most of the criminals in jail were not spanked and allowed to run wild. That if their parents had spanked them, they probably wouldn't have turned to crime.
But somebody went and surveyed a bunch of prisoners once, and what their results indicated,
was that most of the prisoners had been spanked or beaten A LOT as small children,
but then when they hit teenage years and their parents couldn't control them anymore,
the parents just "gave up" and let them "run wild."
Of course they couldn't keep spanking these strong-willed and physically strong teenagers anymore -- the teens were no longer going to take it! So they rebelled in the worst ways and turned to crime.
So yeah, that is just a joke that if you don't spank and punish your children, that they will more-than-likely wind up in trouble with the law.
Right. The beatings are what cause that kind of life path to begin to take shape. It's almost like a kind of Stockholm Syndrome with many. Psychology has shown that as children, we basically view it as a kind of existential suicide to see mommy or daddy as "wrong" and hurting us, so we must create a narrative to justify it. Of course that narrative is usually "I am worthless and bad."
These kids then grow up still with the same exact primal fear and talk about how it is "necessary" to strike children. I feel sorry for them. The knee-jerk defense is pretty easy to spot. Almost always, the person vehemently defending spanking is actually defending what his parents did to him, becuase of that deep-seated crisis it would cause to not trust your caregiver.
People are good when their needs are met. The propaganda is so thick that I myself often forget this, and just slip back into the "people are naturally 'bad'" rut.
Growing up, my parents did spank occasionally but it was a rare event.
My mom had decided that there were only a few things worthy of enforcing with punishment. She remembers feeling sad for other children who got spanked over almost anything, and wasn't going to raise her children that way.
My three siblings and I all did okay for ourselves, and none of us acted out in any great way.
I suppose my own experiences growing up shaped me in a positive way that made it easy to make the next leap to no spankings at all.
You are right that people do seem to defend the way that they were raised, as if to admit anything else would make their parents wrong or even bad.
A while back, a child staying with us for a few days seemed insistent that I enforce more rules on my son and was distressed when I didn't. His mother is a good woman (not abusive) but is much more strict about rules around the house as well as getting school 'work' done, etc.
It became obvious to me that this boy felt like if my parenting was 'right' then his mom would be 'wrong' and he was very uncomfortable with that. He wanted to change my parenting (of his friend) to the same way that his mom parented him. He wanted to restrict my son's freedom in order to make him feel better about his situation. His mom agreed with me that he should have just enjoyed it while he was with us!
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