Learn to trust your YES and your NO Do you remember what it was like to be five years old? To trust yourself and to clearly know what you did and didn’t want?… To go for what you wanted without hesitation?… To freely share your love and your joy and your aliveness with the world? So what happened to that? What happened to your confidence in knowing what you do or don't want and what's true for you? [...]
Distinguishing Needs from Strategies Something I've been studying and working with for many years is something called "Nonviolent Communication" or NVC, which some of you may be familiar with. I struggle with this name as I don't believe that either the Nonviolent or the Communication piece really articulates what it's about. My working explanation for Nonviolent Communication goes like this: Nonviolent Communication is not only a language and process for expressing ourselves and hearing others, it is also [...]
A Context for Mutuality... Adult/child relationships are also constructed through family design and structure. In mainstream society and nuclear family settings, virtually all relationships children have, at least initially, are mediated through their parents. While kids gain greater independence, especially as they get older, in conducting peer-to-peer relationships, there is little scope for independently initiated and facilitated relationships with adults. Most child-adult relationships are based on adult authority such as parents and teachers and not on mutually shared [...]
Reconstructing Adult/Child Relationships Much of the way our relationships with children are currently constructed is based on adult authority and adults acting upon children rather than sharing power and holding mutual respect with them. The labels of “adult” and “child” so often become barriers to connection, on a mutual or horizontal level, where people who find interest in each other and benefit from the company of the other engaged in freely chosen and mutually beneficial ways. What avenues [...]
Age Discrimination We have perceived children for so long as immature and incompetent that we have barred them from participating in activities that allow them to mature and gain competence in the world. These ideas are based more on our sentiments about children however, than on the validity of what children, if they are allowed, are actually capable. Age in and of its self is neither a measure of competence nor of maturity, but it is constantly used [...]
Pursuing One’s Own Interests The best preparation for a meaningful and productive future is a meaningful and productive present Too often, childhood is thought of in terms of preparation: “Do this now, even if it doesn’t feel connected to your most pressing interests and concerns, because later on you’ll find it useful.” Helping children to figure out what seems interesting and worth doing right now, in their current lives, helps them develop self-knowledge and experience at figuring out [...]
I am re-reading a children's classic-Tom Sawyer. I am struck not only by the high level of autonomy and freedom the boys posses in this book, but also the great degree of self-confidence, trust and self-reliance. The reality of structure, supervision and control of kids lives has become, for the most part, the predominate experience. Between sports and homework and whatever extra-curricular activities kids are involved in- when is there time to play, to discover, to imagine, to [...]
Kids Trusting Themselves Thinking children incompetent or not realizing just how capable they actually are, perhaps because we have provided them little opportunity to demonstrate their capabilities, keeps us managing their lives rather than trusting them to make decisions and be responsible for themselves. Such acts foster a relationship of dependence and enforce inequality and inability rather than bring children into parity. By constantly making decisions for kids and managing their lives we are also teaching them to [...]
Community Can Increase Autonomy Sidney and Ana live in a rural environment in which they are surrounded by a community of caring people that look out for them and help them meet their needs. As I ponder the limited scope of children’s movement in current society, I have thought about what sorts of structures, social practices and designs might help to increase the mobility and autonomy of young people. One thing I have observed is that in the [...]
Children’s Freedom of Movement The issues of space and the control of a person’s body also extend to the control of their range of movement. Not only do we invade and control children’s physical bodies/space but the way that children can move about in the world is often severely limited. Children have their movement restricted and are not free to move about as they please. They may be confined to a specific room (such as “the toddler room”) [...]
How we (adults, parents, adult culture and society) control kids bodies/movement and a New Vision of Respect and Empowerment I decided to include this list as part of my series on body space/freedom of movement, as I think it is useful to explore these particular areas and examples and to explore a new vision for how things could be. Control of physical movements-curfews for one, where kids can or can’t go. Forcing kids to sit still in school, [...]
Children’s Sex Lives (part two in series on body space/freedom of movement) Both on the subject of allowing children to trust themselves and their bodies and on the task of bringing children into full parity rather than enforcing inequality through limiting, I have come to examine our ideas around children and sex. We make many assumptions and justifications regarding our need to control and limit children in this area; but do such ideas really help to bring children [...]
Personal and Physical Space Personal and bodily space are interesting facets of people’s lives, ones that we generally consider the private and sovereign domain of the individual, and that the individual has the right to control and protect. Violations of personal and especially bodily space, particularly by strangers, is taken as quite a serious offense. Control of another person’s body, both in restriction of movement and in control of function, is quite literally imprisonment/slavery. While children are initially [...]
One of the worst things about arbitrary authority is it makes us lose our trust in natural authority- people who know what they are doing and could share a lot of wisdom with us. When they make you obey the cruel and unreasonable [authority] they steal your desire to learn from [or listen to] the kind and reasonable [authority]” (Grace Llewellyn, The Teenage Liberation Handbook.) If we truly take the time to listen and be present with our [...]
The effects of our beliefs on kids' capabilities One of the ways we interfere with children’s autonomy and act upon them, rather than cultivating relationships of mutual respect and shared power is through our beliefs of children’s limited capabilities and our efforts to keep them within those limits. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We don’t allow kids to do things we think they are not capable of and therefore they don't have an opportunity to prove otherwise or [...]