File spoon-archives/anarchy-list.archive/anarchy-list_1999/anarchy-list.9910, message 704


Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 03:58:19 -0500
From: Sandi & Scott Spaeth <vespags-AT-stlnet.com>
Subject: Re: growing up (absurd ?)


At 10:21 PM 10/26/99 +0100, Erik wrote:
>
>Well, i have children and actually it is not a this or that situation but a
>mixture of both. It wouldn't help too much if my little child ran under a
>car to LEARN something along the way. On the other hand overprotectiveness
>breeds low selfesteem, which is not very practical to survive in this world.
>
>So as an "anarchist" i still decide lots of times what my children can do
>or not.
>

As a parent of two, my parental authority and my anarchism are probably the
most difficult parts of my life to juggle, and I'm afraid I do it poorly.  Many
times when (most observers around me think) there ought to be discipline
imposed after the fact, I just can't bring myself to do it (unless of course,
something of mine was damaged in the process), so when Ian, a 7yr old first
grader gets suspended from school for three days for fighting, instead of
punishing him (as if it would help, I'm sure he wasn't fighting by himself and
he's not a bully), I got into a verbal fight with his teacher over whether the
"Students Rights and Responsibilities" handbook (which prescribed the
suspension) actually had any rights in it.  The result being Ian is now in
another school, his fourth.

I sometimes worry that by giving him so much leeway we're setting him up to be
crushed by the system later when the stakes will be higher.  Yet we raise Riley
(4) the same way, and she's more consciously unafraid of (and frequently in
conflict with) authority figures, yet never gets in trouble in school. 

And then I'm giving them the same "do a job you despise so you can support your
family" role model that pissed me off so badly at my father.

Grrrrrrr.

Cheers,
Scott

 
---------------------------------------------------------
Catch 22 says they have a right to do anything we can't 
stop them from doing.
                                -Joseph Heller

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