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 Piston Ported Vespas: http://www.piston-ported.homepage.com words http://home.stlnet.com/~vespags/words.html ----------------------------------------------------------
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