*7 How does catering to each child/individual teach family values?
Sandra Dodd
-=-How does catering to each child/individual teach family values?-=-
Oooh. Loaded question and political buzz-phrase!
Let me rephrase it in a less prickly way.
How does attending to each family member's needs help them learn to
live together as a group?
Just like that.
Sandra
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Oooh. Loaded question and political buzz-phrase!
Let me rephrase it in a less prickly way.
How does attending to each family member's needs help them learn to
live together as a group?
Just like that.
Sandra
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
saturnfire16
> -=-How does catering to each child/individual teach family values?-=-Yesterday, my daughter who will be 3 next month was watching tv with my
>
> Oooh. Loaded question and political buzz-phrase!
>
> Let me rephrase it in a less prickly way.
>
>
>
> How does attending to each family member's needs help them learn to
> live together as a group?
>
>
husband. All of a sudden, she said "I'm cleaning up!" and started
picking up things in the living room. By the time she was done, the
living room floor was cleared. She was quite proud of herself "Look, I
cleaned up!" and I thanked her.
She put all her toys and clothes in her room. And she got a few of my
husband socks and some mail in her room too. But so what? She's not
even 3, but she saw something that needed to be done and did it! And
people say, well of couse, little ones are always helpful. Yes, they
are. Until it gets squashed out of them. I see no reason why she
won't just as helpful at 13 as she is now.
Pamela Sorooshian
On Nov 13, 2008, at 3:06 PM, saturnfire16 wrote:
up and become useful valuable integral members of their "tribe," and
during the teen years that natural urge is very often confounded and
distorted into a feeling of desperation to belong to a group. We see
it in the extreme form in gangs. We see it in the cliques that form
and are so all-important to middle and high school kids.
I haven't seen that in my own kids - they have no desperation for some
sort of peer group-identity. Once in a while I've even had kind of a
strange passing thought that maybe there was something wrong with them
that their "group" identity seems to be so about their own family.
Then I came to my senses and realized that this was the natural way
things should be - that it is the other more common focus on peer
groups that is unnatural. My kids are sociable and have lots of
friends, but their "identity" seems very organic to me as opposed to
the school-kids whose identity seems artificial, desperate, and
cobbled together and dependent on what social group they happen to be
"in" with.
All that to say that unschooled children and teens engaging in simple
and unexpected-in-this-society acts, like voluntarily and happily
being helpful around the house, are the result of nurturing that
organic identity - respecting and supporting all those urges and not
squashing or undermining them by imposing external rules and
"consequences" or bribes or punishments to try to manipulate their
behavior. Instead of manipulation, older members of the family can
show that they themselves are glad to be contributing to the family
life and that they receive great satisfaction and joy from it, and
they can openly and encouragingly welcome the increasing contributions
of the younger ones.
-pam
> And people say, well of couse, little ones are always helpful.There seems to be a built-in compulsion for children to want to grow
> Yes, they
> are. Until it gets squashed out of them. I see no reason why she
> won't just as helpful at 13 as she is now.
up and become useful valuable integral members of their "tribe," and
during the teen years that natural urge is very often confounded and
distorted into a feeling of desperation to belong to a group. We see
it in the extreme form in gangs. We see it in the cliques that form
and are so all-important to middle and high school kids.
I haven't seen that in my own kids - they have no desperation for some
sort of peer group-identity. Once in a while I've even had kind of a
strange passing thought that maybe there was something wrong with them
that their "group" identity seems to be so about their own family.
Then I came to my senses and realized that this was the natural way
things should be - that it is the other more common focus on peer
groups that is unnatural. My kids are sociable and have lots of
friends, but their "identity" seems very organic to me as opposed to
the school-kids whose identity seems artificial, desperate, and
cobbled together and dependent on what social group they happen to be
"in" with.
All that to say that unschooled children and teens engaging in simple
and unexpected-in-this-society acts, like voluntarily and happily
being helpful around the house, are the result of nurturing that
organic identity - respecting and supporting all those urges and not
squashing or undermining them by imposing external rules and
"consequences" or bribes or punishments to try to manipulate their
behavior. Instead of manipulation, older members of the family can
show that they themselves are glad to be contributing to the family
life and that they receive great satisfaction and joy from it, and
they can openly and encouragingly welcome the increasing contributions
of the younger ones.
-pam