Love and Not Love I recently saw a post on facebook about a study showing that spanking is harmful even if the parent has a warm and loving relationship with the child. Wow, ok, so this really set some wheels spinning for me... Inflicting physical harm or pain on other human beings is considered violence, aggression, assault or abuse. Nowhere else in our culture do we sanction inflicting physical pain/harm on another human being, not even on violent [...]
You can't make me... I spend a fair amount of time with children. Actually, being with and relating to children is one of those special gifts I have. It started when I was just a kid and I guess I just never stopped playing, being with and relating to children. Through my experience I've developed a unique perspective that's part of what I'm here to share with the world. One theme that has been arising recently is the [...]
What does Nonviolence mean to you? We opened our first class of Communication From the Inside Out with this question. As we delved into the exploration of Violence and Nonviolence we discovered that violence and the roots of violence is far more complex and complicated than we ever would have imagined. Recognizing violence in all of it's forms Most people think of violence as physical harm, brutality and the like, in which most of us don't actively participate, [...]
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 [...]
Social Structure Social structure constantly shapes and directs our lives. For most of us, it is not something that we pay much attention to or that we are consciously aware of. The following experience and insight from living on a family homestead and community with kids and parents living and working in the same space together, helped me to see how social structure might be an important element in design and of increasing kids’ autonomy: My experience of [...]
I do a lot of wondering. A lot of wondering about kids and childhood and our current social construction of childhood, how it supports kids as unique beings in their learning and growing and becoming autonomous people, and how it might work better. What does it mean for kids to have rich, purposeful, engaged lives as part of their community and their society, not only when they grow up, but now, this very moment, at what ever age [...]
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 [...]