Ode Magazine published an interesting article titled “You’re Not My Boss” which considers the potential harm of bossing a child around vs. allowing the child to make his own decisions.
Children should never, really never, be forced to do something against their will. That’s the starting point of a curious movement of parents who think that every form of coercion is damaging. Dawn Friedman describes a controversial view on parenting.
Are the ways we have raised children for the past thousands of years outdated and traumatic? Or are we taking the idea of child-abuse to ridiculous levels?
One day a mom posted a message saying that she was having trouble getting her toddler son to take his medicine every day. The medication was life saving and the parents had no choice, they felt, but to hold him down, force the spoon into his mouth, and hold his mouth shut until he swallowed. She was looking for ideas to make this more workable and less traumatic for her son.
Most of the suggestions were what one might expect: try hiding the medicine in food or try bribing the baby with promises of candy if he takes the medicine nicely. Then one woman posted something entirely different. This woman, Sarah Lawrence, accused the mother of abusing her child by holding him down and forcing him to do something he didn’t want to do. She said that she found the description hateful and terrifying. “If you were my mother,” she finished, “I would kick you with a hobnailed boot!”
The list exploded into what Internet regulars call a flame war. Though at first the uproar centered around the tone of Lawrence’s post, the argument eventually centered on whether or not children should have to do whatever they are told to do. Might it be more desirable to raise children without any coercion whatsoever? Might it be possible that using coercion in any form-no matter how lovingly presented-is damaging to children?
What do you think of this topic? Read the article here.
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