Freedomain Radio

Just listened to the first of this series and thought I'd post some comments/thoughts/questions I have as I listen to each one, from the perspective of someone who's already done the parenting thing.

1. I really liked the focus on modeling the behavior you want to see in your kids. That's so important. If they observe you yelling, or whatever, they will learn that behavior. It sounds like its working so far but I do want to caution that it's really not that difficult for the first one. It gets much harder if/when you add another variable to the experiment: siblings. If/when siblings come along, it's no longer just two mature adults working with one child but you have to figure out how to manage the interactions of siblings who will not always interact in the non-aggressive ways one would hope they would.

2. I like the idea of thinking about situations from the perspective of whether or not you think you could reasonably assume you would get permission after the fact because every parent will run into situations where they need to take control over a situation whether the child wants it or not. Otherwise parenting wouldn't really end up being such a big deal.

3. I may be wrong, but there seemed to be a contradiction of sorts in saying that the first year is vital to creating the environment and relationship needed and yet when talking about decisions made where you sometimes have to do things that are aggressive in nature, one of the rationalizations is that the child is so young, she won't remember. I'm a bit confused on that point.

4. I'm not sure I can agree with the statement that kids will more likely want to please a parent that focuses on the positive. Of course that's preferable and much more pleasant for everyone, but the child will want to please the parent either way. It's important for their survival, right?

5. I also think it's important to point out that too much enthusiasm and praise of everything a child does can also cause unintended harm because it can place too much emphasis on doing something because of the desire to get the parent's approval. I've read somewhere that taken too far, this can cause a child to not trust herself or to do things for the genuine happiness (outside of parental approval) that can result from the behavior, but only because they have learned to rely on the crutch of the parent's over enthusiastic approval. Not saying that's happening here, just pointing out that there's a balance to everything.

Thank you so much for this great observations, I will do a podcast about my thoughts about your thoughts...

Dtomboy:

5. I also think it's important to point out that too much enthusiasm and praise of everything a child does can also cause unintended harm because it can place too much emphasis on doing something because of the desire to get the parent's approval. I've read somewhere that taken too far, this can cause a child to not trust herself or to do things for the genuine happiness (outside of parental approval) that can result from the behavior, but only because they have learned to rely on the crutch of the parent's over enthusiastic approval. Not saying that's happening here, just pointing out that there's a balance to everything.

From what I've read its not that too much praise is a problem but that praise of a certain kind is a problem. What is praised is what is encouraged. So saying something like "You are such a good student" Is bad praise because it sets up the standard of being a good student which may cause the child to avoid challenging things for fear of not succeding and losing the good student praise. I think what is trying to be avoided is causing the child to ego-identify with something that is not a valid basis for self-esteem. I understand the bad kind of praising but always have trouble coming up with example of the good kind, mostly because I think that it was never the kind that I experienced. I think the principal though is to encourage self trust and self evaluation. Like saying "you must be so happy with..." or "you have every reason to be proud." However this approach seems more geared towards a slightly older child and may not be particulalrly applicable to a very young child.

Today I was able to finish up the other 3 philosophical parenting podcasts because I had a lot of snow to shovel off the driveway.  So I thought I'd put my comments about those in this same thread. I also noticed you may have responded to my orginal post with a new podcast so I'll be listening to that soon. Thanks!

Podcast 1571 philosophical parenting part 2:

I was really into your description of how you learn so much from you daughter every day. I felt the same way and it was so much fun watching them absorb the world around them. It made me see the world anew and nothing can beat being able to be the one to help them discover something new or watch as they mastered something new. I think I did manage to move forward and parent better than my parents, even though I still made mistakes, and I'm confident that my kids will parent better than I did. It's an evolution I guess.

Podcast 1573 and 1574 parenting part 3 & 4:

Lots of good points in these. My husband and I had many conversations over the years wondering why some people have kids when they hardly spend any time together. I really liked the analogy to getting married and then having your spouse go on dates every day with other people instead of spending time together.  And then wondering why your relationship isn't so great!

I'm glad to hear you talk to future parents about making the choices needed to create a lifestyle that allows at least one parent to be at home. We had people who said we were 'lucky' but it wasn't luck, we made it happen by the choices we made.

Parents who work often say they would never be able to stay home with their kids (not enough patience, it would be boring, etc) but they have no idea how both the child and the parent would change if they were able to live a more relaxed and peaceful life that having a parent at home allows. As a matter of fact, that's also one reason we decided to homeschool, so we could continue living and learning in a more relaxed and peaceful way, controlling the pace ourselves, not by someone else's arbitrary school schedule (not to mention all the other disadvantages of institutional schooling).

These podcasts ended with such a nice positive energy, I'm sure it will help lots of people. I'll be looking forward to more reports about how your philosophical parenting progresses.