Committed to finding ways out of the coercion/self-sacrifice mire of conventional parenting. We are variously critical rationalists, libertarians, home educators, attachment-parents, but we take our ideas where we find them.
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Here's a little gem I found on the net, and it's one of the most practical parenting tips around: Use about a tablespoon of effective laundry detergent (read: contains phosphates) for any given load of laundry, no matter how dirty, let the machine fill up with cold water and agitate about 5 or 10 minutes, and then turn it off to let the clothes soak at least two hours.*
Surprised? When I first read this in a financial forum, I thought it was crazy. Now I'm convinced it's genius.
1. It makes very good financial sense, and almost everyone with kids could use more money.
2. It's better for the environment than "normal" clothes washing procedures. OK, if you're very green, you want even less phosphates, but then you're going to have to use a LOT more detergent or additives to get clothes clean, resulting in more detergent production which uses more fossil fuels, etc. OTOH, if you could care less about the longterm effects of your "gray" water output (your kids might feel differently), go to reason number...
3. It's a real time- and effort-saver; there's no more searching for stains to treat before you put the clothes in the machine. If you have just a general idea how likely the clothes are to be stained, you sort them quickly into normally dirty and probably very dirty. The very dirty clothes can be left to soak up to 12 hours-a long time, yes, but you're not working any harder.
4. It reduces stress. Have you ever seen parents who freak out when their kids come home covered in mud, paint, blood. . . well, OK, maybe with the blood they are freaking out for a different reason. But some people do seem to dread the laundry, the finding of stains, being sure to check everything so they won't have to rewash. When they see kids in dirty clothes or even doing things that might get them dirty, alarm bells go off. This is bad for parents but also bad for the kids. With this method, nobody gets hassled.
I saved the best for last:
5. The number one reason this laudry tip is great parenting advice is: it's a great way to start a conversation about rational parenting. Give it a try and you'll see how it can lead to talking about being open to changing your habits, finding creative solutions to old problems, using input from a wide variety of sources and learning how to live life better every day.
*If you are doing laundry for people with communicable diseases, yeast infections, etc., by all means use your best judgement-more detergent, hotter water, adding an antiseptic of some kind, the whole enchilada. Just to be sure.
One big social shift I think I've witnessed since being a child is that parents these days are much better at appreciating the importance of having friends of their own. I don't think my own parents were particularly unusual in really not socialising at all: they were too concerned with work, parenting and seeing extended family members from time to time, to take much of an interest in going out on their own, even together, never mind invidually; and none of the other parents they knew (as mums and dads, not people in their own right) indulged in such things, either.
These days, the drive to make new friends begins almost as soon as one is pregnant. In the UK, the National Childbirth Trust runs antenatal classes where people share the experience and swap phone numbers almost as frantically as they practice deep-breathing. Then there are NHS-run ante-natal classes, post-natal classes, breastfeeding support groups and La Leche League, NCT post-natal coffee mornings, and toddler groups in several church halls near you, not to mention baby gym groups, baby music groups, whatever. And I think people do make the effort to hang onto friends they had before they were parents. The extended family is an optional add-on these days, rather than the duty my parents regarded it as, and people are aware that they must make their own support networks.
And nobody needs support networks more than parents do. But I wonder how many people think of the advantages to the children, of having extra adult friends around? Whether or not those adults want to be "babysitters", interaction between them and children can be beneficial on both sides, and lead to very satisfying and mutually educational friendships, with none of the baggage of the conventional parenting role. And it seems likely that children who get a chance to observe adult interaction, and listen in on adult conversation, and have their questions answered when they are interested enough to ask, are learning something very valuable indeed.
If you tell people ideas verbally, they can pick them up rationally. If you demonstrate ideas in action, a whole lot of inexplicit extra material is added to the theory. This is what I think is conveyed by the expression, "Actions speak louder than words". So, better than just helping your child have all the friends he wants and solve the problems he finds with them in good ways, is also helping yourself to do the same and making sure your child knows about it and sees it in reality. There are things we can learn from watching people interact that we can't easily learn any other way.
You can get parenting tips anywhere, but ours are free! And we won't try and make you feel bad if you don't like them.
1. Put the mini-trampoline behind the sofa so children can bounce while watching TV. The always-interesting Taking Children Seriously internet list has been discussing active TV-viewing lately; with unlimited good TV access, children often combine surfing the show with any number of other useful things. It's the same principle as doing the ironing to Woman's Hour or twenty miles on the exercise bike to Today with Des and Mel, except I think kids generally choose better things to watch than us, given a wide enough range to choose from.
2. Buy an ice-cream maker. I got one for Christmas, it is brilliant. You keep it in the freezer all the time, and when you want to make ice-cream you just make the custard base (eggs, sugar, milk and cream), add whatever flavouring you want (raspberries, vanilla essence, melted chocolate), then when it's cooled, take out the ice-cream maker and put the mixture in to churn, and it takes about twenty minutes to delicius spoonable yummy stuff. No E numbers or radioactive chemicals, just good honest dairy fat and sugar. Well, obviously, you could use Provamel as well, if you like that sort of thing. As good as Haagen Daasz and much more fun.
"Self-sacrifice" can imply two things: the willing surrender of one good thing for the sake of something better, or the painful giving-up of something under external or self-imposed duress for whatever cause. We are often told that parenting is about sacrifice, and even that all family life is about giving things up, or compromising, in return for the benefits of having other people around to love and live with.
It is true that having children brings responsibilities, and sometimes these responsibilities constrict us. But the chances are that if we have a large young family, we want to look after them rather than spending every evening in the pub, anyway (for example). One might indeed have given up one's pub-life as a result of becoming a parent, and some might call this a sacrifice, but if it is done willingly the sacrificer won't consider it any big deal. Certainly, they won't be suffering as a result and if they are, then they need to change something.
Making yourself suffer for someone else's benefit is never doing them a favour. "I gave up everything for you! Your father and I only stayed together for your sake!" is enough to make any child desperate to leave home asap without ever looking back. This is the kind of self-sacrifice that hurts the sacrificer: because they don't really want to make it. But the irony is that it hurts the recipient too. Nobody asks to be the origin of someone else's pain.
Robin Clochard writes about the realities of consentual family problem-solving:
Looking at families as micro "nations", outside observers could easily identify their prevailing "political systems" as generally totalitarian or generally democratic. Outsiders looking at families where parents are scrupulously rational might see only general anarchy-but appearances can be deceiving.
It's true that consentual decison-making frequently takes more time than either barking orders or quickly voting for one of two opposing options, majority rules. Applying creativity to solving problems by brainstorming and finding solutions that everyone is actually happy to implement can be a time-consuming affair, especially if a consentual approach is new to any of the participants. It can also be quite spirited, to say the least, as people passionately argue the merits of a solution they favor, or vehemently criticize one which they do not.
So, during what can be a long and loud process, it may look like all hell has broken loose. But anarchy does not generally prevail in a family situation, at least not for very long. Family members differ from fellow citizens; we tend to care a lot more about their happiness than any strangers on the street. Not so much that we should sacrifice our own desires against our wills for their sake, but enough so that their happiness just so happens to be one of our desires. Yes, solving problems "consent-ually" can take time and effort, but the rewards are obvious to everyone involved, even if outsiders, those despots and democrats, often wonder what exactly is going on.
Parents are commonly very suspicious of helping their children to learn by using technology. TV, computers and video games are all viewed warily, just as the widespread use of books was viewed warily when printing first happened and Those In The Know thought that this new “advance” would only cause commoners to be corrupted by the Jilly Coopers of their day.
But think about it: why exactly should constructing wooden jigsaws be more beneficial to a toddler than putting the same broken pictures together with a mouse on the Bob The Builder website? What is special about learning letters from a teacher as opposed to learning them from a Sesame Street CD Rom? Why is it better for children to pick up Spanish from a singing-class than from watching Dora the Explorer (a programme I can’t recommend highly enough for logic-loving under-fives)?
Then think some more: if one episode of Dora is good, how much good does a child get from watching five in a day? Or ten? Or as many as he likes until he as absorbed the maximum amount of information and goes on to do something else?
Think about how much information there is, even in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, about spatial movement, characterisation, narrative and the way life makes fools of us and how and why. Isn’t it great that a three-year-old can pick this up? Why not nurture your child’s passions by helping her immerse herself in whatever she loves as much as possible?
“But what if they are learning bad ideas; how would I know if the TV is harming them?” There is no way to be psychic, but there are plenty of ways of observing whether someone is most likely to be benefiting or being damaged by something they are doing. Do they have lots to say about what they are enjoying? Are they interacting in a creative, interested way? Do they come up with thoughts and responses that have meaning, and are attributable to these new sources? Are they happy and enjoying themselves, do they seem fulfilled and growthful?
We know that technology helps people in wonderful ways: otherwise I wouldn’t be typing this here now. Only with our children do we apply ultra-conservative ideas with irrational “safe” responses (enforced learning-inhibiting restrictions). In doing so, we deprive them of worlds of learning, and therefore ourselves of the benefits of living with more fulfilled and happy children. But facilitating children in technology-related activities is one enormously valuable way of improving things all round.
The British government paid (with your taxes of course) for a bunch of Canadian academics to try and work out what could possibly be going wrong with their school system. And one of the things they cleverly deduced was this:
“high-profile national initiatives like the Year of Reading and Maths Year 2000 have not been as successful as hoped, because "the potential contribution of parents to their children's learning has not been realised."
Which seems a bit of a cheek to me. The school system f*&%$-up because the parents didn’t work hard enough at it. Erm, isn’t the school system the responsibility of the…school system?
Sounds a bit like, “The reason the Police Service isn’t catching all the criminals is, not enough volunteer police-people join in and help!" Or a business saying: "The reason we didn't make much money this year is, not enough customers did their duty and bought out product!"
Or, maybe the school system as educator is bound to fail because it's just an outdated Victorian tool of something-ist oppression that is well past its sell-by date in any civilised half-literate country? Just a thought.
Guest writer Robin Clochard (France) criticises the popular notion that parenting is about making life hard for children:
Many parents believe that the journey from childhood to adulthood is like an obstacle course. Parents, rather than using their own experience to help their child avoid or minimize obstacles, do their best to make sure the child has faced enough (and oftentimes certain specific) obstacles before reaching the finish line. Why? Well, one reason is that many people also see adult life as an obstacle course, and thus children must be prepared.
Conventional wisdom holds that experience makes for experts, and thus parents would be doing their children a horrible disservice by not subjecting them and even encouraging them to subject themselves to hardship at the earliest opportunity--how else will they learn to deal with the inevitable difficulties that will face them as adults?
Leaving aside the misguided notion that children are adults-in-training, I would argue that rational parents must realize that helping children to creatively minimize or avoid obstacles can only facilitate both current and future obstacle courses. Yes, good can come of tackling difficult problems. But subjecting oneself to them and their supposedly inevitable consequences is pointless and anti-rational. Why not help children look for other good solutions? Often, the very idea that some difficult problems are solvable is one that parents studiously avoid divulging to their children. But it is this information--that all problems do actually have solutions, and not that hardship is inevitable--which prepares them best, for the present and the future.
Or, did you have a parent, ever? Do you agree with the principles of consentual relationship-building in families? (Our website says a bit more about that).
"Rational Parenting" is looking for more people to blog about anything and everything to do with consentual parenting. Ideas for problem-solving that don't have to involve the use of force. Thoughts about how to faciliate children's lives and learning, maybe in unconventional ways, helping them to flourish and create happy family dynamics. Anecdotes and observations (no identifiable details and/or individuals, please) or rants about the latest kids issues in the news.
If you are committed to this way of life, help us spread the word! Yes, we do have something of a campaign going on here; we want more people to treat children more like human beings, starting with the children in their own homes. And we also want more parents to stop putting themselves last on the family list and start raising their standards for their own wellbeing.
If you have a blog, or three, or six, up your sleeve, please send it to us at rationalparenting.co.uk and we will publish it here (unless you are a nutter or something, obviously). Parents are busy people of course, so we don't expect a lifelong blog-a-day commitment from anyone anytime soon, but maybe Rational Parenting can help you get something off your chest?
Of course, if nobody wants to comment or blog, we can always crawl off into a corner and feel lonely and sad...(sob!). Hey, what about a paragraph or two on Emotional Blackmail, Does that inspire?
Poet Mike Snider, who now has a permanent link on our sidebar, wrote a sonnet specially for us! Don't let the title (Homework) put off you autonomously-home-educating free-living types. It's about wondering how pro-active one should be in helping children learn, how often we should offer ideas when they might not be welcome and being aware that they find ways of acquiring all sorts of knowledge we will probably never know ourselves. And of course, most good learning happens at home, and is therefore homework.
"Homework
My daughter's learning how the planets dance,
How curtseys to an unseen partner's bow
Are clues that tell an ardent watcher how
To find new worlds in heaven's bleak expanse,
How even flaws in this numerical romance
Are fruitful: patient thought and work allow
Mistakes to carry meaning. She writes now
That Tombaugh spotting Pluto wasn't chance.
Beside her, I write, too. Should I do more
Than nudge her at her homework while I try
To master patterns made so long before
My birth that since then stars have left the sky?
I'll never know. But what I try to teach
Is trying. She may find what I can't reach."
I love specialist weblogs. I certainly hope the future lies in this direction. Enthusiasts can share so much knowledge this way, both voicing and recording their own ideas continuously, and sharing them with others via comments and emails. Looking forward to the home-educated kids weblog-ring, whenever that starts up...
Brian Micklethwait wondered in this post a couple of days ago what we people over here would think about giving children strange names out of Shakespeare plays and Virginia Woolf novels etc.
I have various comments on this, so I will list them.
1. Odd names are now so much the norm that I don't think anyone under twenty expects anything other than to be surrounded by Florizels and Zaks these days anyway,
2. If children hate their names, nicknames or alternatives should be possible,
3. Children generally don't hate their own names on purely aesthetic grounds: the only major reason for hating one's name is that other people make one's life a misery because of it. Those sort of people are ideally kept away from because they are horrible.
That's all I can think of for now (makes mental note to track down kids with nutty monikers and ask them how they feel).
