Gentle Discipline Thoughts...

This weekend I had an argument with my mom and her husband about spanking. Their point was that kids need to learn it's a tough world out there. I pointed out that they'll learn that on their own, and don't need me hitting them to learn that and that I'd prefer that home was at least a *bit* of an oaisis where they could escape from the "cruel world". The conversation really got me thinking.

I strongly believe that peace starts at home, and to raise peaceful people we need to treat them peacefully. Does that mean I let my kids do whatever they want? No, of course it doesn't. What it *does* mean is that I'm more likely to try multiple methods (sometimes many!) to change the specific behavior, but really is behavior what it's all about? The view that we're just here to modify our children's behaviors to get them to do what we want sounds manipulative and simplistic, but is prevalent in our society. If our entire relationship with our children is one of control and the occasional game/tickle/whatever then once we're supposed to be moving out of the control phase (i.e. teens and twenties) what kind of relationship are we left with? I've seen this with my parents and I've seen it with my husband's parents. With his parents, we barely talk anymore, with mine, we had to completely reinvent the relationship once I got over the bad relationship we had. I think it made the teen years more rocky than it needed to be.

Ideally, any relationship is built on respect, trust and mutual appreciation, right? I know that's what I expect out of my marriage, and of my friendships. I don't think it's so strange to expect the same mutual respect, trust and appreciation when dealing with our kids. Can our kids really trust us or appreciate us if the feeling is that we only want to control them and that we don't trust them to make decisions for themselves? I know I don't trust those that I feel are only trying to manipulate me, no matter how good their intentions.

My point here is MUTUAL respect, though. You can't get respect if you don't give it. Spanking is just not respectful, but neither is shaming or belittling or ignoring... all of which are extremely common parenting tactics. I know if someone ignores me, I do not feel respected, so I wouldn't ever do it to my child. I mean, really, there's a reason they're feeling the way they're feeling, they just show it in a different way. My job, then, as a parent is to learn the language of the tantrum and figure out how best to respect my child's needs while accomplishing the task at hand. In dangerous situations this could present as physically dragging my screaming child out of the road. In less dangerous situations it could include questioning the importance of the task at hand (do we really need to do this my way or can we do it slightly differently or later to accommodate my child) or even sympathizing with the child's feelings ("I know you don't want to do this, you don't like it, but it's something we have to do").

The problem with the "us" vs. "them" parenting view is that it doesn't foster respect, trust, or appreciation in our children (or ourselves!). Spanking may change behaviors, but the kind of "respect" I'm looking for isn't fear based. Fear based respect, will, in the long run, only teach people to avoid getting caught. This is useless when you're trying to teach a child how to exist in the world.

All this was to say (basically), that parenting is a relationship, and thus how we behave toward our children is *at least* as important as how they behave, but probably waaaaaay more important because they're also learning how to act based on our behaviors.

Love is not equal to $$ spent

Being that it's the Christmas/giving season, I've been doing a lot of thinking about our current way of gifting. Consumerism has taken over the season and left us with less joy and less in our wallets. Why is this? Since when has the amount we spend on someone equal the amount we love them? That's how the current state of gifting looks to me, anyway.

Businesses focus on this idea, too. If you notice the advertisements on tv this time of year, they all seem to point out that if you don't buy [insert name of obscenely expensive item] for the ones you love, you clearly don't love them enough. This is painfully obvious in jewelry commercials... you know "let her know you love her by buying her [thousands of dollars worth of jewelry]." Would I feel more loved if I received said item, or would I feel more loved if my husband gave me something a bit more personal - that is, something that required a bit more thought and quite likely less money? I believe I'd feel better with a spontaneous (or at least surprise) event than having another rock on my finger. If it truly is the thought that counts, what happened to gifts that require thought over money?

*sigh* This idea has really been haunting me the past few Christmases.

Vaccines

The recent incident of a school district in Maryland rounding up students to inject them with the almighty vaccine seems to have caused quite a stir across the country. In my life, the vaccine issue has been weighing heavily on my mind, with both outcomes (to vax or not to vax) scaring the buh-geezes out of me! What if I do and my child dies because of it? There'll be no proof that the vaccine did it, but I will always question. What and I *don't* and my child dies because of it? Again there would have been no guarantee that the child wouldn't have died from the disease anyway, since the vaccines do not prevent all cases. This is definitely the most difficult decision I've ever had to make.

It doesn't help that the information I find on vaccines all points in different directions. On the one hand, the government is pushing for us to vaccinate EVERYONE for EVERYTHING. Assuring us that the diseases are far worse and more likely than the side effects of the vaccine are. Unfortunately, as far as I've seen, their logic is weak and built on false assumptions. Truthfully, there isn't a lot of evidence proving that vaccines are safe in the long term, thus all the speculation about autism and autoimmune disorders and such. But lack of evidence isn't evidence of lack, and we really don't know either way.

On the other hand, from most of what I've read, the majority of the vaccines they give to infants are not because the disease is dangerous for the infant (and even when it is, they often don't even give the shot until the most dangerous part is over), but to protect the adults in the community. So if that's the case, why are they vaccinating the babies and not the adults? We don't know how much aluminum an infant can metabolize at a time, but we *do* know that an adult can handle quite a bit. I'm sorry, but the "for the good of the many" argument doesn't mean much when it's your child that's been injured by a vaccine.

The government (and the majority of the public) treat vaccines as some sort of magical arrangement that causes no harm and completely protects people from disease. This is not to say that vaccines don't do this, they may, indeed, but why isn't it obvious to people that a child that is ill or has had a reaction to a vaccine in the past should not be getting another? Why aren't we more cautious about giving kids second doses of the same shot when the only reason is because the school district lost the records? When threatened with jail time, how many parents do you think will stop to wonder "hmmm, my kid's been sick, maybe I shouldn't let them have the shot RIGHT NOW..." The government is doing a huge disservice to these people! Having a second dose of the tetanus shot, for instance, before the time has lapsed can be very dangerous and result in the side effects happening. This should be taken much more seriously than the school district in Maryland (and the justice system there) have been taking it.

Lastly, this is AMERICA, is it not? We're entitled to freedom of choice, in fact, our country was built on that concept. These people's rights have been violated and something needs to be done to keep this from happening again. I just hope that the children whose rights were violated all live through this experience!