In a conventional family, the role of the parents is to make the decisions, and to cause the children to comply. If the children cannot be persuaded, it is the parent's role to force them to comply anyway. In a TCS family, all such situations are regarded as differences of opinion, to be resolved by rational means only. It is harmful to assume that children are other than are rational and autonomous.
Limits for children should be defined by and for the individual children themselves in all situations. If parents have theories to share, it is right that they do so but only in ways that do not put the children in a state of coercion.
Being open to criticism means that if there is a disagreement in the family, one regards it as a problem to solve, not a justification for enforcing the wishes of an authority. That means, for instance, not discounting someone's disagreement because you think you know best. It means not prejudging the issue, but considering all the available ideas. It means that ideas should be judged by their content, not by their source. For instance, discounting an idea on the grounds that it was put forward by a small child, is inimical to the growth of knowledge, because if the child were right, you'd never find out. Being open to criticism means avoiding dogma and all entrenched ideas, because if an idea is fixed, then by definition, it won't be replaced by any better ideas that do arise.
The TCS approach advocates sharing your best theories with children – “it's cold outside and I think you'll feel more comfortable with a coat” ... “by the way, if you say ‘fuck’ in front of Grandma, she may react badly”. In this respect, TCS agrees with enlightened conventional opinion. The big difference concerns what happens when the children reject your best theories. TCS advocates scrupulously respecting children's wishes in regard to the conduct of their own lives.
Being forced to enact even a true theory, against one's will, is psychologically indistinguishable from (and therefore exactly as harmful as) being forced to enact a false theory. But there is a more fundamental reason why the question is misconceived: It is not possible for us to know which of the ideas that we believe to be true are in fact true.
It is possible for human beings, through conjecture, reason and criticism, to come to know and understand truths about the world, including truths about the human condition and about specific people. (Also including truths about matters which are not experimentally testable.) But because we are fallible, it is not possible for us to know which of the ideas that we believe to be true are in fact true. Indeed we hold it to be true that many of the ideas that we believe to be true, including some of those that we believe most strongly to be true, are false.
Why is this important? One reason is that no matter how tenaciously and surely we hold an idea, we could be wrong. Realising this allows us to be more open to competing theories.
The most important thing to understand here is that
Preferences are not fixed. Our wants can and do change.
Some people claim that finding common preferences is not possible in the real world. What makes it possible is the joint creativity of the parties involved applied to the specific problem. The only approach that works is to seek a better solution that both parties agree is better than their initial ideas. If either party is only willing to hold on to their original theory, the theory is “entrenched” and the problem-solving process cannot be rational.
Suffering and frustration are not worth anything. They tend to harm, not help, our ability to make decisions. They do not prepare one for further suffering, except when they are so severe that they in effect kill whole aspects of one's personality. (For instance, a continually rejected child may become inured to rejection, but only because he becomes unable to form, or even to want, relationships that leave him vulnerable to rejection.)
Copyright © 1997, 2003 Taking Children Seriously