It would be nice to hear where you found out about TCS and/or the
TCS List. Write to me, Sarah Fitz-Claridge, at 
This file is sent to all new subscribers to the Taking Children Seriously List.
Please be sure to read this before you post. The TCS List has some very unusual posting guidelines.
The TCS List Posting Guidelines
Answers to frequently-asked questions about the TCS List Posting Guidelines
Posting messages on the TCS List
Other Lists which might be of interest
I am Sarah Fitz-Claridge, founder of the TCS movement, List Owner of the TCS List and other TCS-related Lists, webmaster of the TCS web site, and editor of Taking Children Seriously, the paper journal. I started TCS in 1992, beginning with the paper journal, then in 1994, the TCS List, and finally the TCS web site. When I started TCS, I was the only TCS parent in the world. Now, there is a worldwide movement of TCS families.
The Taking Children Seriously List is a forum for the discussion of TCS theory and practice, and for the support of TCS parents. As such, it will not appeal to all parents. TCS is a philosophical theory having moral implications, including implications about what sort of discussions there should be on the TCS List. In order to maintain a List atmosphere conducive to the growth of knowledge of real TCS families in their real lives, the TCS List is lightly moderated. Rest assured that the moderators always approve any post which conforms to the TCS List Posting Guidelines.
The TCS List is unusual in a number of ways. Most notably, (friendly) criticism is welcome on the List, but meta-discussion (discussion whose subject matter is, say, how to hold discussions instead of how to treat children) is unwelcome. Moreover, discussion on the TCS List should be general and hypothetical, not discuss or even mention specific details of children's (or anyone's) lives.
Before you post on the TCS List, please familiarise yourself with the TCS List Posting Guidelines and read the TCS Short Glossary. You might also like to read the TCS FAQ and the articles and posts on the TCS web site.
In order to maintain the high quality of discussion subscribers expect on this List, please bear in mind when posting that quality is better than quantity, and that it is best to post one interesting, subtle message per day than half a million messages lacking thoughtful content. 8-)
It is our policy always to write to the poster if a message is not approved
for the List, so if you send a message to the List and it does not appear
within a few hours, and you do not hear from the moderator, please write to
me, Sarah Fitz-Claridge, at
including a copy of the message you think went missing, and I shall
investigate.
Do not assume that the moderators will pick up your mistakes in posting! There are times when there is effectively no moderation at all, so please take care to ensure that you post in accordance with the TCS List Posting Guidelines, and note that the appearance of a message on the List does not imply the approval of the moderators.
Discussions should be general and hypothetical.
Criticism (friendly), including moral criticism, is welcome on the List.
In general, threads (including discussions on the same subject with a different Subject: line) should be short. They should not be repetitive and they should not go round in circles. Insistently repetitive threads drown out other more subtle threads so please try to ensure that your reply is making a point which others would recognise as new to the thread rather than merely repeating a point which has just been made. If a thread is getting nowhere, instead of replying line-by-line to another post, write a self-contained post which does not refer to previous posts in the thread, and give it an appropriate Subject: line.
Please do not cross-post. Do not post line-by-line discussions from another List to this List. If you are bringing a discussion here from another List, please ensure that your post is self-contained (i.e., that it will be understandable to those who have not read the preceding discussion) and that it has a new and appropriate subject line with no “Re:” in it. Where possible, paraphrase the point you are discussing rather than quoting it, but where the point is original, please get permission to quote it and attribute it properly.
Ensure that the subject of your messages is reflected in the Subject: line of your posts. Change the Subject: line if necessary.
Use plain text only, and avoid sending attachments, MIME or HTML format messages or styled text to this List.
Please do not quote more than is necessary for context. (Quoting too little can also be a problem!)
If possible, include the full reference to the post to which you are replying (for example: “On [date] at [time], [name and email address] wrote:”).
Please use the standard internet quoting notation, namely, set up your software to add “>”s down the left hand side of quoted text, then leave some white space, then write your reply beneath that.
Please set the width of your text to about 76 characters and avoid sending poorly-formatted posts (with bad hard line-breaks, for example) to the List.
To make posts easier to read, add white space. If you write more than about four lines without a gap, consider breaking the text into two or more paragraphs. It will encourage subscribers to read what you have written.
Please do not quote the entire header of messages you reply to, because if you quote the “Reply-To” or “Sender”, then the List server thinks it is a bounce, and sends it to the List owner as an error.
Meta-discussion is discussion about the discussions instead of about on-topic matters. Comments or discussion about –
– are all meta-discussion.
On the object level (i.e., on the non-meta level), there are discussions about relevant issues – TCS-related issues – discussions about how to treat children and why. (There are also object level discussions which are irrelevant to TCS and off-topic but not meta. Discussions about, say, animal rights, abortion, and religion fall into this category.)
We could have an object level (i.e., first order; not second order/meta) discussion about the on-topic issue of whether school is coercive or not. If we didn't have a “no meta-discussion” rule, we could then have a meta discussion about the discussion about that issue. For example, a post complaining that the discussion (or a particular post or poster) about whether school is coercive was disrespectful or offensive would be meta.
“Do you feel that everyone is out to put you down? You are always defensive in your responses.”
“This is a perfect example of the sort of nonsense that arises all too frequently here [on the TCS List].”
“If TCS is a compassionate theory, where is the evidence of compassion in the posts on this List?”
“To the moderator: forgive me if this is off-topic.”
“Why is it that my posts get rejected for being off-topic while posts by others who commit the same sins contained in my posts are not?”
“Bravo, thank you and nicely put...this, unlike the usual confusing philosophical analysis one finds on this List, is precisely the type of example that teaches me more about TCS and gives me room to think. Let's have more such clear, simple and practical posts please!”
“This response seems a little hostile to me. So you disagree, do you feel so unsure of yourself you need to go the offensive? Lighten up, please, all of you.”
“Whoa, this is not a nice comment at all!”
“How can I get help solving the problem if I can't write about the children I'm having the problem with?!”
Instead of saying: “My child...” or “A child I know...” or “In one family...”, use hypothetical forms of words, such as “Suppose a child...” or “If a child were to... then should a parent...?”
For example, please do not write: “We went to Toys 'R' Us yesterday, and Ralph wanted us to buy a Game Cube, a $400 computerised robot, a $129 set of Lego, and countless other items. We have a very limited income and we just can't afford that. What would you do in that sort of situation?”
Instead, write something like: “If a child were to ask his parents to buy a larger proportion of the merchandise in the Toy Mega Store than they could afford without taking out a second mortgage, then how might a TCS parent solve that problem?”
Please don't write: “A child I know likes to pick his nose and ram the contents up his parent's nose, which she finds too disgusting to bear. What can she do non-coercively to discourage this habit (particularly when in the presence of Grandma)? Do you do anything to socialise your children or is that considered un-TCS?”
Instead, write something like: “Young children sometimes have what many adults consider unacceptable habits – such as playing with poo or wiping their noses on the hem of a visitor's dress. How might a TCS parent deal with such situations? Is there any place for showing one's natural disgust, or could that be coercive? How might one avoid a rift with non-family members who find themselves on the receiving end of a young child's bodily fluids? Does the TCS idea of non-coercively guiding children include giving them information about hygiene and how one is expected to behave in polite society?”
Instead of giving a detailed description of the problem, ask a general question instead.
Avoid going into agonisingly specific and potentially privacy-violating detail such as: “Suppose the child wants to follow the mother into the bathroom and cries when she says she wants even one minute to herself...”
Instead, ask something like: “Should one consider it possible and desirable for a parent to have moments of real privacy, even from a young child? While in the bathroom? While having sex? While pondering deeply on the plot of her new novel? Surely privacy is valuable, even indispensable, sometimes – and yet, what if a child doesn't want to leave the parent's company, ever, and cries at the very idea? Don't very young children take that view sometimes? What approaches might one take to make such a child happy, yet solve the problem of privacy too?”
Go to the settings, options or preferences of your email program or browser and ensure that the “plain text only” option is selected.
In Eudora Pro, go to “Settings” in the “Special” menu, go to “Styled Text” and select the option, “Send plain text mail only”. Unselect “Ask me each time” unless you want to be asked every time.
Then go to “Attributions” and type:
At ^3 on ^1, in a message titled "^2", ^0 wrote:†0Dreplacing the † with option-d on the Mac. (Sorry, I don't know what it is in the PC version, but the resulting character looks like a delta sign.)
to add the correct attributions to posts automatically.
If you use Netscape Messenger or Microsoft Outlook or Exchange to send email, you may be unaware that your program is automatically sending annoying attachments whenever you send a message. This feature has to be turned off. If you have not turned it off, please do so. Such attachments contain absolutely unnecessary duplicate messages in HTML coding. We do not accept messages with these attachments, so please follow the instructions below to turn off this feature of your email program or switch to an email program that does not send attachments unless you tell it to.
To stop Netscape Messenger from sending a duplicate message in HTML coding at the end of your normal message, go into Edit, choose Preferences, then choose Mail and Newsgroups. Click on the +, then from the resulting List choose Formatting. You'll see two possibilities near the top: “use HTML editor to compose messages” or “use plain text editor to compose messages.” Be sure to choose the plain text editor. You might also check the second option below that: “convert the message into plain text.”
Also, go into Identity (also under Mail and Newsgroups) and be sure that the bottom option (“Attach my personal card to messages as a vCard”) is unselected.
To stop Microsoft Outlook Express from sending its version of an HTML attachment, please do the following:
Look under Tools, Options, Send, Mail Sending Format: check the box that says “Plain Text” (instead of “html”).
If you are using Outlook 2000, go to Tools/Options, find the tab labelled “Mail Format”, the section labelled “Message Format”, and the select box labeled: “Send in this message format:”. Check the box that says “Plain Text” (instead of “html”).
To stop Microsoft Exchange from appending a WINMAIL.DAT binary attachment, go to the Microsoft site and consult the Knowledge Base article entitled “Preventing WINMAIL.DAT Sent to Internet Users.”
The List welcomes posts from any source, irrespective of whether the address posted from is subscribed to it or not.
If you wish to know more about TCS before posting, see the “Frequently-Asked Questions” pages or retrieve the List archives (see below for details).
Introducing yourself to the List is in no way compulsory, but if you would like to, please feel free to do so, taking the TCS List Posting Guidelines – such as those about avoiding discussion of personal information – into account. Consider saying where you heard about TCS.
If you have a question or indeed if you are bursting with questions, do please post your questions on the List. It doesn't matter if your questions are “basic” or “ill-informed”. Just mention the fact that you are a new subscriber, and ask away. The more questions we get, the more likely each of those issues will be addressed.
If you wish to ask a question or otherwise contribute to the List, first read the TCS List Posting Guidelines above, then send your message to [email protected].
Consider whether you really want to post anonymously. Note that in many cases, TCS people prefer to reply to posts privately, and when you use the anonymiser, no one can reply to you privately. Some posters would say something privately that they wouldn't dream of saying publicly on the List, and many people feel that the most helpful replies to their posts have been the private ones. Take that into account when deciding whether or not to use the anonymiser.
When using the anonymiser, please sign the post with a name so that people replying can attribute the quote, and so that if you want to reply to a reply to your anonymous post, you can make it clear that you are the same person as in your first post.
When posting anonymously, be especially careful not to violate the TCS List Posting Guidelines. When you post using the anonymiser, we have no way of communicating with you to ask you to correct any problem. Please note that in the event that your post violates the TCS List Posting Guidelines, it may be edited, or discarded and never appear on the List.
If you don't want to identify yourself you will have to exercise some caution: including your usual signature in the body of the message could give you away.
May I stress that even if you are using the anonymiser, it is still necessary to make your post hypothetical and general (see above). That is to say, do not give personal information about your children (or any children). If you want help in solving a specific problem involving your children, nevertheless try to change as many details as you can so that they won't recognise themselves in your post.
The List is handled by automatic mailing List software. You control your subscription by mailing commands to the List server at <[email protected]>. Note that this is not the same as the address used for posting messages. Please take care to send List server commands to the List server, not to the mailing List.
Send a message to <[email protected]> saying
subscribe TCS Your-first-name Your-last-name
To unsubscribe, send a message to <[email protected]> sa ying
unsubscribe TCS
This Welcome message is updated occasionally. To get the current version, send a message to <[email protected]> saying
get tcs welcome
or return to this web page.
To get the poster's address in the body of the message send a message to <[email protected]> saying
set TCS dual
If you want to temporarily stop receiving TCS List messages (for instance, if you are going on vacation) send a message to <[email protected]> saying
set TCS nomail
This action will not store up messages for you to receive later, when you resume getting mail. To get messages you have missed, get the archives.
When you want to resume getting messages, send
set TCS mail
Instead of receiving each individual post as a separate message, you can choose to receive a single large message containing several posts. Usually there will be a daily digest containing the day's posts, but that may vary if List traffic is unusually light or heavy. Note: these automatically-created digests can be very large files.
To receive unabridged digests, send
set TCS digest
to <[email protected] .com>. To switch back to receiving individual posts, use
set TCS nodigest
If you find the volume of the List too much, or you are only interested in posts of certain topics, you might like to set yourself to INDEX. To do this send:
set TCS index
to <[email protected] .com>. You will then receive indexes of just the short headers instead of the full posts, that is, sender, date, subject line. They come bundled together daily, in single or multiple posts depending on the List volume.
Here is what one of the indexes looked like: