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Taking Children Seriously

by Sarah Fitz-Claridge

How will credential-less children survive?

What do you mean by ‘fallible’?

What if your baby keeps grabbing your nose ring and cannot be reasoned with?

How do you raise a child to believe in freedom?

Will a child not made to do chores ever develop a work ethic? And if not, how will they ever have a good life?

Dead Poets Society is not taking children seriously

What if your child runs into traffic?

Why do you like IFS but not ‘Self-led parenting’?

What do you mean by ‘coercionist’?

The can-do attitude versus the can’t-do attitude

Fallibilism as a way of being and acting

What do you mean by non-coercive? What is the difference between coercion and non-coercion?

Surely it is cruel to force people to live with the consequences of the ideas and preferences they had when they were children?

Surely studies show that parents have little impact on how people turn out?

Why no ‘common preferences’?

Surely kids need to be forced to learn maths?

Unless we get children try different things, how will they ever learn which things are fun and which are not fun?

Isn’t taking children seriously a risky experiment with children? Is there any evidence that it works? Has it been studied?

What is the psychological impact of not taking children seriously?

How do you handle the issue of other people coercing your child?

Unnatural consequences revisited

When a solution is not found, is it always the parents who must bear the brunt of the sacrifice?

Are you advocating that the children should rule the parents?!

What about instilling values like freedom, fallibilism and the idea of taking children seriously?

The rationalist mistake

How can I drop the anti-rational part of my mind that interferes with me taking my children seriously?

How can I become more aware of anti-rational parts in my mind?

How can I overcome the antirational memes disabling my creativity, with my disabled creativity?!

If anti-rational memes are compelling me to coerce my children, what hope is there?!

Why did my mother’s coercive words fly out of my mouth?!

Why do parents coerce their children despite having been through it themselves?

If a parent has an aversion to something a child enjoys doing, how do you solve that problem?

If coercion has impaired my ability to correct errors, is taking children seriously even possible?

Why does it sometimes hurt to think about Taking Children Seriously?

Surely we should communicate our disapproval to our children?

If we should take babies seriously, should we not take pigs seriously too?

Does taking children seriously mean not influencing them?

In what ways is Taking Children Seriously different from simply taking everybody seriously?

What kind of children is Taking Children Seriously not a good idea for?

What ages is Taking Children Seriously most powerful for, or how does its value change with age? When is it almost too late?

What do you do about vaccinating your children?

Equal relationships with our children?! How are parents and children are equals?!

What is wrong with loving limits for children?

If you are not coercing your child, what do you do instead of coercion?

Do children taken seriously ever ask permission?

What is the relationship between Karl Popper’s epistemology, the ideas of David Deutsch and Taking Children Seriously?

How did Taking Children Seriously start?

How do you teach table manners?

How do you determine what food to give your children?

How can we express approval when our children do something good without manipulating them by implying that we would disapprove if they had made a different choice?

What if my child both hates school and likes being in school with all his friends?

Surely the lack of that extra money is a comparative disadvantage?

Is Taking Children Seriously only for the rich?

Our 15-year-old wants to hitchhike to Outer Mongolia by herself. We think she is not yet “street-wise” enough. What should we do?

Surely it is not coercive to have a rule that whenever our child goes out, he must first tell us where he is going and for how long? What about being a responsible parent?!

If my five-year-old were allowed to open the garden gate, she would be off wandering all over the neighbourhood and might be run over or kidnapped or murdered etc.

At what age should children first leave the house on their own, visit their friend next door on their own, go to the cinema on their own, hitchhike from coast to coast on their own, etc.?

Surely suffering and frustration make us stronger?

Why not say that the policy is non-coercion except on important issues?

If we are fallible and not omniscient, surely it is exaggerating to say it is always possible to solve problems without coercion?

What to do when your child says “Go away” or “I don’t want to talk about it”

What if… ?

“What if…?” questions revisited

Is hiding medicine in your child’s food wrong?

Surely it is necessary to coerce children to avoid them doing unsafe or unethical things?

How can we communicate urgent information to our pre-verbal toddlers?

How do you take babies seriously?

Surely children need discipline to teach them self-discipline?

Surely children need to learn to deal with restrictions to prepare them for life in society?

What do you mean by ‘creativity’?

What do you mean by ‘knowledge’?

Why not argue for Taking Children Seriously in terms of rights?

Who am I to criticise someone else?

If criticism is valuable why not be more critical?

Surely criticism is always good?

What if your child wants to drive?

What if my child wants me to help her murder someone?

I’m a vegetarian. What if my child wants to eat meat?

How do you intervene non-coercively when one child is attacking another?

Is coercion always wrong?

What if my child wants to buy every toy in the shop, and does not consult me?

What do you have against gentle coercion?

Do children not taught that they can’t always get their own way become entitled and inconsiderate?

Is the purpose of taking children seriously to avoid the harm coercion would do?

Is it necessary to reject authority?

How is a compromise not a real solution?

How can I tell if a proposed solution is a real solution?

How do you solve problems where there is a conflict of interest?

If I am not allowed to coerce my child, surely I am being coerced myself?

Surely coercion is ok when the parent is right and the child is wrong?

What do you have against coercion?

Surely children are not born knowing right and wrong?

Does Taking Children Seriously mean children always getting their own way?

Surely it is natural for parents to control their children?

If children are people just like adults, why should we treat our children any differently from how we treat adults?

How is the word ‘parenting’ not taking children seriously?

Which parenting style is Taking Children Seriously? Authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, or uninvolved?

What do you mean by ‘paternalism’?

Children fending for themselves like adults?!

What is Taking Children Seriously?

Why does parenting feel so hard?

How to read this site

Taking Children Seriously: a new view of children

The Taking Children Seriously survey

Home education in Britain

Do not wait until you are perfect

Curious young children taking things apart

A chat about Taking Children Seriously

What Taking Children Seriously is, and what it is not

Question or command?

Help! Child hates eyepatch!

Watch out! There’s a toddler about!

Engaging sexually with children is NOT taking them seriously

Is your child worried about death?

Reacting to an angry child

Protect the victim

Respecting other people’s wishes

No way out – and loving it

(NOT) listening to children

Moving, improving: punishment will not help

Can an emotion be wrong?

The Keeping-One’s-Options-Open mentality

Lying about lying

Does your child love visiting the dentist?

Are time outs time off or serving time?

The dark side of John Holt

Swearing is not a four letter word

Breaking the spiral of coercion

Never make a child feel bad

Beware the homeschooling mentality

Objectifying education sabotages learning

The importance of video games

Treat information about local education authorities with caution

Unnatural consequences

A discussion about whether problems are solvable

How do you get children excited about maths?

Punished by rewards

Creativity and untidiness

Doing nothing academically?

Both coercion and “doing nothing” are mistakes

Coercion — the meaning of the word

Karl Popper on the growth of knowledge

Is creativity a boon to the affected individual?

Is creativity even desirable?

Educational theory: science or philosophy?

It is impossible to control for all the variables in any experiment involving human psychology

Why giving children rules and boundaries is a mistake

It’s your house, your income, your everything; and if the kids don’t like it…

How to transmit inexplicit knowledge without using real life examples

“Natural authority”?

Unschooling and Karl Popper

Different labels for adults and children

Trying to turn philosophy into science is a mistake

Philosophical theories are refuted by argument, not empirical tests

Coerced to change their values

Bathtime and hairwashing

Time out is not taking time out

“What if…?” questions

Blind obedience, thoughtful obedience, ‘cooperation’

Playing with guns, real coercion

Mistakes and what to do about them

In defence of television soap operas

The Simpsons – the best teacher in the world

Coercion as a ‘solution’ to behavioural problems

Unschooling and schooling as a continuum

Children’s welfare secondary to a dogmatic ideology?

Common misapprehensions about Taking Children Seriously

Coercion prevents problems being solved

Solving problems takes creativity

What if your child wants a dangerous substance?

All choices restrict future choices

Ideas colour experience

Don’t children prefer strict rules so they know where they stand?

Criticism of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

Common emotional blackmail

Hand wringing instead of intervening?

What to do if you get a visit from a social worker or CPS

No dogmatism here

Coercion, manipulation, reason, persuasion

‘Influence’ versus ‘coercion’

Young children, reason and creativity

Violating parents’ rights of conscience

Fallibilism is not self-contradictory

Young children, non-coercion and the interplay of reason

How to talk so your kids will be manipulated

Unschooling and academic education 3

Covert educational coercion

Unschooling and academic education 2

Instruction does not address the immediate moment-by-moment concerns and questions of the learner

Unschooling and academic education 1

The education game

Who wouldn’t be ‘school phobic’?

Children’s rights and the law

Television vs. workbooks

“What do you think?”

Never stop reading to your children

What does the UK do about homeschoolers not educating their kids?

Clarification of what I mean by ‘coercion’

Coercing children to play an instrument

Unschooling is not the same as non-coercive education

The education of Karl Popper

Video games: a unique educational environment

The social, educational, economic and political oppression of children

Autonomous learning, autonomous life

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