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Taking Children Seriously

children

New parent? Planning to have a baby and questioning the standard parenting ideas? Don’t miss this critical discussion!

Screens as a natural, integrated, positive part of life

“If you do X, I will give you Y”

How do you raise a child to believe in freedom?

Instead of Cry It Out, try bedtime anarchy

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

Don’t think for them

What if your child runs into traffic?

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?

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?

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?

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?

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 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?

How do you teach table manners?

How do you determine what food to give your children?

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.?

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

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

“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?

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

If criticism is valuable why not be more critical?

Surely criticism is always good?

What if your child wants to drive?

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

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

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

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?

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?

Taking Children Seriously: a new view of children

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