Re: punishment | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: Lynn Nadeau (welcomeolympus.net) | |
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 09:06:01 -0700 (MST) |
Dear Howard, I feel like this topic is getting too far from the cohoL-appropriate category, so I'll post the majority of my reply to you off-list. Not to prove you wrong, but to illustrate that a well-educated 57 year old mother like myself -- also a preschool teacher for 8 years, much of that with kids who had few good role models, to put it nicely-- may have very different "givens" than you do. I can also say that my spirited now-17-yr-old has turned out excellently: knowledgeable, ethical, cooperative, and compassionate. >1) Your 5-year-old gets mad at someone else's 3-year-old and shoves > them hard, causing them to fall down and cry. I would not punish the 5 yr old as a way of teaching them not to shove. I want them to avoid doing so, not out of fear of pain, but out of understanding that there are better ways to solve problems. I would first give my attention to the injured child, modelling compassion. I'd then be sure the 5 yr old was aware of what the result of their action had been, and maybe even what it might have been, had it been worse. I'd rewind to the situation that precipitated the shoving- was it fear, anger, jealousy, a sense of unfairness? I'd hear both children out on what that situation was, and get them in agreement, and then talk about other ways it could have been resolved, so they'd have a different option in their heads when the situation came up again. If there was a great deal of upset, I'd wait till they'd calmed down, using a brief "time out" if that system was in place. (When my daughter was 5 she'd sometimes be so wild I could only drag her into the bedroom and close the door, holding it from the other side while she spent her tantrum, but we'd still talk when she calmed down.) I would (since you postulate that this is "my" 5 yr old) have made some ground rules with my child, with their agreement, over the years, and would remind them of the one that says "it's never ok to hurt someone - that's not the way we solve problems" and maybe "if you can't see how to solve the problem without hurting, ask a grownup for help." I'll give you my response to the other situations off list. As far as cohousing goes, I think the message here is that we can't assume that everyone will logically parent the same way, and need to have room for individual parents to do it their own way in their own space, and come to some community expectations about a fairly neutral way to deal with children in community space. At RoseWind, we have some guidelines that include rules we've discussed with the kids (no little kids in the CH kitchen unless invited by a supervising adult, no using the living room couch as a trampoline), suggestions for resolving common problems (toy sharing - would you like it when he's done with it? or let's find another one, etc) and suggestions for speaking to parents about their children (I have safety concerns when I see Joey running among people with plates of hot food). I'm also tempted to make comparisons to violent/nonviolent solutions of international problems, which come out of mindsets as basic as how to solve toy sharing. Everything I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Reason to think hard about what we teach our kindergarteners by our example. Lynn Nadeau RoseWind Cohousing, Port Townsend WA a small town where 500 people showed up for an initial Not In Our Name group photo for publication, and about a hundred went three hours to Seattle to join the thousands in the street last Saturday; go to www.democracynow.org and listen to Ramsey Clarke's speech made to the 200,000 in DC that same day (virtually unreported by the NYT, WSJ, and AP). _______________________________________________ Cohousing-L mailing list Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org Unsubscribe and other info: http://www.communityforum.net/mailman/listinfo/cohousing-l
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Re: punishment Lynn Nadeau, October 30 2002
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Re: Re: punishment/Non Violent Conflict-Resolution Racheli Gai, October 30 2002
- RE: Re: punishment/Non Violent Conflict-Resolution Albert Schinazi, November 4 2002
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Re: Re: punishment/Non Violent Conflict-Resolution Racheli Gai, October 30 2002
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