Cohousing-L Mailing List: Trespassing, punishment, child-rearing (was: Re: [C-L]_guns-OT)

[Howard Landman (howard]

(Sigh, here we go again ...)

You know, it's really difficult to have a meaningful discussion with
someone who, whenever you criticize something they've said, simply
ignores the criticism and wanders off onto a new topic.  Or several.

> the dangers of bad substances in the home ...  
> suggest you get rid of some of the stuff you seem to have in your home
> (solvents, Drano, etc.).  It's very likely that the air quality in your
> home is very poor (and as such is especially bad for the very young). 

I have taught Chemistry lab at Princeton.  I know a lot more about this
topic than most people ever will.  I can identify hundreds of chemical
compounds instantly by smell.  Having taught chemical safety, I'm a
real stickler for it in my own home.  I once had a knock-down-drag-out
fight with one of my girls when she wanted to mix up hair bleach in
a drinking glass.  House rules: we don't put toxic chemicals in food
ware and we don't put food in lab glassware (of which I have a bit).
And we wear our safety goggles when needed.  These are not open for
debate.  I feel as strongly about this as you probably would about
someone in your house keeping a loaded revolver under their pillow.

Drano is mostly lye and aluminum chips.  It's solid.  It produces no
vapors; in fact, if it was exposed to the air, it would tend to remove
acidic vapors such as vinegar (acetic acid) or HCl.  It also tends
to absorb moisture, which is why you need to keep it sealed tightly.
There is a minor danger of dust.

All of the large quantities of solvents are in the garage.  The remainder
of the dangerous chemicals are kept in the laundry room, which gets
vented every time the dryer is run.  Many of them are laundry chemicals
such as bleach and spot removers, which would be very inconvenient to
keep elsewhere.  A few others are items which it is hazardous to let
freeze (e.g. the rocket engines, which tend to explode on ignition if
they've been temperature-cycled too much).  All these items are at least
four feet off the floor.

We try to keep the house vented as much as possible, but since it's often
sub-freezing in the winter here there's a trade-off to be made between that
and energy efficiency.

In summary, you're both "preaching to the choir" and imagining a situation
that doesn't correspond well with reality.  None of which detracts from the
original point, which is that any home presents some kinds of danger, and
unsupervised minors should not be trespassing.  Two people here at River
Rock have wood shops in their homes, complete with table saws and drill
presses etc.  Neither of them have children.  I believe it is completely
unreasonable to expect that they idiot-proof their homes on the off chance
that someone else's child might wander in uninvited and do something
stupid.  (As long as they're not creating an "attractive nuisance".)
Legally and morally, the child's parents are solely responsible for it and
its actions.


> on the futility of punishment.

>> So even if I did have a firearm, I'm not sure it would be at the top of
>> my list of worries when I thought about irresponsible, unethical and
>> unsupervised minors loose in my dwelling.
> 
>> If one of MY young kids went into someone else's house uninvited, I would
>> most likely punish them pretty severely.  I don't think trespassing is
>> acceptable behavior.  Do you?

> Kids often enter other people's houses without knocking
> because they haven't mastered the "etiquette", or sometimes
> because they are too absorbed in what they are doing to
> notice.

Every baby is born a barbarian.  It's our job as parents to raise them into
civilized human beings.  This is not an easy task.  It is one thing to have
theories of how children should be raised, which is easy and takes no effort
at all and perhaps not even very much thought.  It is quite another thing to
actually raise a child, which takes an immense amount of work and not a
little thought and soul-searching.

Some people have the theory that no child should ever be punished for
anything they do.  Well, that's a nice theory.  The factual situation
is that children often tend to do things that pose severe threats to
themselves and/or others.  A parent then has a choice of allowing the
child to continue in the activity and suffer the natural consequences
(which might include death or serious injury, harm to another child,
or massive property damage), or intervening.  Sometimes the parent
is not present at the time and must act (or not) later.  In any case,
parents are legally liable for anything their children do before
they reach 18.  This gives us the legal right to set limits on what
behavior we consider allowable.

Anyway ... becoming civilized *is*, largely, mastering "etiquette".
It is knowing how to behave towards others: what to say, what to do,
what not to say, what not to do.  It is learning the legal niceties
of driving and commerce, what is criminal and what is not.  It is
learning to read and write in a standardized way so that others may
understand us.  It is learning a large amount of cultural context in
order to make sense of what has gone before and thus gain insight
into what may come next (cf. Ashley Montague's "The Cultured Man"
for his thorough, if slightly dated, definition of this).

This is true even in cohousing.  We have new "etiquettes" such as
consensus to learn and make work.  We have to decide collectively
and individually what is and isn't acceptable within the community
and within our own homes.  These rules and boundaries may be quite
different from (or amazingly similar to) the ones we use in the
wider world.  Yet we need to learn and follow them, we need to
become "more civilized".  And we have to teach them to our children.

By my parents standards (frequent spankings), I believe I'm a fairly
permissive parent.  However, consider the following situations
(all real, either in my family or in ones I know) and tell me that
in no case is any form of punishment whatsoever desirable or necessary:

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.

2) Your 8-year-old boy is "playing Star Wars" and swinging a large
   pointed stick at another child's face - after having been asked
   3 times not to do so.

3) Your 10-year-old went into a neighbor's house without permission
   and caused $10,000 of property damage, which you must pay for.

4) Your 13-year-old just went from an A- student to a D student
   in 6 months, coincident with their starting to use marijuana.

5) Your 14-year-old girl just got pregnant and she's not sure who
   the father is.

6) Your 14-year-old girl is still doing Ecstasy even though one of
   her classmates died from ODing on it.  She figures the other
   girl was just unlucky.

7) Your 15-year-old boy is selling marijuana to his classmates, on
   school property (i.e. he's the local "dealer").  He doesn't
   see anything wrong with this.

8) Your 15-year-old just got arrested for shoplifting - for the
   second time.

9) Your 15-year-old and their friend "borrowed" your car, drove it
   5 miles without even a learner's permit, and ditched it when
   they got scared.

10)Your 16-year-old son has been repeatedly harrasing a lesbian girl
   at his high school and threatening to kill her "and all the other
   dykes and queers".

Again, NOT ONE OF THESE is made up.  In every case, real parents had to
make a real decision about how to handle it.

In community, where we so often care for each others children, it can
be especially difficult since we don't always know each other's standards
for parenting and also usually don't know the history of various behaviors.
It's a learning process.

I personally believe that punishment, even painful punishment, may sometimes
be appropriate.  It's a question (to me) of doing the least overall harm.
Failing to punish someone may make them more likely to do harm, or be
harmed, later.

Here are two truths which many people either do not know or do not believe:

Truth 1:  Pain is not harm.  Harm is not pain.

There are many kinds of pain.  Some of them are related to harm, and some
are not.  There are many kinds of harm.  Some of them are painful, some
are not.  It is possible to produce excruciating pain (e.g. with a nerve
hold) without doing any long term harm.  It is even possible for pain
to be associated with benefit (as in many dental procedures).  It is also
possible for great harm to have no associated pain at all (as with many
poisons).

Many people seem to assume that anything painful is necessarily harmful.
This is erroneous.

Truth 2: Pain can be a great teacher.

We learn more quickly from pain than from anything else.  It is how we
learn not to burn ourselves on the stove, not to cut ourselves with a
knife, not to stub our toe, not to say things that will make someone
else want to hit us.  It is a powerful feedback mechanism throughout
life, but especially during development.

Given these two truths, I find it somewhat difficult to accept the
position that punishment is never, under any circumstances, desirable
or beneficial.  100 years ago the accepted wisdom was "spare the rod,
spoil the child".  Today we reject that as un-PC.  100 years from
now it'll be something else.  But rejecting punishment entirely means
rejecting pain as a teacher, and rejecting the lessons it can teach.
I'm just not sure whether that's really wise.

It's also the case that parents don't always have the choice.  Some
of the children listed above are going to be punished by the legal
system, regardless of their parents' desires.  What's worse, a spanking
or jail?  Could a spanking have prevented jail?  These are not clear,
simple questions with easy answers.

> And some probably do things like that because they get punished,
> which makes them angry and rebellious.  

I reject your implicit argument that punishment on average
leads to more, not less, misbehavior.  We do have to be cautious
about sending the message that "might makes right", which is the
wrong thing to learn.  But I believe that "Whatever you do is
OK with me" is also a wrong and dangerous message.  Parents
need to set standards.

It's also been shown that most of kids behaviors is learned from
their peers, not their parents.  This is also true in other
primates; for example, raising a chimp without its mother does
less psychological harm than raising it without any other
young chimps to play with.  The bulk of socialization is worked
out among coevals.  Thus the importance of having enough kids
of the same age in a cohousing group to play with each other,
and of making sure your child chooses good friends.  Parental
influence only goes so far.

And finally, many kids get angry and rebellious and disobedient
whether or not they are punished.  A lot of them don't even know
why they act the way they do.  It seems to go with the territory.

> [trespassing is] Hardly what I'd call "unethical"...

You must have a different dictionary from mine.  Are you sure it's
for the English language?

        Howard A. Landman
        River Rock Commons
        Fort Collins CO
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