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EULA · 05-27-2005, 04:02 PM

Here's an excerpt by John Holt that I thought was interesting:

Quote:

As a rule we [adults] greatly exaggerate children's interest in power struggles with us. We are so concerned about maintaining our power over them that we think they are equally concerned about taking it away from us. They are very much aware that they are powerless, that we have great power over them. They don't like this, and in a vague way look forward to a time when it may not be true. But they are realistic enough to know that at the moment they are not going to be able to do much to change this. In any case, if they are to any degree healthy and happy, they have other things to do, they are busy living. They don't want to quarrel with us all the time. As long as we don't abuse our power intolerably, or weary the children with our constant struggles to assert it, most of them, most of the time, are willing, perhaps even too willing, to accept it. Most of the quarrels between adults and children that I see are needlessly provoked by the adults for no other reason than to prove what the child never for a minute doubts, that they are the Boss.

How may times, in airports and other places public and private, have I heard this old refrain, to children as young as three or two years old, "When I tell you to come here, you come here, do you understand?" And so, struggling frantically to maintain an authority which was never really in question, we may erode it, bit by bit, until suddenly it is gone, and we wonder in surprise and agony where it went. The child no longer cares. He has felt the sting or weight of our displeasure for so long that he can no longer feel it. We have argued with him so many times about trivia, and when no argument was necessary, that he decides that everything we argue about is trivial, and that we argue only because we like to argue. And then, when there is perhaps something serious to argue about, when we really want--perhaps even the mistakenly--to try to save him from what looks like a disastrous misstep, the lines are down, he cannot hear, his is not listening.

from Freedom and Beyond, pg. 18