Consensual Parenting? I don't think so.

by Sierra on April 3, 2009 · 26 comments

My friend Rowan linked to a Globe and Mail article about something called “consensual parenting”. The basic premise of the article seems to be that parents and children can live together in an entirely consensus based power structure, as peers.

I know there are schools that function this way, like Sudbury Valley. But it’s clear to me that I could never function like that as a parent. This is one of those things that is *so close* to my parenting approach and yet…not.

I love consensus process as much as the next crunchy leftist activist. But at the end of the day, between me and Rio, I am the boss of her. Double for her baby sister.

Take the example the article uses, of clothing. Rio is allowed to choose her own outfits, but I insist that everything she wears be 1. clean, 2. generally free of tears and stains, 3. appropriate for the weather, and 4. approximately her size.

I do this to protect her from freezing her butt off and to protect our family from social censure, both of which I’d risk if I let her wear polka dot shorts to the playground when it is 43 degrees out (her outfit of choice this morning). My job is to care for her, and to let her know that she is cared for by me. I am her safety net, and knowing I’ll catch her allows her to take risks and sometimes fall. That’s how she grows.

Another, and to me more important, point, is that I want Rio to grow up to be a competent person with the power to change the world. To do that she needs to understand power.

I have power over her, whether we like it or not. I want that power to be as transparent as possible so that through seeing me use it, she can learn how power works. I hope she’ll learn that freedom and responsibility are a package deal.

When she was curious about school a few months ago, someone asked me why I didn’t leave the decision about whether or not to attend kindergarten up to her. The simple answer is: I can’t. Rio cannot read a clock, a calendar, or a map. She cannot read or write well enough to fill out kindergarten registration forms. She is not capable of choosing to go to kindergarten. She can wish to attend school, but its not possible for her to do it without my participation and support.

So I must choose for her, and to pretend otherwise does her a disservice. If I abdicate my power as an adult with a full set of adult skills, and pretend she and I are equals, I make the world a scary scary place. A place where she can’t count on me to know better than her, or to have a solution when things go wrong. One day the world will be that scary, but it doesn’t have to be when she’s four-years-old. I really can fix most of her problems these days.

When I have to make choices for her, I try to let her see that I’m doing so and help her understand why. (In the case of kindergarten, for those just tuning, we wound up with consensus that homeschooling would be a better choice).

I also sometimes make choices for myself that affect her, like, “I don’t want to be in the same room with you if you don’t stop screaming and throwing crayons,” or “I don’t want to read you a story if you ask in a demanding voice.” I feel fine about having these boundaries. They’re clear, honest and critical to my sanity as a person who spends almost all my waking hours in the company of at least two preschoolers.

As a new mom, I used to feel pretty freaked out about enforcing rules on the kids when they were being annoying but not dangerous. Now I feel like, hey, they want to live with me, they have to play by my rules. I wouldn’t let an adult throw crayons at me; I’m not going to tolerate it in my kids either.

I think this approach, while it’s more authoritarian than I’d imagined myself being as a mom back when I was pregnant with Rio, must be working. I think this because the other night at dinner Rio complained loudly that she did not want to eat the food her dad had cooked.

I said, “If you don’t like it, you can make your own dinner.”

Usually this logic persuades her to eat what she’s offered. But this time she quietly got up from the table, went to the fridge, took out a box of leftover pasta, pushed a chair up to the counter, and put her pasta in the microwave. She heated it up for a minute, put it on her plate, and ate it.

Responsibility=freedom=power. I think she’s starting to get it.

Also recently, when we were fighting about something, Rio angrily shouted that when she is an adult she is going to live in her own house with her own husband and have her own babies and her own job and she won’t have to listen to me anymore. It was her supreme threat, her nuclear option. It’s also my goal in life. You do that, kid.

Tagged as: parenting, rio, serena

http://asimplelife.livejournal.com/ Tara

Hurrah! This is exactly how I feel about parenting as well. I clearly remember a woman posting in a community about how her child didn’t want to brush their teeth and that was ok with her because she was unparenting. I was horrified. Your child isn’t old enough to know the consequences of that action. In the end they will suffer because you didn’t impart your knowledge of what is really best in the long run. I am all for children being allowed to make choices in their day-to-day life, but some choices have to be made by us because we are old enough to know that the long-term benefits outweigh the short-term pain.

[Reply]
Sierra Reply:
April 4th, 2009 at 4:12 am
aw! I’m so glad this spoke to you. I almost didn’t post it because it felt simultaneously too raw and too obvious. And yes, I think the paired issues are being open about the power one holds as a parent and dealing fairly with the little people one has power over – my kids can trust me to be (mostly) consistent and loving toward them.

[Reply]
Elizabeth Magill Reply:
April 4th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
This was important to me, too. I hope that you will post more on this power idea later.

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http://asimplelife.livejournal.com Tara

Hurrah! This is exactly how I feel about parenting as well. I clearly remember a woman posting in a community about how her child didn’t want to brush their teeth and that was ok with her because she was unparenting. I was horrified. Your child isn’t old enough to know the consequences of that action. In the end they will suffer because you didn’t impart your knowledge of what is really best in the long run. I am all for children being allowed to make choices in their day-to-day life, but some choices have to be made by us because we are old enough to know that the long-term benefits outweigh the short-term pain.

[Reply]
Sierra Reply:
April 4th, 2009 at 4:12 am
aw! I’m so glad this spoke to you. I almost didn’t post it because it felt simultaneously too raw and too obvious. And yes, I think the paired issues are being open about the power one holds as a parent and dealing fairly with the little people one has power over – my kids can trust me to be (mostly) consistent and loving toward them.

[Reply]
Elizabeth Magill Reply:
April 4th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
This was important to me, too. I hope that you will post more on this power idea later.

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Sarah T

Bravo.

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Sarah T

Bravo.

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ceo

Your reaction to that article was pretty much the same as mine. There appears to be this mindset some people have, that if they think some practice, such as overly authoritarian parenting, is bad, they must go all the way to the opposite extreme. There needs to be a balance struck; we make a point of giving Benjamin decision-making power where appropriate, like what museum we’re going to, but if it’s well past his bedtime we’re not getting out the markers no matter how much he complains. (First words out of his mouth this morning were “Now can I draw?”)

[Reply]
ceo

Your reaction to that article was pretty much the same as mine. There appears to be this mindset some people have, that if they think some practice, such as overly authoritarian parenting, is bad, they must go all the way to the opposite extreme. There needs to be a balance struck; we make a point of giving Benjamin decision-making power where appropriate, like what museum we’re going to, but if it’s well past his bedtime we’re not getting out the markers no matter how much he complains. (First words out of his mouth this morning were “Now can I draw?”)

[Reply]
blk

Yes, this, very much. My mother was more authoritarian than I am, and I thought I would be more about consensus when I had kids, too. One of the hardest parts of parenting for me was to learn to make my own choices about what works and what doesn’t, for whom, and why, instead of just copying or opposing her methods based on what I liked or didn’t like about my childhood.

I believe that, among other things, the idea of -consistent boundaries- is the most important thing a parent can give a child. I want my children to be secure and empowered without giving them adult-level responsibility that they aren’t capable of handling. At the same time, I don’t shield them from knowing about many of the responsibilities I have (e.g., taxes, fiscal planning, time management), so they get a sense of the things they will grow into when they are ready.

[Reply]
blk

Yes, this, very much. My mother was more authoritarian than I am, and I thought I would be more about consensus when I had kids, too. One of the hardest parts of parenting for me was to learn to make my own choices about what works and what doesn’t, for whom, and why, instead of just copying or opposing her methods based on what I liked or didn’t like about my childhood.

I believe that, among other things, the idea of -consistent boundaries- is the most important thing a parent can give a child. I want my children to be secure and empowered without giving them adult-level responsibility that they aren’t capable of handling. At the same time, I don’t shield them from knowing about many of the responsibilities I have (e.g., taxes, fiscal planning, time management), so they get a sense of the things they will grow into when they are ready.

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phoenix

I haven’t read the article, but was just having almost exactly this discussion after mentioning my discomfort with the term “anti-authoritarian parenting”. Thank you for putting it all so well.

[Reply]
phoenix

I haven’t read the article, but was just having almost exactly this discussion after mentioning my discomfort with the term “anti-authoritarian parenting”. Thank you for putting it all so well.

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http://www.mothermirth.com/ Terry

Absolutely, unequivocally in agreement with you here. There is a balance to strike here, a giving of power, an earning of more power. A consistent and conscious teaching on how to handle responsibility. My five year old is an amazing little person, and she is able to help negotiate boundaries and consequences and make good choices, as is my seven year old. But I’m not abdicating my role as person in charge of them until they are ready to take on the world. “Authoritarian” sounds like a dirty word in my left-leaning crunchy brainmeats, but on the “consensual – authoritarian” parenting scale, my parenting style definitely leans more toward the latter.

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http://www.mothermirth.com Terry

Absolutely, unequivocally in agreement with you here. There is a balance to strike here, a giving of power, an earning of more power. A consistent and conscious teaching on how to handle responsibility. My five year old is an amazing little person, and she is able to help negotiate boundaries and consequences and make good choices, as is my seven year old. But I’m not abdicating my role as person in charge of them until they are ready to take on the world. “Authoritarian” sounds like a dirty word in my left-leaning crunchy brainmeats, but on the “consensual – authoritarian” parenting scale, my parenting style definitely leans more toward the latter.

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http://childwild.wordpress.com/ Sierra

“unparenting”? I wonder if I sound that crazy when I tell people I am “unschooling” my kids?

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http://childwild.wordpress.com/ Sierra

“unparenting”? I wonder if I sound that crazy when I tell people I am “unschooling” my kids?

[Reply]
msmsgirl

I have power over her, whether we like it or not. I want that power to be as transparent as possible so that through seeing me use it, she can learn how power works. I hope she’ll learn that freedom and responsibility are a package deal.

When I have to make choices for her, I try to let her see that I’m doing so and help her understand why.

These two sentences just went into my word document called “values,” where I keep a list of the truths and intentions I want to pass on to my kid if i should be lucky enough to have one. They are revelatory to me — I grew up with a frustrated, depressed mother who exerted a truly insane amount of controlling power over me and was really invested in it (which was really damaging) — but who was also, paradoxically, thankfully, really transparent about that power! So much so that I had a fully-developed critique of it by the time I was like 8 or 9 that I still find astonishingly astute when I read my journals 20 yrs later.

This is the first time I have realized that it’s NOT the blatant, explicit openness about the fact that the parent exerts authority over children that’s the problem — far from it, parental power and authority that’s hidden and manipulative and passive-aggressive and unspeakable causes FAR worse problems, I think!! It’s a matter of appropriate degree. Thank you for this!

[Reply]
Sierra Reply:
April 5th, 2009 at 2:38 am
wow, that’s intense.

I have to confess that it reminds me of an amusing incident in my own childhood. We were driving cross-country from Arizona to New York, and my mom let seven-year-old me hold the map and “navigate”. Only when we wound up in El Paso instead of Albuquerque (hundreds of miles away from where we intended to be), did she notice that I’d missed a turn in the directions I was giving her.

This was funny and not tragic because instead of living on the street we got to go to a funky cool space museum in the middle of nowhere, and were a day late getting to Grandma’s house at the end of our trip. Also, my mom immediately learned her lesson and took full responsibility for the mistake. On the down-side, it has been 23 years and she still won’t let me navigate when we are driving somewhere together.

ps – I kind of love your blog. I’m glad you stumbled on mine.

[Reply]
msmsgirl

I have power over her, whether we like it or not. I want that power to be as transparent as possible so that through seeing me use it, she can learn how power works. I hope she’ll learn that freedom and responsibility are a package deal.

When I have to make choices for her, I try to let her see that I’m doing so and help her understand why.

These two sentences just went into my word document called “values,” where I keep a list of the truths and intentions I want to pass on to my kid if i should be lucky enough to have one. They are revelatory to me — I grew up with a frustrated, depressed mother who exerted a truly insane amount of controlling power over me and was really invested in it (which was really damaging) — but who was also, paradoxically, thankfully, really transparent about that power! So much so that I had a fully-developed critique of it by the time I was like 8 or 9 that I still find astonishingly astute when I read my journals 20 yrs later.

This is the first time I have realized that it’s NOT the blatant, explicit openness about the fact that the parent exerts authority over children that’s the problem — far from it, parental power and authority that’s hidden and manipulative and passive-aggressive and unspeakable causes FAR worse problems, I think!! It’s a matter of appropriate degree. Thank you for this!

[Reply]
Sierra Reply:
April 5th, 2009 at 2:38 am
wow, that’s intense.

I have to confess that it reminds me of an amusing incident in my own childhood. We were driving cross-country from Arizona to New York, and my mom let seven-year-old me hold the map and “navigate”. Only when we wound up in El Paso instead of Albuquerque (hundreds of miles away from where we intended to be), did she notice that I’d missed a turn in the directions I was giving her.

This was funny and not tragic because instead of living on the street we got to go to a funky cool space museum in the middle of nowhere, and were a day late getting to Grandma’s house at the end of our trip. Also, my mom immediately learned her lesson and took full responsibility for the mistake. On the down-side, it has been 23 years and she still won’t let me navigate when we are driving somewhere together.

ps – I kind of love your blog. I’m glad you stumbled on mine.

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http://asimplelife.livejournal.com/ Tara

Probably not. I doubt you are cruising online message boards explaining to people that it’s ok if your kids don’t ever learn to read and write.

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http://asimplelife.livejournal.com Tara

Probably not. I doubt you are cruising online message boards explaining to people that it’s ok if your kids don’t ever learn to read and write.

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http://www.scrivenings.net/ Scrivener

Totally agreed with you on this issue. And I think it’s key that you explicitly state that setting boundaries for your children is not just about exerting authority over them, but it is, in all seriousness, about protecting your children.

I’ll cite an example from my own childhood. My mother pretty much did abdicate responsibility and treated me as an equal most of the time, beginning when I was probably in first grade. I did get to make many big decisions, which sometimes did feel empowering for me–but much more often, it was terrifying. I always felt that I had a burden to get things right or else everything would fall apart. When I was in 5th grade, my mother took me along to look at houses to purchase, and she asked my opinion on them. When we found a townhouse, she asked me if I thought it would work for us and I liked the place, so I said yes. A few years later, we found out we were signed to a mortgage with crazy ballooning interest rates we couldn’t afford, the house was foreclosed on, and we were living on the streets. For *years* I felt terribly guilty because I had made the wrong decision about which house to purchase–when I was ten years old.

[Reply]
http://www.scrivenings.net Scrivener

Totally agreed with you on this issue. And I think it’s key that you explicitly state that setting boundaries for your children is not just about exerting authority over them, but it is, in all seriousness, about protecting your children.

I’ll cite an example from my own childhood. My mother pretty much did abdicate responsibility and treated me as an equal most of the time, beginning when I was probably in first grade. I did get to make many big decisions, which sometimes did feel empowering for me–but much more often, it was terrifying. I always felt that I had a burden to get things right or else everything would fall apart. When I was in 5th grade, my mother took me along to look at houses to purchase, and she asked my opinion on them. When we found a townhouse, she asked me if I thought it would work for us and I liked the place, so I said yes. A few years later, we found out we were signed to a mortgage with crazy ballooning interest rates we couldn’t afford, the house was foreclosed on, and we were living on the streets. For *years* I felt terribly guilty because I had made the wrong decision about which house to purchase–when I was ten years old.

[Reply]