Discipline is an environmental issue. It’s how you establish this environment where kids can do a lot. You cut down a lot on those kinds of things. If you understand kids can’t share, kids can’t take turns, kids can’t collect information, there’s things that kids can’t do, it’s a better environment for this. For me what really matters is the golden rule, I’m going to treat you like I want to be treated and I don’t want to be put in time out. I don’t want to be jerked around. I don’t want to be talked to in an inappropriate way. We can get through this. We’re going to be okay. That’s what you want to do. You don’t want the pain and the anguish and the embarrassment to linger very long.
Things to think about
In what ways can you establish an environment that respects children are egocentric and cuts down on discipline problems as a result?
Do you have a set of rules for children?
How do you hold boundaries with children that does not shame or punish them?
When you have a problem with a child, do you look for the root causes first?
Are children made to come to gathering times? Why or why not?
Highlights from Playful Wisdom
by Michael Mendizza featuring Bev Bos and Joseph Chilton Pearce
Personally I don’t like strollers. I prefer carrying small children to pushing or lying them in a trendy three-wheel stroller. I can feel their soft face next to mine as we make funny sounds together, not loud, just between the two of us. As we walk I can rub their feet, knowing that tiny nerve endings move up from her paws to every part of her body. Forget all the brain stuff. I do it because it feels good. Lying in the stroller means the child is not being touched. Convenient for me, indeed, but sensory deprivation for the child – and sensory deprivation for me too, but most adulterated-adults are too busy with themselves to notice. In a sensory deprived culture, we often don’t consider sensory deprivation – sensory deprivation.
“If we have pleasurable sensory stimulation, that’s the brain engrams, the templates that will be stored, and they will be images of pleasure. If they are painful there are going to be images of pain, and pain evokes violent responses. But there is something else that invokes violent responses, and that is the absence of pleasure, and that is really different than the sensory event of pain, and most people don’t appreciate that distinction. In fact, more damage occurs with the sensory deprivation of pleasure than the actual experiencing of physical, painful trauma, which can be handled quite well in individuals who have been brought up with a great deal of physical-affectional bonding and pleasure, which carries with it emotional trust and security. So we really have to look at the trauma of sensory deprivation of physical pleasure, and that translates into the separation experiences, the isolation experiences of the infant and the mother. That’s the beginning, the origins of violence.” James Prescott, PhD.