Learning
All Around
Information For
Mindful Family Living
The newsletter of Wears The Baby, distributing
cool and useful goodies for nurtured children and mindful family life.
Volume 1, Issue 2 December 1998
Inside this issue
Feature Article
– getting it out there
Still Thinking
– book excerpts to consider
Papa
– views on fatherhood
Site Seeing
– cool web sites
Buy, Sell & Barter
– goods ‘n’ services
AND MORE...
Spanking:
a shortcut to nowhere...
Penelope Leach
A lot of parents take spanking for granted and don't
give it much thought.They got spanked for being naughty when they were
children.Now that they've got children they hand the spanking out.What's
the big deal?
Some parents feel more strongly than that about
spanking. There's a group that feels spanking is an important part of bringing
up children; not only a parental right, but a duty. There's also a group
that doesn't really approve of spanking; wouldn't ever plan to spank,or
do it in cold blood, but can nevertheless be driven to spanking and then
regret it.
Finally,there are a few parents who feel that spanking
is a very big deal indeed and wouldn't lay a finger on their children however
maddening they were. Some of them have spanked a child once or twice and
never forgotten it. Non-spanking parents aren't especially saintly or especially
patient. They aren't all middle-class people with (or without) nannies;
they don't all have loving partners, supportive families, nice homes or
good jobs and they don't only have little girls or just one child each.
In fact, there isn't anything special at all about parents who don't spank.
They are just people who have thought about hitting children and decided
it's got no place in their family relationships because it is unjust and
it doesn't help "discipline" either. Those parents care just as much as
everyone else about their children's behaviour. In fact,a lot of them are
rather strict parents who set clear limits.
I am a part of that non-spanking group, both as
a mother and as a psychologist. I believe that spanking-or tapping, or
slapping, or cuffing,or shaking, or beating or whipping-children is actually
wrong. I also believe (and hope to show) that far from producing better
disciplined people, spanking makes it much more difficult to teach children
how to behave. Spanking is a shortcut to nowhere. To get where we want
to go with our children we need to take a longer route, teaching them with
our heads and hearts rather than with our hands and belts.
The Evidence that Spanking Doesn't Help
If spanking and other physical punishments worked,
you'd expect children who are slapped or spanked 'when they need it' to
learn to behave better and better so that they needed punishing less and
less often. But that's not the case. Families who start spanking babies
before they are a year old (and 63% of mothers surveyed in 1985 said they
did this) are just as likely to spank them very frequently when they are
four year olds as families which don't start spanking until later. In fact
almost all four year olds are spanked (97% of a big random sample of British
children), so spanking babies and toddlers clearly does not produce better-behaved
pre-school children.
Plenty of spankings at four don't make for better
behaved seven year olds either. Although some children are spanked less
by that age, three quarters of that British sample were still spanked regularly
1 - 6 times a week and one in eight were spanked at least once a day. For
some, 'ordinary spanking' has clearly not produced behaviour the parents
found acceptable because by their seventh birthday a quarter of all boys
and nearly as many girls have been hit with a belt or a strap, a cane or
stick, or with any 'suitable' object that came to hand such as a slipper
or a wooden spoon. Whatever lessons those parents are trying to teach,
their children clearly are not learning them. There is even some evidence
from the British study that they may be less able to learn because physical
punishments reduce children's IQ.
However carefully you tell a child why you are spanking,
reason always gets lost in the feelings the punishment produces. A baby
or toddler is as amazed and horrified when a beloved parent spanks as you
would be if the family dog suddenly turned around and took a chunk out
of your leg. At that age a child will often turn to you to make the hurt
better. A child of four or five is overwhelmed with rage which s/he dare
not show to you and must bury until it can be taken out on someone or something
else. An older child is angry too but also deeply humiliated. The blow
may hurt self-esteem much more than it hurts a backside. Those feelings
leave no room for remorse or determination to do better in future. Spanked
or beaten children cannot think about what they have done because they
are full of what parents have done to them.
How Children Learn to Behave
Babies are born human but they aren't born knowing
what it takes to be people. To find that out they need a long apprenticeship
to people who have already made the grade as adults: parents or the permanent
caregivers who stand in for parents. Like other kinds of apprentices, children
learn by being with you; watching and listening to you, imitating you,
trying things out and getting them wrong, trying again and getting them
right.... One day each of your children will have learned so much that
s/he will be ready to function as an independent adult and maybe pass all
that learning on to your grandchildren.
Children want to learn because wanting to know is
built into them. They particularly want to learn how they should behave
because (whether it looks that way today or not!) they want to please you.
But children can only learn at the pace their individual development, mental,
physical and emotional, allows. So trying to teach them to behave in ways
they can't yet manage, or expecting them to grow up faster than they can,
stores up unnecessary misery for everyone. The very quickest way to lose
the co-operation which is the foundation of good and easy discipline is
to ask the impossible of your child and imply that unless s/he performs
it s/he will lose your love.
Babies
Your baby cannot learn any social behaviour because
she does not yet know that there is a world full of people who are separate
from her. She cannot learn to respect your feelings (such as your desire
to spend the night asleep!)because she can't understand that you might
feel differently from her. Her waking and crying, her desire to play or
suck at 3:00 a.m. certainly will displease you but equally certainly are
not meant to. Whatever your baby does or does not do, it is not to get
at you.
Toddlers
A young toddler finds it difficult to learn rules
and regulations, like leaving the TV alone or not dabbling in his food,
because the curiosity which he needs to keep him finding things out is
much more developed than his memory. If you keep showing him and telling
him what he must do, he will learn. But don't expect him to learn from
ten tellings in a day. It may take hundreds of tellings over months.
At two or three your child does know that you and he are separate people
but he isn't at all sure that he welcomes that. One bit of him wants to
get on with growing up and become independent but another bit of him finds
it scary and wishes he were still a babe in your arms. That's why you get
shouts of 'me do it' one moment, and floods of tears the next because you've
taken him at his word and left him to struggle on his own. Giving him room
to grow up but not enough space to feel lonely makes this a difficult stage
for you, but it's much worse for him. He gets angry and frustrated and
afraid. He may throw tantrums, bite and kick. But it's himself he's angry
with: his own smallness, incompetence and fearfulness. The more competent,
in control and able to manage he can feel, the calmer and easier to handle
he will be. And it's your constant calm and kindly control that will give
him those feelings. Two-year olds cannot be 'good' or 'naughty' on purpose
because they do not yet know right from wrong or understand what makes
the difference. Why is it clever to turn out a sandcastle and naughty to
turn out your pudding? Why is it 'dirty' to dabble in wee in a potty and
'clean' to dabble in soapy water in a basin? Your toddler will be 'good'
whenever you can arrange for her to want to do what you want her to do.
Want those toys picked up? Tell her she must and she may easily refuse
because she doesn't want to pick them up nor understand that she should
do things just because you want them done. If she says 'No!' you can scold,
shout, slap, reduce her to a jelly of misery, but you'll still have to
pick up the toys yourself. But say 'I bet you can't pick all those up before
I've tidied your bed...' and there's a good chance she'll do the job with
no tears for either of you. And while she's doing it, she's learning that
toys live in the toy cupboard rather than on the floor.
Pre-school children
By the time yours is three or four s/he will be
capable of understanding most of your feelings and your rights, will be
able to remember most of your instructions, and will be able to foresee
the results of many actions. When s/he reaches that stage s/he will beable
to be 'good' or 'naughty' on purpose but which s/he chooses will mostly
depend on how s/he feels about you. If your child reaches that stage of
development feeling that you are basically loving, approving, and on his
side, he will want (most of the time) to please you and he will behave
(with many lapses) as you wish. But if he reaches that stage feeling that
you are overpowering, incomprehensible and against him, he may decide that
trying to please you is hopeless because you never are pleased; that minding
when you are cross is too painful because you are cross too often and that
loving you is too dangerous because you have so often seemed not to love
him.
Schoolchildren
A five, six, or seven your child can 'behave', but
don't expect that s/he'll always do so because s/he isn't a saint. Children
have periods of moodiness - don't you? They make mistakes, as we all do.
And they sometimes do what they want, rather than what they know they should,
just as everybody does. In fact children are people, just like the rest
of us, but people with a lot still to learn about being grown up. This
is often an age for filthy clothes and filthy language, for defiance, and
dumb insolence as well as for real sympathy, generosity and caring. Your
child needs you to sort out the bad bits from the good bits and to tell
him or her which is which. S/he doesn't just know that 'f...' is worse
than 'fiddle' or that calling an adult a 'silly cow' is quite different
from yelling it in the playground. Tell him or her. S/he doesn't just know
that the trouble s/he took over your Mother's Day card lit up your whole
week either. Tell him or her that, too. Children need parents to explain
to them about grown-up behaviours and feelings but they still need to be
allowed to be children. They need assurance that one day they will graduate
from apprentice to adult person but that in the meantime, however idiotic
their behaviour may be, they themselves are loved and valued and everything
you could want in a child.
Positive Discipline - Without Violence
Positive discipline requires confidence from parents:
confidence that you really are the most important people in your children's
lives; confidence that you can measure up to that as 'good enough parents'
and therefore confidence to see bringing children up as a matter of family
co-operation rather than adult authority and childish obedience to it.
Teaching children how to behave doesn't really mean
ensuring that they obey you and behave as you want while you are watching
them; it means helping them grow into people who will one day do as they
should and behave as they ought when there's nobody watching them and no
chance that they will be found out if they do wrong. That means that you
aren't just disciplining them from outside, but trying to help them build
the kind of self-discipline we call 'conscience'. To build that, children
need to understand each tiny everyday instruction or scolding so that they
can fit it into the bigger pattern of how people should 'behave' which
is forming inside them.
While you keep children safe, and protect others
from them, you are teaching them to keep themselves safe and to care for
other people. While you control them, you are helping them to control themselves.
And while you explain the moral values - like honesty, justice or respect
for others - that lie behind your orders and exhortations, you are offering
those values to your children so that they can take them in and make them
part of themselves.
Practical Ideas for Avoiding Spanking
Remind yourselves that you spend half your time
trying to stop your baby crying so causing crying is against your own interests.
* You don't have to slap hands that get into danger. Grabbing them
is quicker and attracts just as much attention.
* Force isn't the best way to get something from a baby who will hold
on tighter the more you pull. You don't need a slap, though. Offering a
swap always works.
* Baby-proofing living space is really worthwhile. In Sweden all young
families get free safety-gadgets to 'reduce family friction'. In North
America you'll have to buy and fit them yourself but every stair-gate,
fire-guard or cupboard lock is worthwhile. If there's nothing dangerous
or breakable in reach, there's not much to quarrel about.
* If you ever feel your temper going, make sure the baby's in a safe
place like a cot or playpen and leave the room until you've cooled down.
The baby may cry at being left but that's better than crying at being hit...
Toddlers Try to avoid direct clashes. They teach toddlers nothing and
bring you down to toddler level. Stay adult and remember that you are much
cleverer than your child. You can almost always find a diversion or distraction.
* Use your superior size and strength to defuse situations rather than
to hurt. A child who won't come out of the bath can be lifted. A child
who won't walk with you can be carried. A child who hits out at you or
the dog can be safely held and told 'No. That hurts...hitting's horrid...'
* If you're driven to distraction, your child will not listen to you
and you've started to deliver a slap, divert the blow to the table or your
own knee. The sound will interrupt the behaviour and the child will hear
what you say far better than if s/he was crying.
* Try not to join in tantrums. If you are at home, try turning your
back to the child and ignoring the scene. Singing to yourself may help
distract you from the noise and your own desire to yell back. If you're
in public and embarrassed, bodily remove the child to the nearest private
screaming place. Do be ready with comfort when the yells change to tears,
though. Real tantrums terrify toddlers.
* Don't even hope that your toddler will play safely without adult
attention for more than a few minutes. Instead, cultivate eyes in the back
of your head, the ability to do two (or five) things at the same time and
at least some adult company for yourself. Then ask yourself 'Has today
had any fun bits in it? How often have I heard that gurgly laugh?'
Older Children
Everybody gets angry or fed up with children sometimes.
Keeping your hands off your child doesn't mean that you have to bottle
up your feelings. If a child's driving you crazy, try clapping your hands
together as loudly as you can. The noise will interrupt whatever's going
on and the only person you may hurt is you!
* If you've started to say 'stop that this minute or I'll...', you
may have time to substitute 'scream' for slap you'. Do it, as loudly as
you can. Your child will be surprised and impressed and your tension will
vanish.
* If you're child is being silly- teasing, provoking, going too far,
and refusing to listen or take you seriously, don't waste energy on a crescendo
of unheeded shouts that end up in a slap. Crouch down so your two faces
are on the same level; grasp the child firmly by the upper arms so s/he
cannot avoid looking at you and then talk. If the 'conversation' starts
out with a yell, well, that's a lot better than a blow.
* If you feel irritation building inside you but your child hasn't
really done anything, try removing yourself for five minutes' peace and
self-indulgence. You could turn on the radio, put on some makeup, gaze
out of the window or run around the garden. It doesn't matter what you
do as long as it enables you to simmer down into a 'let's start again'
frame of mind.
Removing yourself means that your child loses your attention so unless
s/he's playing with friends that may be a kind of punishment just as it
is with younger children. You're saying 'I just don't want to be in here
with you until you can be nicer/quieter/gentler or whatever.
Above all - do talk. The people who say that children
prefer quick slaps to boring lectures don't realize that children aren't
bored when parents tell them what they think and feel and want. They want
adults to treat them the way other people treat each other - and they don't
want to be hurt any more than adults do. Much is made of the fact that
other animals control their young with nips and blows, but are you rearing
a lion cub or a person? Human beings have the unique advantage of being
able to talk. Let's do it.
Still Thinking...
good books
“Parenting as Practice”
By Jon Kabat-Zinn, from Wherever
You Go There You Are
This was how I saw it: You could look at each baby as a little Buddha or Zen master, your own private mindfulness teacher, parachuted into your life, whose presence and actions were guaranteed to push every button and challenge every belief and limit you had, giving you continual opportunities to see where you were attached to something and to let go of it. [italics mine] … The deep and constantly changing needs of children are all perfect opportunities for parents to be fully present rather than to operate in the automatic pilot mode, to relate consciously rather than mechanically, to sense the being in each child and let his or her vibrancy, vitality, and purity call forth our own.
The list of situations in which your equanimity and clarity will be sorely challenged and you will find yourself “losing it” is endless… These trials are not impediments to either parenting or mindfulness practice. They are practice…
I meditate early in the morning because there is no other time when things are quiet in the house and nobody is demanding my attention…I find that practicing in the early morning sets the tone for the entire day. It is both a reminder and an affirmation of what is important, and it sets the stage for mindfulness to spill out naturally into other aspects of the day. But when we had babies in the house, even the morning time was up for grabs. You couldn’t be too attached to anything because everything you set about to do, even if you arranged it very carefully, was always getting interrupted or completely thwarted.
I felt strongly in those days, and still do, that an awareness of my body and my breath and of our close contact as I held them while we sat helped my babies to sense calmness and explore stillness and feelings of acceptance. And their inner relaxation, which was much greater and purer than mine because their minds were not filled with adult thoughts and worries, helped me to be more calm and relaxed and present. When they were toddlers, I would do yoga with them climbing up, riding on, or hanging from my body.
Each day is a new challenge. Often
it feels overwhelming, and sometimes quite lonely. Parenting and
family life can be a perfect field for mindfulness practice, but it’s not
for the weak-hearted, the selfish or lazy, or the hopelessly romantic.
Parenting is a mirror that forces you to look at yourself. If you
can learn from what you observe, you just may have a chance to keep growing
yourself.
Papa
views on fatherhood
by Evan Scott
I want to talk about eating. I don’t have
any daughters. I have two boys. So the topic won’t necessarily include
manners. I trust you are the type of audience who will forgive me for any
offense. My wife made the statement to me years before we had children,
“Evan, just because your mouth can hold that much food doesn’t mean you
have to put that much in it.” But she is wrong. I must take bites that
fill my mouth. Even with potato chips where one could eat a chip at a time,
it is a rule that a man put multiple chips in his mouth. I find myself
applauding my sons, making a game of it even, when they take BIG bites.
I rarely get reprimanded for talking with food in my mouth because it is
an impossibility. I wonder if and when I have a daughter whether I will
encourage her to do the same or whether I will be the “foil” for learning
manners.
The DK Letter Page
Great books and software
for children and adults...
I recently began distributing the really cool books like the ones you see here at Dorling Kindersley's Online Store. As a distributor, I can offer them at a better price, and am also able to have TONS of beautiful books in my home as a part of my job. Let me know if you'd like more information about distributorship, or would like to receive a free catalog. DKFL offers great employment opportunities and hundreds of titles exclusively through distributors, and many other titles found in retail stores and on the web are offered through me at a discount of 10-30%.
December Specials!
DKFL doesn't allow me to post book and software titles on my web page, but I can send you an email of the December Specials. If you would like me to do that, send me an email with "DK-December" in the subject line and I will send it off to you. If you would like to receive the specials by email each month, sign up here.
If you have considered hosting a DK Book Look, now is the time...
From December 12 to January 11, you will receive a 40% Host Award! For example, if the guests of your party order $350 in books, you get to choose $140 worth of books FREE. And for the remainder of January, the host award is 30%. Beginning in February, it is the regular 20%.
Ask me
about long-distance book looks if you would like to earn free books and
software and don't live near Cincinnati.
Site Seeing
sites we like...
Xoom Greetings Online - Christmas is
rapidly approaching, so why not send an online greeting card to your friends
and family? Environmentally friendly and free of charge. Xoom says
there are Christmas greetings at this site, but I don’t see them!
Advent, Hanukkah, World AIDS Day, and much more - but not Christmas.
Never fear – here are a few more sites with free greeting card services
that are sure to have all you like.
Virtual Presents (as
it says, here you can give virtually anything to anyone with email, virtually
of course ? It’s all free and fun)
http://www.virtualpresents.com/
Blue Mountain Arts – greeting
cards for Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, Eid el-Fitr, St. Andrew’s
Day, Bible Week, and more.
http://www.bluemountain.com/
WebTobics
Greetings
http://www.dimensional.com/~janf/wtgreetings.html
Breastfeeding
Virtual Cards
http://www.elogica.com.br/aleitamento/ingles/postal.htm
Labor
Of Love Free Postcards (if you hunt around this site a bit, you might
find a nice parenting column by this one really hip person named Amy Scott)
http://www.thelaboroflove.com/postcards/index.shtml
Hallmark
Electronic Greetings
http://www.hallmarkconnections.com/SID=d42c8c17_4/cardshtml/index.html
Buy, Sell, & Barter
goods ‘n’ services
Jodi Harris
- Cincinnati - 513-731-7013
Offerings
Knitting and other craft work instruction
Wishes
Roto-tiller
Internet instruction
Rose Vanden-Eynden
- Cincinnati - 513-956-7827
Offerings
Licensed Massage Therapy, Energy and Spiritual Healing, Intuitive readings
and psychic consultations, Classes in mediumship development
Wishes
Astrological charts and interpretations for the family, Custom picture
framing, Wallpapering and house painting services, Bean/water table for
children, Train table for children
The Scott Family,
Cincinnati – (513) 631-2694
Offerings
Dirt Devil Broom Vac
Gymnastics instruction
Internet training
Proofreading
General computer help
Resume consulting
Wishes
Car repairs and maintenance
Periodic housecleaning
Dance lessons for children
Melissa Fannen, Cincinnati
– 531-3009
Offerings
Nutrition consulting
Wishes
Toys made from natural materials, new & used
The Robeson-Jacobsen Family, Cincinnati – (513) 792-0144
Offerings
Healthy homemade bread and other baked goods
Graphic design services (bus. cards, brochures, etc)
Puppet shows for birthday parties
Organic produce
Wishes
Red checked picnic table cloth
Beeswax candles
Haircuts
Used clothing–adults and children
Something New
broadening horizons...
Incorporating Buddhism into the Winter Holidays
Where ever Buddhism goes, it picks up the customs and bits of the culture from the country it arrives in. So perhaps we should find incorporate Buddhism with some of our winter holiday customs . Of course the compassion of the season fits right in with Buddhism.
December 8 is Bodhi day, by some Buddhist traditions. This day honors the enlightment of Siddhartha Gautama. Bodhi Day would be a good way to integrate the winter holidays with Buddhism. Here are some suggestions for integrating our customs with Buddhism:
* String multicolored lights around your
home. These lights represent enlightenment. That they are multicolored
represents the many pathways all of which are valid. Turn on the lights
each evening starting on December 8 and for 30 days after.
* The Bo tree (ficus religiousa) is the
tree under which the Buddha sat. Buy a potted live ficus tree for your
home (a ficus benjamina will do if you can’t find a ficus religiousa) decorate
this tree with lights, strings of beads representing how all things are
united, and three shiny bulbs representing the three jewels of Buddhism.
* Sujata offered The Buddha milk and rice
which helped him to regain his strength so that he could become enlightened.
A breakfast of milk and rice would be a way to start Bodhi day with mindfulness.
from The
Family Dharma Connection
Corrections from October/November Issue – "Papa" is by Evan Scott