Hi, Tereza. I will reply to your below by going into your words and responding to them there.
TEREZA
Hi, Jack. After our zoom conversation, I texted my oldest daughter about it. She has a master's that includes child psychology because she's a grief counselor for children and getting her license as a therapist specializing in children. When I told her that you said I was authoritarian, she wrote, "Well tell him that your kid says he's wrong." And she attached an article on authoritative vs. authoritarian parenting, making the point (as she has before) that my parenting style was the former.
JACK
You and your daughters both agreeing you were “authoritative” rather than “authoritarian” does not address my critique of you as Parentarchy personified.
Authoritative and Authoritarian, these two words need to be defined and in the PET analysis are often and actually the same which is parents using power to control behavior as you do with your point system of bribes/rewards and threats/punishment.
You do not use your system I hope with so-called adults (including your daughters now?!)—your husband/boyfriend, friends, etc, do you?
Read my post on how parents use a special language of “misbehave” only with their children (and pets).
You stated unequivocally that only “bribes, threats and manipulation” can be used in parenting. These parenting “tools” should be termed “weapons of fear” used to control behavior and are instances of manipulation which should be considered Authoritarian.
P.E.T. and any other truly peaceful parenting model (they are only a few, the most popular such as Triple P and Incredible Years use the “weapon of fear” as you do), consider the use of those behavioral control means to be Authoritarian parenting. Thomas Gordon often critiqued popular parenting programs like Triple P because they try to euphemistically reframe punishments as “natural consequences” etc. and use Timeouts which P.E.T. considers punishment and does not sanction.
Your power-to-control parenting style of “bribes, threats, and manipulation” is accurately termed Authoritarian and it is understandable you and your daughters want to euphemistically reframe this as “Authoritative” but my argument here I hope does not allow you to get away with that.
TEREZA
I happen to be visiting her now and read some of your commentary to her along with my quotes. She said that she and her sisters were talking about my point system recently and both thought it was a good system. She said the beauty of it is that it makes the consequences small and replaceable with a little bit of effort. Maybe a kid may decide it's worth it to lose a point, but that's their choice. She sometimes counsels people who've grown up with very harsh consequences, and that's been tragic. She also sees parents now, where the pendulum has swung the other way, and they're at a loss. And their children are unprepared for life, which has consequences, to say the least.
JACK
As you did before in our discussion on Atheism and continue to do here on parenting, you avoid addressing the issue of Parentarchy because you personify it and cannot see yourself in its mirror just as most authoritarian or permissive parents cannot. The Elephant in your Womb is trying to be born but you would abort it.
You obviously did not read this post or hear in our last Forum the questions put to you about a fourth cooperative and mutual need-meeting way of autonomic respect rather than your three control-for-obedience reward, punishment, manipulation trinity.
I invite you to read my post above what Thomas Gordon wrote on parents like you who believe there are only two supposedly opposed ways of parenting (they are both sides of the one coin of power to control parenting whose fiat financing has condemned the world to forever paying off the debt in violence): either Authoritarian (parent wins) or Permissive (child wins).
You speak for almost all parents in recognizing and acknowledging ONLY two ways of parenting both of which have winners and losers. Tom’s words clearly show your Parentarchy programming of only Authoritarian or Permissive while inviting you to consider the No One Loses, Cooperative third way of respectfully and mutually meeting needs.
But you refuse to read his words as you refused to answer Leonard’s question.
TEREZA
She also said to let you know there was no shortage of explanations and talking and reasoning, in which I always listened to them. For your emphasis on listening to kids, I WAS NEVER ALLOWED TO EXPLAIN ANYTHING ABOUT MY METHOD IN THAT ZOOM. IF I HAD, YOU'D KNOW THAT MANIPULATION WASN'T SOMETHING I USED. I THINK THAT YOUR METHOD FALLS INTO THAT CATEGORY. My kids earned points, exchangeable for things they wanted to buy. So love was unconditional but stuff was earned.
JACK
From the PET perspective, your bribe, threats, and manipulation would not be considered listening.
If you were truly “Active Listening” as taught in PET you would not be using bribes, threats, and manipulation.
Your point system is Skinnerian behavioral control no matter how you attempt to frame and excuse its coercion as being for your daughters’ own good and their acceptance of it.
It is what I term your “moral schizophrenia” that allows you to dissociate in your writing above “MANIPULATION WASN'T SOMETHING I USED” when you have repeatedly written and said there are only three ways to parent “BRIBES, THREATS AND MANIPULATION”; and further, this split mind of yours allows you to contradictorily write your love is “unconditional” while writing they must conditionally “earn” points to meet your needs.
For me, when I read you contradicting yourself like this it means you are deeply self-alienated and mistrustful of your self which a theme the Guru Papers on the Course of Miracles you believe in (of course, contradictorily, without believing in your belief) goes into.
Just as in our discussion of Atheism, so too for this on Parentarchy, you never read what I wrote or quote or answer a good faith question put to you.
It seems coming from your everything-is-manipulation perspective you cannot enter into a discussion without being offended and accusing others of manipulating you, rather than treating them with at least initial respect that someone has a different view than you and you are willing to present your evidence and allow them to present theirs.
TEREZA
And the example of Veronica running on a cement airport floor carrying her baby sister was transcribed as a dog, first. I don't have dogs. If she had tripped, which would have been more likely if I'd chased her, she could have fallen on her sister and caused permanent damage, even death. Veronica would have gone through the rest of her life carrying that guilt--because as a parent I had no control over her. I don't think real life consequences like that can be risked.
you started to say “dog” or perhaps “dau” as in daughter? Then changed to “little baby sister”.
You refused to answer Leonard’s question and instead created a “straw woman” extreme example of saving a life to attempt to justify your behavioral control method of rewards and punishments which you euphemistically term your “points system”. You choose to peer right past the Elephant in your Womb as do all parents unconsciously embedded in Parentarchy.
You cannot admit you use “bribe, threats and manipulation” even as you say and write repeatedly you can only use “bribe, threats and manipulation” in parenting.
TEREZA
But these are no longer my issues, with my daughters all grown. It sounds like your kids are still little, is that right? So I wish you luck with whatever method you use. But my daughters would like you to know that my system took the conflict out of parenting, and left the love. It's how they plan to raise their own kids, for what it's worth to you--which doesn't seem much.
JACK
These issues that you shared about trying to justify behavioral control parenting based on the weapons of fear (bribes, threats and manipulation) personify Parentarchy and our encounter is therefore worthwhile to me as I hope one day it may be to you for the same reason of seeing Parentarchy (and Statism) in the dustbin of history along with Slavery.
That your daughters are carrying on your Authoritarian parenting is understandable and regrettable. Intergenerational trauma as the Stockholm Syndrome is rife.
I will be publishing on my Substack a full article on Parentarchy with references that I hope may enable you and your daughters to see the Elephant in the Womb. I consider the research evidence of peaceful parenting programs like PET and work by Alfie Kohn along with models such as Self-Determination Theory will win/win the day toward no-power parenting.
Toward a Peaceful World through Peaceful Parenting, the only way to awaken Humanity from its Nightmare of History of Child Abuse and Neglect.
Hi, Jack. After our zoom conversation, I texted my oldest daughter about it. She has a master's that includes child psychology because she's a grief counselor for children and getting her license as a therapist specializing in children. When I told her that you said I was authoritarian, she wrote, "Well tell him that your kid says he's wrong." And she attached an article on authoritative vs. authoritarian parenting, making the point (as she has before) that my parenting style was the former.
I happen to be visiting her now and read some of your commentary to her along with my quotes. She said that she and her sisters were talking about my point system recently and both thought it was a good system. She said the beauty of it is that it makes the consequences small and replaceable with a little bit of effort. Maybe a kid may decide it's worth it to lose a point, but that's their choice. She sometimes counsels people who've grown up with very harsh consequences, and that's been tragic. She also sees parents now, where the pendulum has swung the other way, and they're at a loss. And their children are unprepared for life, which has consequences, to say the least.
She also said to let you know there was no shortage of explanations and talking and reasoning, in which I always listened to them. For your emphasis on listening to kids, I was never allowed to explain anything about my method in that zoom. If I had, you'd know that manipulation wasn't something I used. I think that your method falls into that category. My kids earned points, exchangeable for things they wanted to buy. So love was unconditional but stuff was earned.
And the example of Veronica running on a cement airport floor carrying her baby sister was transcribed as a dog, first. I don't have dogs. If she had tripped, which would have been more likely if I'd chased her, she could have fallen on her sister and caused permanent damage, even death. Veronica would have gone through the rest of her life carrying that guilt--because as a parent I had no control over her. I don't think real life consequences like that can be risked.
But these are no longer my issues, with my daughters all grown. It sounds like your kids are still little, is that right? So I wish you luck with whatever method you use. But my daughters would like you to know that my system took the conflict out of parenting, and left the love. It's how they plan to raise their own kids, for what it's worth to you--which doesn't seem much.
I'll have to pass on this as I'll be gone in a couple of hours ... going to my wife's mom's townhouse again ... almost ironically, a family commitment, that an adult daughter and her husband (me) attending to the needs of an elderly parent: giving back, as it were.
Besides, this just is not a topic I can get excited about.
That said, I would hold out for the Biblical family model as holding out the most hope for solving the actual problems of the relationship between parents and children: neglect, abuse, and helicoptering (in a sense, the opposite of neglect).
"Children are a heritage from the LORD, offspring a reward from Him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their opponents in court." Psalm 127:3-5
“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you." Exodus 20:12
"Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord." Colossians 3:20
"Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6
"But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." I Timothy 5:8
"[A man] must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full respect. For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church?" I Timothy 3:4-5
"Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 'Honor your father and mother,' which is the first commandment with promise: 'that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.' And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord." Ephesians 6:1-4
Perhaps in this context:
"Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself; it is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity but rejoices in the truth; [love] bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, ensures all things." I Corinthians 13:4-7.
This (sadly neglected) worldview does place the husband/father as the head of the household and the wife/mother under him, but each has assigned responsibilities and not mere authority. A Biblical father "does not provoke his children to wrath," i.e., does not abuse them; and "if anyone does not provide for ... members of his household, he ... is worse than an unbeliever," i.e., the Biblical father is under instructions not to neglect his children.
It seems to me that the consistent, judicious, and above all, warm and loving application of these rules would solve most if not all of the problems associated with "parentarchy," and then some.
Hi, Tereza. I will reply to your below by going into your words and responding to them there.
TEREZA
Hi, Jack. After our zoom conversation, I texted my oldest daughter about it. She has a master's that includes child psychology because she's a grief counselor for children and getting her license as a therapist specializing in children. When I told her that you said I was authoritarian, she wrote, "Well tell him that your kid says he's wrong." And she attached an article on authoritative vs. authoritarian parenting, making the point (as she has before) that my parenting style was the former.
JACK
You and your daughters both agreeing you were “authoritative” rather than “authoritarian” does not address my critique of you as Parentarchy personified.
Authoritative and Authoritarian, these two words need to be defined and in the PET analysis are often and actually the same which is parents using power to control behavior as you do with your point system of bribes/rewards and threats/punishment.
You do not use your system I hope with so-called adults (including your daughters now?!)—your husband/boyfriend, friends, etc, do you?
Read my post on how parents use a special language of “misbehave” only with their children (and pets).
You stated unequivocally that only “bribes, threats and manipulation” can be used in parenting. These parenting “tools” should be termed “weapons of fear” used to control behavior and are instances of manipulation which should be considered Authoritarian.
P.E.T. and any other truly peaceful parenting model (they are only a few, the most popular such as Triple P and Incredible Years use the “weapon of fear” as you do), consider the use of those behavioral control means to be Authoritarian parenting. Thomas Gordon often critiqued popular parenting programs like Triple P because they try to euphemistically reframe punishments as “natural consequences” etc. and use Timeouts which P.E.T. considers punishment and does not sanction.
Your power-to-control parenting style of “bribes, threats, and manipulation” is accurately termed Authoritarian and it is understandable you and your daughters want to euphemistically reframe this as “Authoritative” but my argument here I hope does not allow you to get away with that.
TEREZA
I happen to be visiting her now and read some of your commentary to her along with my quotes. She said that she and her sisters were talking about my point system recently and both thought it was a good system. She said the beauty of it is that it makes the consequences small and replaceable with a little bit of effort. Maybe a kid may decide it's worth it to lose a point, but that's their choice. She sometimes counsels people who've grown up with very harsh consequences, and that's been tragic. She also sees parents now, where the pendulum has swung the other way, and they're at a loss. And their children are unprepared for life, which has consequences, to say the least.
JACK
As you did before in our discussion on Atheism and continue to do here on parenting, you avoid addressing the issue of Parentarchy because you personify it and cannot see yourself in its mirror just as most authoritarian or permissive parents cannot. The Elephant in your Womb is trying to be born but you would abort it.
You obviously did not read this post or hear in our last Forum the questions put to you about a fourth cooperative and mutual need-meeting way of autonomic respect rather than your three control-for-obedience reward, punishment, manipulation trinity.
I invite you to read my post above what Thomas Gordon wrote on parents like you who believe there are only two supposedly opposed ways of parenting (they are both sides of the one coin of power to control parenting whose fiat financing has condemned the world to forever paying off the debt in violence): either Authoritarian (parent wins) or Permissive (child wins).
You speak for almost all parents in recognizing and acknowledging ONLY two ways of parenting both of which have winners and losers. Tom’s words clearly show your Parentarchy programming of only Authoritarian or Permissive while inviting you to consider the No One Loses, Cooperative third way of respectfully and mutually meeting needs.
But you refuse to read his words as you refused to answer Leonard’s question.
TEREZA
She also said to let you know there was no shortage of explanations and talking and reasoning, in which I always listened to them. For your emphasis on listening to kids, I WAS NEVER ALLOWED TO EXPLAIN ANYTHING ABOUT MY METHOD IN THAT ZOOM. IF I HAD, YOU'D KNOW THAT MANIPULATION WASN'T SOMETHING I USED. I THINK THAT YOUR METHOD FALLS INTO THAT CATEGORY. My kids earned points, exchangeable for things they wanted to buy. So love was unconditional but stuff was earned.
JACK
From the PET perspective, your bribe, threats, and manipulation would not be considered listening.
If you were truly “Active Listening” as taught in PET you would not be using bribes, threats, and manipulation.
Your point system is Skinnerian behavioral control no matter how you attempt to frame and excuse its coercion as being for your daughters’ own good and their acceptance of it.
It is what I term your “moral schizophrenia” that allows you to dissociate in your writing above “MANIPULATION WASN'T SOMETHING I USED” when you have repeatedly written and said there are only three ways to parent “BRIBES, THREATS AND MANIPULATION”; and further, this split mind of yours allows you to contradictorily write your love is “unconditional” while writing they must conditionally “earn” points to meet your needs.
For me, when I read you contradicting yourself like this it means you are deeply self-alienated and mistrustful of your self which a theme the Guru Papers on the Course of Miracles you believe in (of course, contradictorily, without believing in your belief) goes into.
Just as in our discussion of Atheism, so too for this on Parentarchy, you never read what I wrote or quote or answer a good faith question put to you.
It seems coming from your everything-is-manipulation perspective you cannot enter into a discussion without being offended and accusing others of manipulating you, rather than treating them with at least initial respect that someone has a different view than you and you are willing to present your evidence and allow them to present theirs.
TEREZA
And the example of Veronica running on a cement airport floor carrying her baby sister was transcribed as a dog, first. I don't have dogs. If she had tripped, which would have been more likely if I'd chased her, she could have fallen on her sister and caused permanent damage, even death. Veronica would have gone through the rest of her life carrying that guilt--because as a parent I had no control over her. I don't think real life consequences like that can be risked.
JACK
You can listen to the video yourself
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wA18G4G0jN7VqCBl5_obSoOoJ5MCxTsl?usp=sharing
you started to say “dog” or perhaps “dau” as in daughter? Then changed to “little baby sister”.
You refused to answer Leonard’s question and instead created a “straw woman” extreme example of saving a life to attempt to justify your behavioral control method of rewards and punishments which you euphemistically term your “points system”. You choose to peer right past the Elephant in your Womb as do all parents unconsciously embedded in Parentarchy.
You cannot admit you use “bribe, threats and manipulation” even as you say and write repeatedly you can only use “bribe, threats and manipulation” in parenting.
TEREZA
But these are no longer my issues, with my daughters all grown. It sounds like your kids are still little, is that right? So I wish you luck with whatever method you use. But my daughters would like you to know that my system took the conflict out of parenting, and left the love. It's how they plan to raise their own kids, for what it's worth to you--which doesn't seem much.
JACK
These issues that you shared about trying to justify behavioral control parenting based on the weapons of fear (bribes, threats and manipulation) personify Parentarchy and our encounter is therefore worthwhile to me as I hope one day it may be to you for the same reason of seeing Parentarchy (and Statism) in the dustbin of history along with Slavery.
That your daughters are carrying on your Authoritarian parenting is understandable and regrettable. Intergenerational trauma as the Stockholm Syndrome is rife.
I will be publishing on my Substack a full article on Parentarchy with references that I hope may enable you and your daughters to see the Elephant in the Womb. I consider the research evidence of peaceful parenting programs like PET and work by Alfie Kohn along with models such as Self-Determination Theory will win/win the day toward no-power parenting.
Toward a Peaceful World through Peaceful Parenting, the only way to awaken Humanity from its Nightmare of History of Child Abuse and Neglect.
Hi, Jack. After our zoom conversation, I texted my oldest daughter about it. She has a master's that includes child psychology because she's a grief counselor for children and getting her license as a therapist specializing in children. When I told her that you said I was authoritarian, she wrote, "Well tell him that your kid says he's wrong." And she attached an article on authoritative vs. authoritarian parenting, making the point (as she has before) that my parenting style was the former.
I happen to be visiting her now and read some of your commentary to her along with my quotes. She said that she and her sisters were talking about my point system recently and both thought it was a good system. She said the beauty of it is that it makes the consequences small and replaceable with a little bit of effort. Maybe a kid may decide it's worth it to lose a point, but that's their choice. She sometimes counsels people who've grown up with very harsh consequences, and that's been tragic. She also sees parents now, where the pendulum has swung the other way, and they're at a loss. And their children are unprepared for life, which has consequences, to say the least.
She also said to let you know there was no shortage of explanations and talking and reasoning, in which I always listened to them. For your emphasis on listening to kids, I was never allowed to explain anything about my method in that zoom. If I had, you'd know that manipulation wasn't something I used. I think that your method falls into that category. My kids earned points, exchangeable for things they wanted to buy. So love was unconditional but stuff was earned.
And the example of Veronica running on a cement airport floor carrying her baby sister was transcribed as a dog, first. I don't have dogs. If she had tripped, which would have been more likely if I'd chased her, she could have fallen on her sister and caused permanent damage, even death. Veronica would have gone through the rest of her life carrying that guilt--because as a parent I had no control over her. I don't think real life consequences like that can be risked.
But these are no longer my issues, with my daughters all grown. It sounds like your kids are still little, is that right? So I wish you luck with whatever method you use. But my daughters would like you to know that my system took the conflict out of parenting, and left the love. It's how they plan to raise their own kids, for what it's worth to you--which doesn't seem much.
I'll have to pass on this as I'll be gone in a couple of hours ... going to my wife's mom's townhouse again ... almost ironically, a family commitment, that an adult daughter and her husband (me) attending to the needs of an elderly parent: giving back, as it were.
Besides, this just is not a topic I can get excited about.
That said, I would hold out for the Biblical family model as holding out the most hope for solving the actual problems of the relationship between parents and children: neglect, abuse, and helicoptering (in a sense, the opposite of neglect).
"Children are a heritage from the LORD, offspring a reward from Him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their opponents in court." Psalm 127:3-5
“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you." Exodus 20:12
"Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord." Colossians 3:20
"Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6
"But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." I Timothy 5:8
"[A man] must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full respect. For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church?" I Timothy 3:4-5
"Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 'Honor your father and mother,' which is the first commandment with promise: 'that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.' And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord." Ephesians 6:1-4
Perhaps in this context:
"Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself; it is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity but rejoices in the truth; [love] bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, ensures all things." I Corinthians 13:4-7.
This (sadly neglected) worldview does place the husband/father as the head of the household and the wife/mother under him, but each has assigned responsibilities and not mere authority. A Biblical father "does not provoke his children to wrath," i.e., does not abuse them; and "if anyone does not provide for ... members of his household, he ... is worse than an unbeliever," i.e., the Biblical father is under instructions not to neglect his children.
It seems to me that the consistent, judicious, and above all, warm and loving application of these rules would solve most if not all of the problems associated with "parentarchy," and then some.