warden of 10 yr old
If I want parenting advice from you, I'll ask for it. My daughter's 13. I also remember what I and my sisters and friends were like at 16. As long as the law makes me legally responsible for my kids till the're 18, I'm gonna use my repressive, paternalistic, authoritarian, patriachial power. Sorry if you disapprove. But not too sorry. It's not your damn business. jks
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Well, Mister Crabby,
sounds like you've got a few issues. Just for the record, I didn't mention your daughter, you did. I wasn't offering any advice on raising your kids either, except to note you sounded nervous about it. You sound worse today than yesterday. Must be a bad hair week.
I will add this though. I tried repressive, paternalistic, authoritarian and patriarchal power, all enabled and cheered on by my wife, while we were still married, on a miserable little eight year old. I thought he was screwing around, not paying attention and not doing his work in school. I got the expected sullen, pouty, silent reaction, that belies a burning inarticulate rage. Looked mighty damned familiar to me.
After going to an appointment with his teacher, and listening to her well reasoned complaints, I had to reflect long and hard about what was really going on. To all apparence, he was reacting to her and my authority trip.
So I went out to find the most hippy, free love, big titted, (probably dope smoking) warm loving and smart teacher I could and moved his ass into another school where the anal atmosphere was zero.
They had smaller classes, more fun stuff to do, lots of messy things like pottery, junk collections to build stuff, open classes with work areas, multiple aged and tiered study groups. It was private, but cheap and I could work off some of the expense by working on field trips and clean up days. The teachers ran the school as a collective. They were all public school teacher drop outs who were fed up with following the school district's curriculum and not their own, dealing with discipline problems all day, and having no interaction with the parents. It was basically what most public school teachers always wanted to do, but couldn't. The field trips and over nights were great, because both his teachers were into the same things I was: rafting, skiing, camping, and nature sight-seeing at the ocean or mountains. That was mostly his first teacher. She was a white water rafter (fifth grade). His second teacher (sixth grade) was into reading the paper, arguing, writing about politics, social problems, what to do with yourself in life, etc.
Another good thing they did was make sure the school was well integrated---not just white and black, but hispanic, asian, and foriegn born. Poorer parents paid less with a few who paid nothing.
It was a great experience and everyone of his problems evaporated like magic. Of course he got other ones, but they were not the sort that smelled like infinite trouble later on. The other cool thing was I got to work on planning, organizing, and working on the field trips with the kids and teachers. So I got to watch my kid completely outside of a home environment with his friends and teachers. That is really not very common. After a couple of year breather in collective hippydom, we switch him back to public school starting seventh grade and he did fine after that.
After these experiences I decided that authority trips were obnoxious nasty and actually harmful, plus they didn't work. It was very helpful to learn from the teachers too. They had a zillion tricks to get around the usual stubborn, sullen, and combative noise that kids generate. On the other hand, heavy handed authority just breeds hatred, rage, resistance, self-loathing, rebellion, and all manner of pathologies. I suspect it even fucks up your language skills---consider Judith Butler. Very bad for psychic health all around.
Chuck Grimes