Parenting Fail
My Thoughts on Go To Your Room and Its Terrible Tips for Raising Kids
A 2020 book by a French psychologist has created a storm online, as she claims even babies can understand they have broken the rules, and the ideal punishment for those* is to be isolated in their rooms.
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*What she calls 'breaking the rules
- Talking too much
- Talking too loud
- Complaining over nothing
- Refusing to say hello
- Emotional over-reacting
As soon as 'over-reacting' hit the list, I knew the author was the child of exactly the kind of parenting wreckage that the gentle parenting crowd is trying so hard to avoid handing down to their children.
The author's argument is that even little kids (at 1 year) understand when they have broken the rules.
While that may be true (I doubt), what is not true is that self-regulating emotions is among the abilities of a toddler. That skill has nothing at all to do with rules or order (the author claims 'order leads to peace.')
Actually, I am certain that she can accurately claim that a baby put into isolation frequently leads to peace for the parents. For a while.
When children need their parents for everything from a sense of safety to shelter, isolation is a very, very effective power tool to stop them exploring, stop them expressing their emotions, and to make them quiet and compliant. It drives them to figure out, very quickly, how to avoid being stripped of their sense of being acceptable and loved.
Time-outs are the intentional withdrawal of love and approval as a punishment.
There is no peace in that for a child.
This creates a child who is hyper-alert to the moods of parents, hyper-vigilant, and extremely judgmental of themselves, as bad, wrong, and unacceptable. It sure does make them stay in their proper lines at school, though. For a while.
Punishment absolutely 'works' for making obedient children, at least for a while. It worked really, really well in Germany, from the 1700s until about 1934, when it all came unwound, with a lot of very, very angry people who suddenly had a target they could freely take it out on.
People ask how atrocities happen, how can people be so cruel, even evil?
When children believe themselves to be evil, bad, wrong, irredeemable ... that is the result. Acting it out. Lashing out. As soon as they are free. Sometimes at others, often at themselves.
The author's argument, that 'order brings peace' is the dream of totalitarianism, regimes like the Nazis adore order. Directly opposed to that 'order' were the goals of the La Résistance.
This makes me wonder how her grandparents feel about that.
Peace at Home
The genuine peace in families is a result of:
Met Needs
Attunement to needs (our own, and our children's) and meeting them as they arise, creates contentment, satiety, and, yes, peace.
Get Better at Feeling
Kids need support and patience, and get better at emotions by feeling understood, so they can communicate their feelings quietly. They also need living, breathing examples in real time of adults handling emotions effectively (not Stepford Wives being plastic and FINE.)
Adults in Peace
Probably the most daunting task: helping ourselves feel safe to provide a sense of safety for our children; once we're regulated, they can 'catch' our calmness from us.
Time Together
We need time, to work and play and talk together to create the sense of 'our family' that feels peaceful; staying separate is often just stressed people in different spaces.
You can create the peace you want to see in the world, but not by trying to control the outcome (behaviour) of what is happening to a child... remember All Behaviour is Information.