The problem, Shiroi Tora, is that you do not listen to your critiques. Your initial post made me react strongly, and there are many reasons for this. Since then, it has not improved.
First, you post this long, and very extreme post about the "danger", as you put it, to fail to win "the battle of will" as a parent, and you proceed to justify and explain your position by comparing it with the "human nature" you observed as a correctional officer.
You are then challenged with the format (writing a long and detailed text center-aligned). Readers offer you some feedback: you are being told by that it is hard to read, that there are norms for writing because the eyes naturally go to the left, that it decrease your understandability and, to an extend, makes your text less likely to be read and to be appreciated.
Are you listening to the feedback? Are you even considering it?
No. Instead, you belittle people who gave you the feedback or dismiss their critique by saying it's really not that difficult to read.
I think that this example, although quite insignificant in and of itself, gives a good idea of the core problem here.
You are promoting the idea of "always wining the battle of will" - and this is <I>
exactly</I> what you are attempting to do here.
Instead of <I>
learning from your feedback</I> - instead of <I>
listening</I>, you push back, you dismiss, you joke, you refute.
The net result is that you are frustrating people, you get less listened to in return; your content is lost or diluted; and sound condescending each time you try to defend your arguments.
So I am venturing to say that this is <I>
exactly</I> the result you get when you engage in that "battle of will" with a child, as a parent.
The more you use the tactics you describe, the less you are being listened to. The "battle of will" escalates as children reacts <I>
like any human being</I>, including the readers here - with resistance and defensiveness.
Is your goal to "win" the argument here?
Or Is your goal to pass a message, share information, discuss the importance of not giving up in an argument with a child and convince your readers of your point?
Because if it is the latter rather than the former, your "battle of will" is spectacularly failing.
Which is <I>
precisely</I> my point.
When you take a parental decision about what is going on with your child, isn't your goal to have the child accept that decision and listen to you?
Yet the "battle of will" does <I>
exactly the contrary</I>.
It pushes the child to react, to rebel, to shut you off, to stop listening to you. And that counterproductive.
Your "authoritarian" method only promote this. They do not let the space for flexibility, for admitting that perhaps, <I>
perhaps</I> sometimes, the parent might be wrong. That <I>
perhaps</I>, your child deserves to be listened to and, who knows? Maybe sometimes, you can come up with a mutually acceptable, creative solution rather than <I>
"your</I> way or the high way".
Just like you are doing right here in this thread.
If you want people to listen to you, start by listening to them.
As IAdad said, people spend a lot of time to write their response. The least you could do is to <I>
really </I>read them.
You can start right here, by responding to all of the critics I have already offered your post in detail in
post number 6, and that you did not even took the time to address and respond, other than to dismiss it globally in post #7. Let me specifically quote the key pieces you ignored:
About every human being having the same motives yet being deeply different than criminals:
parentastic said:
they all act in ways that enable them to fulfill their needs, so they share the same basic motives. However, the way they do this heavily depends on the tool-set that was given to them by their parents, by the love and nurturing they got, by the worldview that was engrained in them.
About the danger of self-fulfilling prophecies:
parentastic said:
there is a HUGE danger in comparing criminals and adolescent. Teenager's brains are not fully grown yet, and if you start acting with them as you would with an inmate, you will CAUSE their brain not to develop normally. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nasty.
If you treat your child as a criminal, that's exactly what they will become.
About the paradox of doing to children exactly what you are trying to teach them not to do:
parentastic said:
So in essence, you are reflecting on the idea that to prevent children from doing this, parents should plow their way through them by force? Do you see the paradox here?
[/QUOTE]
About this astonishing fact that contradicts all of your opinion regarding the danger for children to "win" the battle of will:
parentastic said:
Did you know that the VAST MAJORITY of inmates in USA prison all were SPANKED during their youth? Of course, not all spanked child end up being a criminal, but nearly no child raised through authoritative parenting (and NOT authoritarian) ever end up in prison. It's a quite striking perspective, isn't it?
About the logic of escalation:
parentastic said:
This causes some children to comply (submission, lying, avoidance) or to fight (rebellion, escalation).
Each time a parent retaliates by upping the ante, it possibly causes an even greater rebellion response, pushing children to be "defiant" even more, pushing children to drop out from school as an act to find back some autonomy, causing them to join gangs and peers to regain a measure of self-esteem, etc.
About the possibility that the parent might also be wrong, sometimes?
Shiroi Tora said:
You must not allow them to win at being wrong...
EVER.
parentastic said:
But can the parent be wrong too, sometimes? What if they are?
So, would you kindly respond to these points? Or will you ignore them... and try to "win the battle of will" with me, perhaps?