TLP and Parenting.

[RRR]

How would you go about parenting with truth love and power aligned? Is that not the ultimate challenge?

Truth: How do you expose your children to truth? How do you explain ethics, reality, and society at large to a child? How many parents blatantly lie about ethics and reality to their children? How many parents pass the test of truth? How can we grow?


Love: How do you expose your children to love? How do you help them fill their lives with connection, communion, and communication? How many parents understand the difference between love and attachment? Children by nature will attach to the closest powerful human as a means of survival, how do we explain the difference between love and attachment to children? How many parents pass the love test? How can we grow?


Power: How do you expose your children to power? How do you get a child to become responsible, self-determined, focused, full of desire, and self-disciplined? Children are hardly ever taken seriously, they can easily be shown their power is meaningless compared to the authority and violence of parenting. How can you raise a child to embrace their own power? How many parents pass the power test?

Sorry if this post seems a bit contrived, I hope the rest of you can expand on my ideas and understand the importance of parenting in the human existence. Most of us have had bad parents, I believe it is a major stepping stone of growth to improve parenting.

[Brutha]

How do you expose your children to truth? How do you explain ethics, reality, and society at large to a child? How many parents blatantly lie about ethics and reality to their children?

Apart from the lie about Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny my parent told me always the truth.

I might not always have understood complex ethical issues, but my father still followed the maxim of trying to explain them to me whenever I asked.

Children by nature will attach to the closest powerful human as a means of survival, how do we explain the difference between love and attachment to children?

By living the concept of love and loving the child.

Love isn't something that you push on people.

Children are hardly ever taken seriously, they can easily be shown their power is meaningless compared to the authority and violence of parenting.

If the parent doesn't take the child seriously the parent simply isn't up to the task of being a good parent.

A 5 year old is often able to give arguments for his case. If the child makes good arguments there should be no need to use authority or violence to force the child to do something.

It simply about having a honest discussion with the child and respecting its opinion. Arguments with a child should be seldom decided by authority alone and never by violence.

[Cyllya]

Hmm... I think some general guidelines might be:

1. Try to encourage principles rather than rules. The difference between the two is that principles are enforced only by yourself. This will help make it so that they are well-behaved within reason but don't follow stupid pointless rules.

2. Don't lie, especially about things you expect the child to learn the truth of later. Instead of trying to convince them that there's some weird old man spying on them 24/7 to know how many elven-slave-created toys they'll be paid at the end of the year, teach them about the actual real-life Saint Nicolas. Or teach them the legends as well, but don't try to convince them that the legends are reality. Magic and fantasy do not need to involve deceit.

3. Don't say things like "Because I said so" or "Stop crying, or I'll give you something to cry about!" or hit the kid. Not only are they really disrespectful (unloving), but they encourage blind obedience (no power) in the kid. However, I think there are some times where you might not be able to resist doing one of these, especially the first one. Later, when things have calmed down, admit your mistake to the kid and apologize. This is more loving, more truthful (instead of pretending you're perfect), and gives you a chance to educate the kid on what caused you to be so upset so he can behave better.

4. Home school; the kid will get a better education anyway. Don't send him to school unless it's a free school or something. Public schools and many private schools are great for turning someone into a nice, obedient little worker bee. If you really must send your child to public school, don't act like the school and its staff are some almighty god that must be obeyed at all times. Tell him if a teacher tries to forbid him from going to the restroom, there's nothing keeping him from walking out the classroom door and going anyway. If he starts handling his junior high homework like Steve handled his college homework and it's working out well for him, don't feel compelled to stop him even if his teachers complain. (Later on, no one will care about his junior high grades anyway.) Tell him that if one of his peers tries to physically attack him, he can defend himself with force if necessary. That means he'll get suspended, but school is not that important. He's not going to become some jobless loser by going without for a couple days.

I think if you're good at aligning with Truth, Love, and Power in general, you'd do fine with them in regards to parenting.