Growing Without Schooling, Volume 4, 1984–1986

The March 25, 1985 issue of Newsweek carried a one-column story about homeschooling. It was generally accurate and favorable, and correctly gave the impression that the movement is growing in size and legitimacy. My one objection to the story is that they call me “the Guru” of the homeschooling movement. This is in some important ways mistaken and misleading. I won’t pretend that I have not been an important voice in the homeschooling movement, but the movement is by no means made up of Holt followers; many homeschoolers do not think of me as a good guy, and many have never heard of me at all. This is all to the good. The whole strength of the movement and the reason why it has been such a remarkably effective instrument for social change is that it does not have a centralized leadership, and having none, is able to generate so much and so effective local leadership, people who learn not from some “guru” but from their own experience, and having learned, inform and support each other.

Discipline: Without Spanking or Shouting by Jerry Wykoff & Barbara Unell ($4.95 + post). This book has been very helpful for our family. It deals with behavior problems in young children, ages 1-5. I was a little skeptical about it at first—I wasn’t convinced that a book could help me learn not to shout at my children; after all, I’ve had several years of practice and grew up with it, too. But I am delighted to find that Wykoff and Unell’s techniques really work. They don’t cure everything all at once, of course; parenting is never easy, and it takes time to change.

There are several very important points made in this book: treat your child as you would treat a guest in your home; do not spank your child, even for dangerous behavior (if they are punished for going out into the street, for example, children will most likely learn to watch for, not for cars); do not judge your child, that is, do not label him/her—saying children are good or bad (or anything else) is damaging to their self-image. What we need to deal with is the behavior, not the child—when a child does something inappropriate, we can say, “I don’t like for you to hit the baby, and I will not allow it,” rather than “Be a good girl and be nice to the baby,” or “Don’t be such a bad girl.”

The alternatives to spanking and shouting that the authors propose for unacceptable behavior are preventing the problem and “timing out.” The child is timed out when the parent puts him/her in a special chair or other place for a specified amount of time. The authors suggest one minute for each year of your child’s age. The authors also stress that we as parents must be consistent. Children need to know their limits and we shouldn’t confuse them. Also, a child learns from his parents—if we can show that we are able to control ourselves, it will be easier for our children to learn control. At first children tend to resist time-outs very strenuously and need to be kept in the chair by a parent. After a few times, when they know you really mean it, and will not give in, children accept the time-out. It takes them out of the situation and allows them to calm down.

We time Anna (3) out now for various infractions—hitting, cutting things she knows she’s not supposed to cut, etc. We try to give a warning first. I’m a firm believer in offering a second chance whenever possible. Sometimes she really doesn’t understand things. But when she hits Helen (1), for example, she is taken straight to the porch (or to the green chair when it’s cold). Sometimes she even puts herself on the porch before I get a chance to.

Of course, prevention is best whenever it’s possible, and the authors have very sensible and workable ideas on preventing difficult situations altogether. The main thing is avoid conflicts, not to make some kind of point. Some of the behavior difficulties discussed in the book are: bedtime, food problems, temper tantrums, whining, aggressive behavior, taking things, sibling rivalry, interacting with strangers (this is a very straightforward, sensible chapter on a difficult subject), demanding freedom, and traveling problems. Each chapter is divided into short sections on defining the problem, preventing the problem, solving the problem, and a sample scenario. There is nothing in this book that you couldn’t figure out yourself or hear about elsewhere, but for me it’s very important to see all the ideas presented clearly and concisely in a very useable format. Mark and don’t quite agree with some of the problems presented by the authors (bedtime difficulties, for example our children sleep when they are tired). But, we can take what we need and leave the rest. I feel this book has much to offer to those who find themselves punishing and shouting at their children more than they want to. As the authors say, we have to remember that, for the most part, what we do to our children is what they will do to our grandchildren. —Mary Van Doren

[JH:] When this book first arrived at the office I read it eagerly, since I totally disapprove of spanking and like to keep shouting down to a minimum, but my first thought was not to add the book to our list. I only decided to add it when Mary Van Doren, in whose house I had spent some time and whom I knew for a very intelligent person and a very loving and (mostly) patient and understanding mother, told me first of all that she liked the book, and more important, that it had actually helped her very much in dealing with a child who, much as I loved her myself, I had to admit was going through an exceptionally difficult time.

What troubled me about the book was this. Many books and articles about disciplining children have been written during recent years, and most of them say in effect that we can solve all our problems with children if we simply make enough rules governing their behavior, all the things we want or don’t want them to do, establish beforehand an appropriate punishment for violating each rule, and instantly apply the correct punishment whenever a rule is disobeyed. What is wrong with this, aside from the fact (as Mary knows) that it is never this simple, is that it threatens to turn the home into a courtroom, and indeed I have been in some houses that seemed much less like homes than courtrooms, where the talk always seemed to be about what the rule says, and do you understand the rule, and did you obey the rule, and why didn’t you, and what the punishment is going to be. Even in as highly disciplined an organization as a submarine operating in wartime there was very little of such talk. More than 99% of the time we operated as a cooperative society of reasonable human beings, and this, rather than rules and punishments, is the goal we should be striving to reach in our homes.

A small example. If you say to children, “Have you brushed your teeth?” and they say they haven’t, the sensible thing to say is. “Please go brush them now,” (and no “Okay?” at the end!), rather than begin talk of rules and punishments. In the real world of adults, much of what we do, we do because some other adult has politely asked us to. Why not, as much as possible, deal with children the same way?

A further problem with punishments is that if the child feels that she has not been able to tell her story, or that the punishment is unfair, we may turn a small problem into a much bigger one. Children, at least until they come to feel that it is hopeless, demand to be treated justly, and we should be glad that they do. Some parents and “experts” argue that children should never be allowed to tell their side of the story, and that all punishments imposed by adults are by definition reasonable and just. (Sounds like school!) Every now and then I read a letter saying, “I never permit my child to express or show the slightest resistance or objection to anything I say.” Such talk makes my blood run cold. It is tyranny in its purest form. I can still remember the helpless outrage and fury I felt when, as a child, having been unfairly (as I saw it) scolded, shamed, or punished, I was then told, “And wipe that expression off your face!" Were not even my expressions my own? Did not even my face belong to me? I can remember saying often to my fifth grade students, “The law says you have to go to school, but it doesn’t say you have to like it, or even pretend to like it.” I tried to run and generally was able to run a minimally coercive class, but there were times when I felt I had to tell students to do or not do something, and when I did, I made it stick. But I never denied them their right to make it plain to me that they did not like what I had said or done.

Let me say finally that a shout, a sharp vocal expression of warning or disapproval, is not always a bad thing, and if not overused (which is really the point of this book, not to make shouting a habit), may often be the quickest and most effective way of dealing with a situation. The danger is, of course, in thinking that if one shout works two will work even better, three better yet, and so on. Not so. But once in a while, and always and only when an expression of true feeling, they may be helpful. I am happy to say that such shouts have not altogether disappeared from the Van Doren household, and I might be a little worried if they had. With these slight reservations, I join Mary in recommending this book.