Question:
Parenting practices and philosophy?
What is your opinion on the following:
Taking Children Seriously, TCS, is a worldwide parenting movement and educational philosophy based upon the idea that it is possible and desirable to raise and educate children without either doing anything to them against their will, or making them do anything against their will.
The TCS model of parenting and education argues that most traditional interactions between adults and youth are based on coercion. TCS rejects this coercion as infringing on the will of the child, and also rejects parental or educator "self-sacrifice" as infringing on the will of the adult. TCS advocates that parents and children work to find a common preference, a solution all parties genuinely prefer to all other candidate solutions they can think of.
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
Bah. I'm a teacher, and have studied child development for a long time. I'm also a mom, and I can tell you what would happen in a classroom or in a home if you tried to do this. The kids would be undisciplined, spoiled and uneducated. They wouldn't learn the basic necessities needed to survive in the world, and they would end up as grown ups without even the basic skills or basic social mores.
The reason that human infants do not reach adult hood until the age of 18 is that they require adult interaction and teaching until that time. Not because someone thought it was a "good idea" or because of any other reason. Kids need adult intervention because they don't know what to do without being taught what to do first, then given a chance to make decisions for themselves.
How can they be expected to make appropriate decisions if they are not given the correct information from which to draw the choice from to begin with?