Our children need our guidance, otherwise they would be born as adults.

Readers of my book, Instead of Medicating and Punishing: Healing the Causes of Our Children’s Acting-Out Behavior by Parenting and Educating the Way Nature Intended know that natural, need-focused parenting and child-led organic learning are not new fads. Although growing in popularity under trendy terms like, Attachment Parenting (AP), holistic parenting, self-directed learning, education hacking, unschooling or Radical Unschooling (RU), these ways of growing children are simply a revival of the ancient wisdom of the Earth; the way parents parented and guided learning for millennia, before the dawn of agriculture. However, as these nature-based principles have gained in popularity, we may be losing some of their deeper intentions.

Centuries of agriculture, civilization and industrialization have perverted nature’s intent for humans, perpetuating a tragic cycle of child abuse, neglect, community and cultural violence, slavery, genocide, war, planetary destruction and endless other forms of human-inflicted suffering. Readers of my book understand that the origins of human violence are a result of unmet holistic needs and trauma beginning in childhood, leading to holistic suffering that was systematically projected onto and inflicted upon family, friends, tribes, communities, cultures, nations, regions… and then the globe. Here we stand in 2013, with nearly the entire human family enslaved by a daily grind of systematic forced schooling, working, buying and paying just to live and survive. Most people cannot see any way out, and thus just resign themselves to the fact that this is life, even as they walk in the woods and wade into the ocean and see that the rest of nature runs wild and free.

The first people to revive the modern Attachment Parenting, organic learning and unschooling movements of the late 60′s and early 70′s were some of the first child advocates and parents to say, “No more. Our children are far too precious for this! We want to raise our children to be free, joyful, healthy, happy and natural!” Pioneers of natural family living began to question industrialized, corporate, processed living and they began to observe, explore and return to unfolding nature’s intent for children and families.

Now that Generation X has grown up and become the parents, Attachment Parenting and unschooling have broken out of the “hippie” fringe and have become a growing trend that has even received some mainstream attention.

Since the turn of the 2000′s, at the very point in history when ubiquitous technology, processed food, cradle-to-grave busywork, cradle-to-grave consumerism and monstrous corporations are taking over every aspect of life, there has been an explosion of information about how to return to the wisdom of the Earth. Organic primal diets, natural remedies for medical and mental health issues, holistic treatments, energy healing, ancient spiritual practices such as meditation, intentional communities, compassionate volunteer work, living off the land, self employment and of course, Attachment Parenting, democratic schools and unschooling have sprouted out of the chaos like a plant that rises through pavement. The premise of all of these ways of reviving the Earth’s wisdom is nature’s intent: These ways of living are holistically healthy because they are in line with nature’s intent for humans.

The foundation of Attachment Parenting (and therefore unschooling) is based on meeting a child’s holistic needs to the best of our ability. Readers of my book are well aware of the secure attachment cycle and the four steps involved:

1. Child has a need
2. Child expresses the need
3. Parent meets child’s need ASAP
4. Child feel homeostasis

This secure attachment cycle is the same for all mammals and is based on the conditions each individual species requires in order to grow, thrive and meet their full holistic potential. When parents meet the needs of their children at all developmental stages, from pre-birth through late adolescence, children will naturally thrive and grow to be holistically healthy. Humans are all born wired to be loved and to love; the natural state of the human being is to holistically thrive. When childhood needs are met, humans can live up to their potential.

My readers also know the flip-side of the secure attachment cycle, or, what happens to children when their needs are unmet. When parents or the environment fails to meet the needs of children, children are no longer in a state of homeostasis, but in a state of distress. This distress leads to attachment disruption in the parent-child dynamic, or, in modern terms, ambivalent, distant, conflicted or anxious parent-child relationships. Such relationships are not a “normal stage” at any time in child development, they are an alarm signal of distress in the parent-child relationship.

When a child’s needs are chronically unmet, their distress builds and begins to cause emotional and holistic injury, or trauma. In severe cases, trauma can result from just one serious incident of distress. Evidence of distress, unmet needs and trauma are easy to identify in children– Children act-out, shut down, or develop emotional, behavioral, learning, social or even sexual problems. Sometimes, the evidence of unmet needs does not manifest in children for a decade or two. Other children manifest their distress immediately.

Most parents in the AP/RU communities support natural parenting practices such as natural birthing, genital integrity, extended breastfeeding, natural immunity, cosleeping, gentle parenting, relaxed homeschooling or unschooling, nonviolent communication, natural healing, close parent-child relationships and children having freedom in following passions and interests. Most parents in the AP/RU communities understand that disrespecting children by punishing, shaming, controlling, yelling at or hitting them is harmful to every level of their holistic development. Most parents in the AP/RU communities understand that traditional school environments, with all of the human rights violations that occur therein, are also harmful to children on every level of their holistic development. In these ways, AP/RU parents are in line with nature’s intent for children’s healthy holistic development.

While the original AP/RU movement as a whole has been on board with nature in so many important ways, there has been a concerning trend that has developed in the movement that seems to fly in the face of the entire foundation of AP/RU: Unparenting.

Unparenting appears to be a well-intentioned effort to ensure that children are not in any way being stifled by adult intervention. However, the practice borders on (and in some cases exceeds the definition of) child neglect.

I have been dismayed to hear that some parents in the RU community advocate for children wasting days, weeks and even years staring at screens all day, addicted to a constant stream of console and online video games, TV shows, texting and social media. Such parents claim they are allowing children to “make the choice”; however, is it really a “choice” if it is a dopamine addiction?

I have been shocked to hear some in the RU community justify allowing children to gorge themselves on candy, soda, pizza, fast food and other mainstream foods, despite that it is well known in the natural living communities that refined sugar, gluten, dairy and processed foods are toxic and contribute to chronic inflammation, emotional distress, obesity and even cancer. Again, these parents claim they are allowing children to “make the choice”; however, is it really a “choice” if it is a dopamine addiction?

I have been appalled to learn that in the name of “choice”, some parents in the RU community allow their children to be exposed to dangers such as lack of supervision, abusive adults, alcohol, drugs, premature sex and adult media- even porn! (It is sexually abusive for adults to knowingly expose children under 18 to pornography.)

Some RU parents even advocate for allowing children to use extremely vulgar language in public or for parents not to expect basic hygiene from their children.

It shocks me to my foundations that any parent who claims to parent for attachment, who puts the time and energy into AP/RU principles, would then constantly expose their children to addictive, dangerous and toxic lifestyle choices and situations that can cause physical harm or long term psychological trauma to children. I wonder why they don’t just send their children to school and parent in all of the other harmful mainstream ways? While the confinement of schooling and the control of mainstream parenting are at one end of the spectrum of harm to children, some parents in the AP/RU communities have rushed to the other extreme- total hands off, “let’s watch and see” parenting.

Our children need us to guide them on their journey to adulthood.

Unparenting goes against nature’s intent and doubles as neglect. It also flies in the face of common sense: If children did not need our intervention, then they would be born as adults, not as children. It should go without saying that children need us to guide them on their journey to adulthood, not for us to stand by and watch them get hurt or lost.

When we observe how Hunter-Gatherer people once lived in nature, we find the opposite of punitive, controlling parenting AND the opposite of unparenting. In peaceful nonviolent tribal cultures, children enjoyed respect and freedom. Parents guided children largely through very strong, constant community modeling. Parents did not stand by idly when children acted in not-yet-mature ways; adults guided and lead the way without demands, control or punishment, but with firm expectation (i.e.: “This is just the way we live”). In no mentally healthy tribal culture did parents expect youth to negotiate childhood alone, without guidance.

How do children get to a place of having rude social skills, poor hygiene or being exposed to toxic food, excessive media usage, dangerous people or adult-themed entertainment? By parents accepting, modeling or offering those conditions. How do children get to a place of not “choosing” such conditions? By parents being heavily involved in guiding children’s choices, asking questions, modeling, expressing parental feelings and thoughts, having some basic, loose family routines, having a schedule of activities, providing information, purchasing only healthy foods, refraining from purchasing cable or electronic gadgets, working together as a team and facilitating exciting alternatives and opportunities that children would find irresistible.

In any growing movement that attempts to heal a social problem, past histories, anecdotal information, personal interpretation and dogma will eventually creep in and dilute the original principles. When many of us detoxed from mainstream parenting, educating, eating, living and healing, we probably asked ourselves some variation of the question, “What does nature say about this?” When it comes to our continued journey in the natural family living lifestyle, when we have doubts, questions and concerns we can also look to nature’s intent for answers. Nature’s intent is the only parenting advice we really need!

What does nature tell us about parenting our children?

What does nature say about children eating a toxic diet? What does nature say about children chronically staring at screens for hours on end, day after day? What does nature say about failing to protect children from people, dynamics, situations, substances and choices that are not developmentally appropriate for them? All we need to do is observe or imagine what (did) would happen if peaceful tribal children, wild animals, trees, plants or the land were exposed to such conditions contrary to their natural development. I believe parents who have discovered the AP/RU lifestyle already know the answers to those questions deep in their hearts and in their primal mothering and fathering instincts.

Rules, dogma, GroupThink, arguing amongst leaders (and attacks against leaders!) about what AP/RU “is” or “isn’t” are the opposite of the AP/RU principles of peace, nonviolence, freedom, fun, discussion, exploration, healing, consciousness, diversity, family, community and organic living. Negative dogmatic rules might work great at attracting converts, but do little to help parents develop their natural instincts… and do even less in helping the mainstream understand the deeper principles of the AP/RU lifestyle. With a little guidance from nature, Moms and Dads can each tune into their Earth-given instincts and follow their hearts- and their common sense- and know just what their individual children need to thrive holistically.

The Ohio rape, like any other rape of a girl, boy, man or woman, is a chilling tragedy. The media’s viral coverage of the story incited people to go into a frenzy of typing, posting, tweeting, sharing, ranting and blogging. Unfortunately, people have been lapping up any status, graphic, statistic, quote or rant that has shown up in their newsfeeds without stopping to question the source or the media frenzy they are perpetuating. This media frenzy is less focused on the victim and is instead focused on spreading more violence in the form of pushing political agendas, spreading disinformation about sexual violence and its causes, vilifying males and promoting demonization of the boys who committed the rape. The ignorance has reached such a pathological level that one blog post I saw was equating a two year boy hugging a girl without her consent as being a precursor to rape!

Everywhere I look, I see posts about “teaching” boys not to rape, as if girls and women don’t rape… And as if boys are born to rape and it must be “taught” and shamed out of them. Sound familiar? Remember the macabre Puritanical beliefs of centuries long ago that poisoned our culture with the belief that children were born “evil” and the “evil” needed to be beaten out of them? Centuries of brutal child abuse and cultural violence can be traced back to that psychotic belief. Most intelligent, thinking people have now caught up to the brain science that shows us that children are born to love and be loved; to be peaceful and benevolent. Most intelligent people have now caught up to the brain science that shows that violence is learned when children are its victims; that childhood trauma, abuse and violence permanently alters neurological and psychological development and can cause the very tragedy we saw in Ohio.

Or maybe people really haven’t caught up to the brain science about children at all.

This painful Ohio story has lead me to believe that our culture is still centuries behind the brain science, steeped in icy religious tradition and cold modern political theory that dares whisper that some children are just bad. Or, more bluntly to what is being currently perpetuated, boys are bad.

Let me put these facts about boys and “the rape culture” bluntly:

If you don’t want your son to rape, then don’t rape HIM.

Don’t allow ANYONE, woman, man, boy, girl, teacher, family member or babysitter to rape or sexually assault HIM.

If you don’t want your son to rape, don’t allow a doctor to sexually violate him by forcibly handling, attacking and cutting off part of his penis under the candy-coated tradition of “circumcision”. Yes, that is rape! (If you are Jewish, don’t allow a mohel to cut and then suck on your son’s penis- Yes, that is rape, too, and religion is no excuse for rape!)

If you don’t want your son to rape, don’t shame his penis, his scrotum, his body, his bodily functions and his growing sexuality by using euphemisms for his body and its functions. Don’t tell him his penis is bad, ugly or dirty either literally or by your facial expressions or reactions to him. Don’t shame or punish him for masturbating. Don’t make jokes about his body, his body parts, his bodily functions, male sexuality, male masturbation or about maleness.

If you don’t want your son to rape, don’t hit him, or allow ANYONE to hit or hurt him, especially on his buttocks. Yes, “spanking” is sexual assault. Don’t commit or allow anyone else to commit any other form of physical, sexual or emotional abuse on your son.

If you don’t want your son to rape, don’t allow him to watch the viciously anti-male media on TV that makes sexual assault of males into comedy. Yes, shows and movies that show males being kicked in the testicles or males being being sexually overtaken by overzealous females are promoting sexual assault of males.

If you don’t want your son to rape, then treat him with love, compassion and respect. Meet his needs, keep your attachment relationship with him of paramount importance and do not expose him to people or environments that will hurt him, violate his human rights or overpower him into submission. Let your son cry. Honor all of his emotions. Nurture the deep sensitivity and empathy boys naturally have and tell him how beautiful and wonderful he is as a human being. When he is in adolescence, continue to nurture, hug, cuddle and hold him. When he is in adolescence, continue to treat him with love, tenderness, compassion and respect.

If you don’t want your son to rape, let him know that his body is beautiful and marvel at his growth and development. Let him know that he has a right to his own bodily autonomy, that he has a right to privacy and the right to say no when someone touches him. Let him know that boys can be sexually assaulted, raped and hurt by women, men and even girls and boys. When the girls in middle school are years ahead of him in sexual development, protect his innocence from being violated before he is ready. Over the years, always provide the information about puberty, sex and the human body that he needs and wants. Show him art and anatomy books that depict the natural nude human body in a way that is not pornographic. Allow him access to these books. Let him know masturbation is a healthy and natural part of taking care of himself.

If you don’t want your son to rape, then when he is in adolescence, keep an ongoing, positive and open dialog about sex and sexuality. Do NOT tell him that he is responsible for doing or acting in a way that you would not expect out of your daughter.  Tell him what you would tell your daughter: To respect his body, to respect his limits, that its OK to say no, to assert his limits with his partner, that “no means no” for both partners, that he should only date a girl or a guy who respects him and his limits. If you would tell your son that he must respect a girl’s “no”, then you must tell your daughter the same. If you would tell your son that he must respect girls, then you must tell your daughter to respect boys. If you don’t want to promote rape, then there must be no double standards.

If you don’t want your son to rape, then don’t rape his intentions by putting adult connotations onto childish behavior; hugs and kisses by children are not sexual assaults! Don’t rape his intentions by comparing awkward growing up errors and developmentally appropriate teenage behavior to adult sex offenses.

If you don’t want your son to rape, then you must not rape his psyche with your own history, your hurt, your baggage, your biases, your beliefs, your traditions and your ignorance.

If you don’t want your son to rape, you must not rape his mind with the disinformation, political agendas, traditions, stereotypes and anti-male bias in our culture. You must inform him when he’s old enough developmentally to handle the information, that boys suffer sexual assaults and rapes equal to girls. Inform him that historically, sexual assaults, genital tortures and rapes of boys and men were some of the most brutal and socially accepted ever recorded. You must inform him that girls and women rape and sexually assault boys and men in much larger numbers than the crime stats and stats from human services agencies report. You must inform him that college age young men are just as vulnerable to date rape as young women and in some studies, young men report higher rates of date rape.

If you don’t want your son to rape you must inform him that our society has traditionally silenced boys and men from reporting sexual assaults and rapes that they’ve suffered. You must inform him that when boys and men have reported, their reports weren’t counted into rape and sexual assault stats- The FBI didn’t even allow males to be included in their definition of rape victims until 2012!

If you don’t want your son to rape, you must inform him that our society has covered up the research on female perpetrators for political purposes. You must inform him that when girls and women are caught sexually assaulting or raping, they are not held equally accountable to males who commit the same crimes. You must also inform him that few people stand up for boys or protest when people mock, laugh at and make comedy out of grown women raping and sexually abusing teenage boys. You must tell him when you see this sexism, you will stand up for boys and men.

If you don’t want your son to rape, you must inform him that even though the mental health, medical, social service, human service, law enforcement, social justice and human rights fields know that boys legally suffer from Male Genital Mutilation in the USA, most everyone in those fields, including the United Nations, is silent about it. You must also inform him that all of those fields and organizations use biased literature, case stories, pronouns and statistics as well as false “facts” to make it appear that boys and men are not at risk for sexual violence. You must also inform him that even through all of those fields are aware that boys and men are not likely to report being the victims of sexual assaults and rapes due to shame and fear, there are no campaigns to do mass outreach to boys and men.

If you don’t want your son to rape, then you must stand up against anti-male sexism when you see it politically. You must inform him that rape crisis agencies, “gender equality” organizations and anti-rape campaigns use sexist and hypocritical slogans such as, “End violence against women and girls” and push laws like the Violence Against Women Act. These slogans and names imply that sexual violence is a gender crime and that males are the sexual perpetrators and females are the victims.

If you don’t want your son to rape, then make sure that, “No means no”, “There’s no excuse for abuse” and “Rape is rape” applies equally to both sexes. Make sure that when you use the words “rape culture”, that you let your son know that part of the “rape culture” is our culture ignoring Male Genital Mutilation, male victims of rape and female perpetrators of rape. Let your son know that in 2009, when a 17 year old boy was lured and brutally raped in every possible manner, multiple times by a women and a man who were both school teachers, the story received no more than passing local coverage. No Facebook Pages named, “Not One More Boy”, no graphics about male victims of rape, no Tweets with the hashtag “rapeculture”, no anti-rape rallies, no “Teach Your Daughters Not to Rape” blog posts went viral- or were posted at all.

If you don’t want your son to rape, then don’t rape his mind by instilling it with hatred and violence. Instead of vilifying people who commit crimes such as rape, murder, war or genocide, model empathy and understanding for how hurt people hurt others when they do not have the compassionate people, resources and support to help them built the resilience to handle their hurt. By showing empathy compassion and love to your son and to others, even towards those who seem to deserve it least, you are instilling love, peace and compassion in your son. You are not condoning or “excusing” abhorrent behavior by empathizing with the human being.

Let’s bring the media hype back down to the common sense level: The majority of males in this world will not ever rape. Most sexually abused people will not rape. However, the most severely traumatized children with the fewest resources and compassionate people in their lives are at risk for passing on the cycle of violence. If you want to teach your CHILDREN to love and respect all PEOPLE, then love and respect YOUR CHILDREN. Raise them on compassion, love, patience, respect, understanding, tenderness, sensitivity and kindness. Treat them that way and let them witness you treat everyone you meet in that manner, as best as you can. Children will grow to treat others the way their parents, families, educators and the culture treats them.

Only ignorance and propaganda believes that shaming, bullying and force feeding 50% of the population the commands, “Don’t rape” and “Respect women” is the way to stop rape. The only true way to stop rape is to protect, respect, nurture and heal ALL of our youth… and to treat ALL children the way we wish them to someday treat others: With love, compassion, kindness and respect.

A sampling of the research and news you haven’t seen about rape and sexual assault

High rates of female-perped sex abuse in backgrounds of male sex offenders 93% chose females after
http://www.canadiancrc.com/Female_Sex_Offenders-Female_Sexual_Predators_awareness.aspx

Men coerced into sex almost as often as women, more men coerced into oral sex
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=f926b44a-39c9-4c7d-bc44-24001f40c213

Sexual coercion of men and women- High rates of coerced sex of men
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/ID45-PR45.pdf

The Controversy Over Domestic Violence by Women
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/CTS21.pdf

Risk Factors for Physical Violence Between Dating
Partners: Implications for Gender-Inclusive Prevention
and Treatment of Family Violence (References that despite over 200 studies finding that women are equally and slightly more violent than men in relationships, the research is ignored)
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/ID28-PR28.pdf

Sexual Abuse of Boys (under-reported)
http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/280/21/1855.short

Study of sexual abuse of boys by mothers (under-reported)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0145213489900343

Books about female sexual perpetrators (all note bias in the human services, social services, research fields, law, justice system, etc.)
http://www.jimhopper.com/male-ab/#fem

The Long-Term Effects of Child Sexual Abuse by Female Perpetrators
A Qualitative Study of Male and Female Victims
http://jiv.sagepub.com/content/19/10/1137.short

Ohio Mother Charged with Raping Infant Son
http://www.mlive.com/news/us-world/index.ssf/2011/09/ohio_mother_charged_with_rapin.html

Mother Raped Own Daughter for ‘Sex Education’
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/120110/mother-rape-daughter-porn-films-cybersex-sex-education

Woman Who Raped Boy 200 Times Sentenced to 9 Years
http://toysoldier.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/woman-rapes-boy-almost-200-times/

“Meet the Female Pedophile” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCpr3hr0K30

Male Victims
http://www.ncdsv.org/publications_malevictims.html

CITIVAS Study: Women and Men: Who Are the Victims?
(Domestic Violence, Labor Market issues- UK)
http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/cs09.pdf

Boy victims of sex trafficking ignored
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Part+Four+Boys+forgotten+victims+with+video/6350524/story.html

DV awareness and funding and services blocked: http://www.law.fsu.edu/journals/lawreview/downloads/304/kelly.pdf

“86% of the victims of female sexual predators aren’t believed, so the crimes go unreported and don’t get prosecuted. Considering these facts, arrest statistics for child sexual offenders by gender are meaningless.” – “The Sexual Abuse by Women of Children and Teenagers“, UK TV programme – Panorama – BBC1 – 10 pm Monday, October 6th, 1997 http://www.canadiancrc.com/Female_Sex_Offenders-Female_Sexual_Predators_awareness.aspx and http://www.canadiancrc.com/Newspaper_Articles/BBC_Child_sexual_abuse_by_women_06OCT97.aspx

LawFirms.com, Teacher Sex Offender List, http://www.lawfirms.com/female-teacher-sex-crime-offenders-and-scandals.html

Female Perpetrators and Male Sexual Abuse Victims: Society’s Betrayal of Boys http://kalimunro.com/wp/?page_id=1550

“The big list: Female teachers with students, the most comprehensive account on Internet of women predators on campus” http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=39783

Female and male teaching couple in California lured a 17 year old boy and raped him several times: http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-04-23/news/29484681_1_hot-tub-teaching-couple-school-and-davidson-shepard

Mom Pleads Guilty to Raping 4 Sons: In this case, the mother, who plead guilty to raping her four sons in 1997, is allowed to walk for 16 years of time served. Her conviction was originally overturned: http://www.wmur.com/news/29886665/detail.html

Anesthesia not used for MGM: http://www.moralogous.com/2012/03/06/hey-baby-just-bite-down-on-this-stick/

The psychological impact of circumcision
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1464-410x.1999.0830s1093.x/abstract

Male Circumcision: Pain, Trauma and Psychosexual Sequelae
http://hpq.sagepub.com/content/7/3/329.short

Circumcision: The Hidden Trauma
http://www.circumcision.org/cht.htm

Circumcision Decision Maker
http://circumcisiondecisionmaker.com/circumcision-facts/what-happens/

Penile and Foreskin Neurology
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD2yW7AaZFw&feature=player_embedded
Boys equal victims historically of torture and sexual assault by adults
http://www.psychohistory.com/originsofwar/08_infanticide.html

Male Genital Mutilation: The American Academy of Pediatrics Says OK! http://www.laurieacouture.com/2012/09/male-genital-mutilation-american-academy-of-pediatrics-says-ok/

FBI Changes Definition of Rape to Include Male Victims (2012)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-01-06/fbi-rape-definition-adds-men/52398350/1?csp=34news

(Official Bully film poster, Weinstein Company)

I reviewed the film documentary, Bully on Amazon.com. Documenting and exposing the reality of children being tormented by peers in traditional schools is commendable. The humanizing footage of the bullied children, including footage of their emotional suffering and home-video of them at various stages of their childhoods, was painfully powerful. The film’s exposé of the infuriating  incompetence, minimization and victim-blaming shown by the adults towards the victimized children was outstanding. Of course, the stories of  the children who took their own lives were  some of the most heartwrenching “wake-up calls” in the film.

However, despite these strengths, I gave the film only a three-star rating for the following reasons:

1. The film failed to address that the root causes of peer bullying are child maltreatment by adults and the child-subordinating power structure of schooling itself.

2. The film failed to state that the most obvious immediate solution to protect bullied youth is for parents to rescue their children by abandoning the schools.

The film also left viewers with a false sense of “hope”. Emotional community rallies, slogans on bracelets, pledges, Facebook groups and bringing passionate speakers to schools will not put an end a problem that is a symptom of a much larger problem: The inhumane way children are treated by adults in Industrialized culture.

Following is my review of Bully on Amazon:

This film misses the obvious solution: Homeschool!

This film is a heartbreaking account of several children who have been tormented by harassment and verbal and physical abuse in school. The most tragic stories are of those youth who were driven to the point where they took their own lives.

I rated this film a three-star because although the anti-bullying rallies and projects are a way to help families heal and bring solidarity to victims, they are mere band-aids on the true causes of bullying: Child maltreatment and confinement.

I have been working with youth of all ages in various roles, including as a mental health counselor, social worker, mentor and educator. I am a homeschooling single mother. Children treat others with violence and hatred when their needs are not met, when they are tormented, abused and neglected at home by their parents and families and when they are forced to attend the prison-like hierarchical environments of factory schooling. The entire power structure of schools, with adults having total power and control over the lives, movement, bodily functions and thoughts of children sets up a dangerous dynamic amongst a group of youth forced to associate in such conditions. Many school teachers are rude, sarcastic, disrespectful, controlling, abusive and use their position to lash out and act out their own personal control issues onto the children. Teachers model bullying by their very position over children.

The entire structure of schooling sets youth up to be powerless and voiceless. Youth lash out against the apathy to their basic needs and against the neglect of their needs for freedom, play, creativity, autonomy and joy by developing a toxic youth culture that adults can’t penetrate, despite their attempts, threats and surveillance. Youth in schools set up their own power structures, usually based upon superficial criteria. Youth feel the power and control they lack by segregating into groups and even by targeting and abusing other youth. Rallies, bracelets, slogans, initiatives, curriculum and school talks about bullying are not going to stop this abuse of children because they fail to address the way adults treat children in Industrialized culture.

I also rated this film a three-star because this film ignored the most obvious solution that a growing number of families are joyfully choosing daily: Homeschooling and unschooling! The best way to change a system that refuses to change is to walk away from it. If enough families abandon schools and either homeschool or unschool or begin establishing child-led learning communities right in their towns and cities, the indomitable power structure of schooling would fail.

Parents, your children’s lives, your children’s mental health, your children’s safety are worth more than school. Our society’s bizarre, unchallenged belief that school is a necessity and that the absence of school is akin to death is causing death to be the answer for so many suffering youth.

If your child is suffering any form of bullying, remove your child from school and research unschooling TODAY. Do NOT force your child to take the abuse for another day! Would you tolerate what they are forced to tolerate? Protect your child and help him or her restore a healthy sense of self worth, safety and self love by allowing your child to live and learn naturally, as people did for millennia until 1852. Yes, parents with minimal income and full time jobs and single parents CAN do it with sacrifice and creativity! Tap into homeschool groups and community activities. Allow your child to follow his or her passions and interests. Whatever you do, don’t keep sending your child back for another dose of torture- You are not aware of their breaking point. As someone who works directly with youth who are victims or bullies (and often both at the same time) and as someone who has personal experience [with this issue] as well, I can tell you, SCHOOL IS NOT WORTH THE DAMAGE IT CAUSES.

(Photo by Laurie A. Couture)

I hope this month’s post will empower children to advocate for their needs and rights and I hope it will empower parents to seek out learning environments that respect their children’s needs and rights. On 2/8/13, I received an email from a middle school teacher who was displeased that a boy in her class had empowered himself with one of my articles. Her email and my response to her email (with a grammatical fix for clarity) follows.

NOTE to school teachers: I am a mandated reporter of child abuse and neglect. If you leave a comment telling me that you deny children use of the toilet, I will forward your school’s info to Child Protective Services in your state as required by law.

(I redacted the teacher’s name and personal information for her privacy):

“As a teacher I took offense at the tone of your article. If a child asks to use the bathroom in my class I will most likely say yes. I may ask the child to wait until I finish giving instructions, but then will allow them to go. Recently one of my students decided to use your article against me when I denied him use of the bathroom. However when he has used the bathroom in the past, he fools around. He will spend 15 minutes in the bathroom; that is 15 minutes of class he is missing! And he is already a poor student. Earlier in the week he was told to use the bathroom in the class before mine. Which he of course neglected to do. This is not a child who needs to go at the same time everyday. Requiring permission which you seem to think is unnecessary is a safety issue. This way if a child is “missing” we can check to see what time the student left for the bathroom. Yes kids have rights but when they overstep the boundaries there should be consequences.”

Hi ______,

I imagine you took offense at my article because your control over children’s bodies was called into question. I am not sure of which article you are referring, but I write to inform youth and their parents of children’s basic human rights and their needs. My tone is meant to empower those with little to no power, not to be disrespectful. However, I have little tolerance for the beliefs that people use to justify their subjugation of other people who they deem less equal than themselves. In a democracy, it is unacceptable that children should be held in school against their wills like a 13 year jail sentence- It certainly goes without saying that attempting to control children by regimenting their biological functions is abusive and inhumane.

I am pleased to hear that a youth felt empowered enough by one of my articles to stand up for his basic human rights. What evidence do you have that he “fools around” in the bathroom? Are there cameras recording his actions? Who has a right to determine what amount of time a person should have while taking care of personal matters? There are a number of reasons why a person, especially a teenage boy, might take 10-15 minutes in the bathroom: He might have difficulty urinating because he was forced to wait so long. Maybe he gets anxious urinating in front of others and waits to be alone. He might have constipation or diarrhea. He might be feeling ill. He might feel emotionally distressed and overwhelmed and needs an emotional break. He might be masturbating to ease the sexual tension that is natural and so intense for teens. He might be bored and is trying to take space or talk to a friend to rejuvenate himself.

Being cooped up in school for six hours a day certainly doesn’t give kids the time to play, socialize or take care of their many biological or emotional needs. You seem to think that 15 minutes of “class time” (that he doesn’t seem to want) is more important than caring for his bodily and emotional needs. You say it is a “safety issue” for a child to leave the classroom without permission, yet you denied him permission, putting his health and well being at risk. I see it as unsafe to “train” young impressionable humans to be obedient in a democracy that is supposed to be based on consent, critical thinking, equality, mutual respect and consensus.

You said he’s a “poor student”– then likely he is a brilliant and creative person. “Poor student” often translates to “the learning environment fails to meet his learning needs” or “the learning environment does not respect the kinesthetic or artistic modality through which he learns”. “Poor student” can also translate to “person who refuses to choke down and regurgitate a force-fed agenda.”

I encourage you to question your training that schooled you to believe that it is acceptable to force “class time”, education, confinement and bodily control over people simply due to their age and status in society. I would recommend former NY teacher, John Taylor Gatto’s book, “Dumbing Us Down” and the many other books about the unschooling movement and schools that run as child-led democracies (The Sudbury Valley School is one of many examples). You will discover in doing the research that youth, like my own teen son, are passionate and responsible about learning when it is interest-led and there is no force or confinement.

I hope you will praise your student for advocating for himself and for caring for his body and well being. Isn’t that what adults have to spend the rest of their lives learning to do after recovering from their schooling?

Sincerely,

Laurie A. Couture

Protect our vulnerable boys! Rename and rewrite VAWA so it is gender-neutral.

(Note: Although I appreciate the support, this is copyrighted material. This article may not be reposted to your blog without permission/payment, however a link is appreciated.)

This is an open letter to Democratic Leader, Nancy Pelosi, who strongly supports reinstating the gender-biased Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). For the past 18 years, VAWA has been renewed without public debate. VAWA fails to support boys and men who are victims of sexual and domestic violence. It also fails to acknowledge that women perpetrate sexual and domestic violence against children and adults.

I mailed a hard copy of this letter to Nancy Pelosi, along with a list of studies and reports supporting my statements. I sent a similar letter to Governor Maggie Hassan of NH, who also supports VAWA. For this post, I included a partial listing of the resources. I also redacted my address and information personal to my family.

As a child advocate, I feel it is my duty as a professional to demand equality, compassion and fairness in laws that have the potential to help or harm children.

January 24, 2013

Office of the Democratic Leader
H-204, US Capitol
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Honorable Leader Nancy Pelosi,

I am a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, a children’s rights advocate and former social worker. I have worked with children of all ages and families in various roles for 20 years. I am a registered Democrat, a strong humanitarian and community activist. I am requesting that VAWA be renamed The Sexual And Domestic Violence Act and rewritten so that it is gender neutral.

I am writing to express my dismay at how politics have infected the fields of human services in the past several years, to the point where I am seeing a chronic lack of compassion and a dangerous apathy towards the suffering of male victims of sexual and domestic violence. I have worked hard over the years to protect all people from suffering. Sexual and domestic violence are the tragic consequences of people who grew up with severe childhood trauma, whose needs have not been met to such a degree that they act-out in violence as a means to cope. I have always worked to try to heal children and families to prevent the cycles of violence from spreading. However, in my work with youth and families, over and over I come across unspoken and unwritten rules that seem to suggest that it is politically incorrect and even profane for Democrats, humanitarians and social justice advocates to speak on behalf of the rights and needs of boys and men, or to bring attention to and hold women accountable for their violent and sexually aggressive behavior towards children and adults of both sexes.

I have worked with countless boys of all ages who have suffered rape and sexual assaults by perpetrators of both sexes. Far more boys than girls are severely abused by their parents. Many of the men in the families I have worked with are victims of domestic and sexual violence. The difference between these boys and men who are victims and their female peers who are victims, is how they are treated by society, the mental health system, community crisis centers, the child protective/social service system, the legal system, the justice system and the media: While the girls and women I work with have been focused on, protected, believed, supported and empowered by these systems, the boys and men I have worked with, as a whole, have suffered systematic discrimination, sexism, mockery, disbelief and neglect by these systems. Despite the already over-abundant outreach efforts, programs, policies and services for women, there are still no serious outreach attempts to educate, protect, empower, focus on and support boys and men who suffer date rape, rape, sexual assault, genital mutilation, child abuse, domestic violence and psychological battery in their families, relationships and in society.

I don’t know where to turn with these concerns. As an author and writer, I have reached out to progressive magazines, human rights organizations, feminist organizations and other politicians. I have either received no response or an angry, dismissive response. However, what I have witnessed in my own work as a humanitarian is not isolated. I have been researching this gender bias against male victims of sexual and domestic violence and the ignoring of female perpetration of violence for several years and my findings have been shocking. There have been almost 300 quantitative random sample research studies since the 70′s that have consistently shown that men and women both report that men are the victims in 51% of domestic violence incidents involving male-female couples. There have been decades of studies showing the high incidents of rape and sexual violence against boys and men and of female-perpetrated sexual assaults. Murray Straus at the Family Research Lab in NH has an unpublished study showing that boys under 18 in the US suffer slightly more sexual abuse than girls. Also, in several studies of college-age youth, young men report being the victim of coerced sex (date rape) more often than or equal to young women! News reports of male victims of both sexes, but especially boys and men tortured by women, boys raped by mothers, boys raped by teachers, especially teenage boys raped by grown women, are kept under the radar and receive little attention other than mockery.

Yet, quantitative, random sample studies and news reports are ignored in favor of compiling crime statistics, or stats from social service/crisis centers, which only tally who actually reports abuse and crimes to law enforcement and social service agencies. It is common knowledge in the human services that boys and men are unlikely to report sexual and domestic violence to law enforcement or to the mental health system (especially when they are victimized by a woman), therefore they are grossly under-represented in crime stats. Additionally, the FBI didn’t even count male victims of rape until 2012, so boys and men were not ever factored into rape statistics compiled by the FBI. I have witnessed many times that reports to Child Protective Services of boys being sexually abused by women are not referred to the DA or to law enforcement. When women are actually caught and prosecuted for sexual and domestic violence, they receive light sentences or none at all.

Another issue I want to briefly mention is genital mutilation. Most humanitarians agree that Female Genital Mutilation is an egregious crime against girls. However, in our country, millions of boys have suffered the sexual violation and trauma of genital mutilation without any interest or concern from human rights groups. Research and victim reports are clear that Male Genital Mutilation (circumcision) causes trauma, mother-son attachment disruption and sexual and mental health problems, yet it continues without any outcry.

As a democrat, a humanitarian, a mental health counselor, a children’s rights activist, an aunt and a mother, I do not understand why there is such an outpouring of support and protection for girls and women but an indifferent, silent apathy which ignores boys and men. It is an egregious violation of human rights in my ethical opinion.

As my Leader, I am asking you to only support legislation that is gender neutral, that protects ALL victims of sexual and domestic violence and that holds ALL perpetrators equally accountable for sexual and domestic violence. I know that VAWA has been a hot button for politicians; I am asking that you only endorse VAWA if the name and the language in the act are gender-neutral. The act should be renamed, The Sexual and Domestic Violence Act, and should have equal provision for all victims, holding all perpetrators equally accountable. Law enforcement must stop targeting men for punishment, and understand that men are half of the victims and women are half of the perpetrators. It is factually incorrect and even a public safety threat to have an act like VAWA that is named to only protect half the population and target half the perpetrators.

I saw your Tweet on 1/23/13 that “No woman should be forced to suffer abuse in silence”. I don’t believe ANY person should suffer abuse in silence, including men and children. I would like your thoughts and your suggestions of how I can bring more public awareness to this problem in order to protect my clients and the people I serve. I hope that you will consider supporting ALL victims who suffer the trauma and pain of sexual and domestic violence in our country.

Sincerely,

Laurie A. Couture
Licensed Mental Health Counselor
Author of Instead of Medicating and Punishing
Parenting Coach and Speaker

Resources

Abused Boys: The Neglected Victims of Sexual Abuse by Mic Hunter

Female Sexual Abuse of Children Ed. by Michelle Elliot

From Victim to Offender: How Child Sexual Abuse Victims Become Offenders by Freda Briggs

The Sexually Abused Male: Vol. 1 by Mic Hunter

Report Reveals Many Abuse Stats are One-sided or False

Young men suffer more date rape than young women

Predictors of Sexual Coercion Against Women and Men by Denise A. Hines

The Controversy Over Domestic Violence by Women

Male Victims of Domestic Violence: A Substantive and Methodological Research Review

Risk Factors for Physical Violence Between Dating Partners: Implications for Gender-Inclusive Prevention and Treatment of Family Violence

http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/ID28-PR28.pdf

Thirty Years of Denying the Evidence On Gender Symmetry in Partner Violence: Implications for Prevention and Treatment by Murray A. Straus in Partner Abuse, Vol. 1 No. 3, 2010

Current Controversies and Prevalence Concerning Female Offenders of Intimate Partner Violence: Why the Overwhelming Evidence on Partner Physical Violence Has Not Been Perceived and Is Often Denied by Murray A. Straus in Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment and Trauma, 18:552-571, 2009

A Closer Look at Men Who Sustain Intimate Terrorism By Women by Denise A. Hines and Emily M. Douglas in Partner Abuse, Vol. 1 No. 3, 2010

Sexual Abuse of Boys (under-reported)

Study of sexual abuse of boys by mothers (under-reported)

Books about female sexual perpetrators

The Long-Term Effects of Child Sexual Abuse by Female Perpetrators
A Qualitative Study of Male and Female Victims

17 Year old boy raped and tortured by woman and man couple

“Sexy Substitute Gets No Jail Time”

The psychological impact of circumcision

Male Circumcision: Pain, Trauma and Psychosexual Sequelae

Circumcision: The Hidden Trauma

Circumcision Decision Maker

Penile and Foreskin Neurology

Why Boys Turn Violent

Ohio Mother Charged with Raping Infant Son

Mother Raped Own Daughter for ‘Sex Education’

Woman Who Raped Boy 200 Times Sentenced to 9 Years

Woman Charged with Slashing Children’s Throats

Boy victims of sex trafficking ignored

Domestic violence awareness and funding and services blocked

Anesthesia not used for MGM

Female Teacher Avoids Jail Time in Statutory Rape Case

LawFirms.com, Teacher Sex Offender List

Female Perpetrators and Male Sexual Abuse Victims: Society’s Betrayal of Boys

Florida Epidemic: Teachers Sleeping With Students

The big list: Female teachers with students, the most comprehensive account on Internet of women predators on campus

Female and male teaching couple in California lured a 17 year old boy and raped him several times

Choate Stepmother Charged, Pleads Not Guilty (case of severe torture of a 13 year old boy)

Police: Mother, boyfriend caged and starved 5-year-old

“Dynamics of Female Perpetrated Abuse”, from The Invisible Boy

Mom Pleads Guilty to Raping 4 Sons

(AP Photo/Newtown Bee, Shannon Hicks)

I am deeply saddened by the news of the tragic school shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut this morning. As of the time of this writing, 28 people have been confirmed dead, including 20 young children at the school, six adults at the school, a seventh adult at a second scene and the young 20 year old suspected gunman himself, Adam Lanza. My heart goes out to all of the people involved in these tragedies: The victims, their families, the surviving children who will suffer trauma from what they have witnessed and for the young man who could find no other way but violent means to meet his needs.

It is tragedies like these that cause me to feel deep gratitude that my son was unschooled and that I parent him by Attachment Parenting principles. These tragedies cause my heart to ache for the other children in my life who I love deeply or who I care about who are unfortunately not Attachment Parented or in a safe and need-meeting learning environment. My heart also aches for a society that will rush to hateful judgements and will blindly recycle superficial causes and superfluous “solutions” for the symptoms of a deeper malignant problem of Industrialized culture: Child trauma.

It is too early at this point in the investigation to confirm most details, including the exact identity of the alleged gunman, his motives, his targets or his history. There have been some reports that the young man named as the alleged gunman, Adam Lanza, targeted and killed his mother, who was a kindergarten teacher at the school. WCVB.com, Channel 5 reported that a woman who knew the family described Adam as “a troubled child”, with “Asperger’s Syndrome and OCD” (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). The woman described Adam’s mother as “a dignified but strict” mother and that Adam would “rebel against” her strictness.

My son made a poignant comment tonight as we were eating and discussing this occurrence with somber moods. Deeply saddened by every aspect of this tragedy, my 18 year old son expressed an insight and piece of wisdom that most expert commentators in the news miss:

“He must have been in an inordinate amount of pain.”

At the heart of every act of violence is child trauma. At the heart of violence so extreme, such as taking the lives of innocent children, there are deep, chronic unmet needs. At the heart of violence targeted against one’s own mother, there is a disruption of attachment that could find no relief anywhere else in life’s offerings. To discuss these issues is not to make speculation about the family, or to in any way condone violence. Many people are fearful that empathic understanding of violent people negates responsibility or condones actions. Empathy does no such thing. Empathy in these situations allows us to stop, connect to the humanity and suffering in people, and to realize that crucial and immediate paradigm shifts are in order in our culture’s way of parenting and educating children in order to prevent future tragedies.

Terrified parents ran frantically to reach their children this morning after the shootings. No doubt when they were fortunate enough to find that their children survived, they held onto their children and didn’t want to let go. Not all of the parents were so fortunate. Their grief tonight is unimaginable.

Despite this horrific expression of industrialized culture, our culture will encourage parents all over the country- including the parents of Sandy Hook Elementary School- to send their children right back to school on Monday. Back at school, with the addition of a few grief counselors, it will soon be “business as usual” as children are expected to swallow their trauma, tears, fears and needs and attend to apathetic curriculum assignments. Our culture will increase school building security, tighten up on school rules and maybe even enforce that all youth are screened for mental illness and referred for mental health “treatment”. Psychiatric drugging of “troubled youth” may increase, crime punishment may intensify, metal music groups may be blamed and each political faction will most certainly capitalize on this tragedy to push their obtuse, self-serving agendas.

In other words, nothing will change. Nothing will change in our culture’s paradigm of parenting and educating children just as nothing changed after the infamous school shootings of the late 1990′s. No lessons will have been learned by our culture as a whole. Children will continue to suffer in home and school environments that do not even meet a fraction of their needs and when the conditions feel so intolerable that they act-out or sink into depression, they will continue to be punished or diagnosed as mentally ill.

It is time for us to heed Gandhi’s words, “We must be the change we wish to see in the world”, and take action to live them rather than just re-post them as  a Facebook status update. If every one of us did this, our culture would embark upon a true paradigm shift.

The first step in heeding and taking action to live Gandhi’s words is empathy and compassion:

Following violent tragedies, social media sites, the media, the office and our dinner tables can immediately become ablaze with judgmental and hateful comments self-righteously dehumanizing the violent offender and demanding punishment and tougher laws. What can you personally do within yourself to challenge these fearful beliefs and instead see the situation with compassion and love? The Hawaiian practice of Ho’ Pono Pono is a deeply healing and cleansing process that invites each of us to assume responsibility for our role in contributing to violence in the world while forgiving others and freeing ourselves of fear, anger and hatred. I love Ho’ Pono Pono and do my humanly-best to use it regularly.

Additionally, what can you personally do to help others connect empathically and view violent offenders through the lens of childhood trauma and unmet needs rather than through the lenses of cold political theories, religious judgements and legal system punishments?

The second step in taking action to live  Gandhi’s words is reaching out to those who are seeking another way:

How many children in our culture are surviving day in and day out in homes that are disconnected, strict, overpowering, authoritarian, neglectful, abusive and tormenting? What can you personally do to reach out to these families, report suspected child abuse and neglect or to inform the media about Attachment Parenting? How many children are trapped day in and day out in schools that are neglecting their basic needs, violating their human rights, confining them to desks and chairs and punishing, shaming, verbally abusing and instilling fear in them? What can you personally do to inform politicians and inform the media about unschooling? What can you do to reassure the distraught parents around the country that they don’t have to let go of the children they are embracing tightly tonight- that they can protect them through homeschooling and unschooling?

I believe that living a lifestyle that has the potential to heal humanity, as Attachment Parenting and natural learning certainly does, carries with it a responsibility to inform others about children’s needs and how to meet those needs. We can take action to reach out to parents, politicians and the media and inform them that more and more families of all demographics are living the need-meeting lifestyle of Attachment Parenting and Unschooling.

Tonight, hold your children close. At all ages, they need this from you. Allow your heart to feel the magnitude of the suffering felt by the families involved in these shootings. Allow your heart to connect to the conditions in this culture that are causing young people to feel so desperate, distraught and despairing that taking their own lives- or taking the lives of other people– seems like the only solution they can find to escape this culture. Then, reach out. “Be the change”. Don’t just post status updates to your social media platforms, but use the platform of your voice, your written words, your connection to family, friends and your communities to help update the paradigm of this culture.

Showing respect to our teens and using humor keeps the parent-child connection strong.

I love my teen and I love the countless adventures of day-to-day life while parenting a teen. I love being a mom and being part of the memorable and silly, albeit unexpected, situations that are part of a teen’s maturing process. I also love and find respectful humor in teen logic when they are so excited about trying to make something work that is going awry:

On Thanksgiving afternoon after a busy day with family and lots of driving, my son and I embarked on a drive to drop him off at a sleepover that he and two other boys had planned. I drove an hour (considered a long drive by New England standards) in setting sun only to discover that my son and the two other boys involved had loosely set up the sleepover without informing the parents of Boy #3, the home where I surmised the actual sleepover was to be held! However, that wasn’t the worst part; the real problem was that Boy #3 and his family had left the state for the entire day to visit family for Thanksgiving! Boy #2 had no idea when they were returning.

My son has asthma and allergies and could not go inside the pet-shared home of Boy #2 who was actually home. Interestingly, I learned that the plan had been to hang out at the home of Boy #2 and then sleep over the home of Boy #3. To complicate matters, my son would be going into the recording studio over the weekend and needs his lungs, sinuses and throat to be in perfect condition. Risking going into the home of Boy #2 was not an option. It seemed my son had overlooked these details in his eagerness to spend time with these friends who had both been difficult to visit due to scheduling conflicts.

In my post-turkey-Tryptophan-induced-lethargy, I had not clarified the kaleidoscopic details prior to the drive.

Empathizing with our teen children is critical to attachment parenting.

It was getting dark and cold and I could not reach the parents of Boy #3. My son and Boy #2 tried to convince me that they’d “be fine tenting out on the lawn” in 26 degree weather tonight wearing only a fall coat, regular clothing, sneakers and thin gloves. I quizzically and curiously regarded my usually logical, mature and health-conscious son, surprised by this rare reasoning. I let him know that it was unsafe and I could not leave him with that arrangement, with no (allergy-free) camping gear, no bathroom and no clothing fit for below freezing temperatures. Empathizing with our teen children’s feelings and with the urgency they feel to make things work out is critical to attachment parenting. Protecting them when their safety is at stake is also important. I’m thankful that my son respects my judgement when I say “no” because I say “no” to him rarely and I say “yes” to him almost as a default. Saying “no” is reserved for safety and health issues, with the goal being to find a way to turn the “no” into a “yes”.

Brainstorm win-win solutions that honor your teen and everyone involved.

Although camping on the suburban neighborhood lawn with the risk of hypothermia and frostbite was not an option, my son and Boy #2 did not want to leave Boy #3 behind by having the sleepover at our home instead. I did not want to do extra driving by going home, waiting to reach Boy #3′s parents to confirm that they were OK with the sleepover and then driving back (a total of four hours of driving) because I had planned to work on my latest book when my son was away. Driving back the next day would negate the possibility of a sleepover because of weekend plans and would not allow me much time to write.

A conundrum, indeed.

I worked with the boys to find a solution. None of the suggestions we brainstormed seemed to be win-win for everyone involved. We were about to settle with a less-than-satisfactory solution.

Thankfully, we finally reached the parents of Boy #3 by cell. This was an opportunity for my son to practice assertiveness skills by informing Boy #3′s parents of the situation while still asking if the sleepover idea could be salvaged. Thankfully, our friends came through for us! We drove nearby to their relatives’ home (who has pets), one of whom unlocked Boy #3′s home so my son and Boy #2 could go inside to stay warm and hang out. This freed me up to drive home and work on writing rather than drive them around for an indefinite amount of time trying to find somewhere open where we could stay warm on Thanksgiving evening.

The boys were all smiles, I exhaled a sigh of relief that everyone was satisfied and we all exchanged “knuckles” at the uncanny timing… Thus, a happy ending: The sleepover was able to happen as planned once Boy #3 and his family returned home… um… four hours later.

LOVE being a parent to your teen, and love all of the adventures that parenting your teen brings!

I love being the kind of mom who was able to flow with each stage of this scene, from the surprising “discovery” that the plans weren’t quite what I envisioned, to brainstorming win-win solutions that honored everyone’s needs, to seeing it all work out. I also love being the type of mom who so loves being a mom that I was able to laugh at this entire experience and see the potential for it to be memorable and not get upset with my son. I love being an Attachment Parenting mom who finds joy in these parenting moments rather than seeing these experiences as inconveniences to me. My son and I remain close and deeply connected because he can see that I approached this and other similar situations with, yes, concern; but also with humor, empathy, respect and a genuine desire to help him make it work out for everyone involved.  If I reacted with anger, sarcasm, humiliation, shaming or a punitive attitude of trying to make him “pay” for his age-appropriate misjudgment by insisting it be turned in my favor, our connection and relationship would have  been harmed. Punitive, shaming parenting is the definition of attachment disruption. Connected, empathic, compassionate and respectful parenting is the definition of secure attachment.

Remember, adolescence is a stage of childhood, and the risk-taking, spontaneous, sometimes “creative” judgment of our adolescents is developmentally appropriate. Being a parent is a sacred agreement with our children to love, treasure, cherish and respect them, at all ages and stages of development. The most critical aspect of our sacred agreement with our children is to meet their needs– and also to honor their wants. Making things happen for our children, saying “yes” when it is safe, healthy and positive to do so (especially when they make mistakes) and enjoying the years of taxiing and facilitating social activities is part of Attachment Parenting and unschooling.

Note to Self: In light of the aforementioned saga and other such adventures, double check plans with the other parents before embarking on long drives when son says, “It’s all set, Mom!”

[Photos of Laurie and her son by Brenden Sanborn; photos of Laurie's son by Laurie]

Laurie’s son, Brycen R. R. Couture

On 6/11/12 my unschooled teen son, Brycen R. R. Couture answered questions sent to him by a reporter who was interested in learning more about unschooling. Here are Brycen’s responses:

What do you like about being unschooled?

BRRC: What I love about unschooling is the ability to be free and wild. To choose what I want to do when I want to do it. If I want to play music, which is my passion, then I can play music at any time. I am free in every way a person can be free, mind, body and spirit. In public school they shackle your body with their routines, they shackle your mind with their curriculum, and they shackle your spirit with their rules. If they find it difficult to shackle you, they resort to psychiatric drugs. I also continue to grow close to my family and friends because I have the freedom and time to spend with them.

What does a typical unschooling day look like for you?

BRRC: There is no typical day for an unschooler, because everyday is based on what we want to do that day. My family is extremely spontaneous, aside from all of the regular groups, band practices, activities and events in the community that I have chosen to put into my schedule. Every day is different. For example, one day may consist of the following: Chainmaille crafting, rollerblade-basketball with Mom, band practice, putting up the letters on the marquis at a historical theater we are helping to restore, running my Dungeons and Dragons group, leather crafting and making plans for future days. One day the whole day might revolve around hiking a mountain with a friend or two and studying nature, followed by a dip in the local lake.

What do you plan to do when you’re done with schooling? Go to college? Start a business, etc.?

BRRC: There’s no such thing as finishing with unschooling. I also want to clarify that I haven’t been “schooling” all of this time, I’ve been living my life and I plan to continue doing that. As far as starting a business, I already started two- I started my first when I was 12, and the most recent, selling my chainmaille crafts, I started last year. I am also a performing musician, public speaker and child advocate. I’ve known I wanted to be a singer ever since I was five years old and unschooling has made it so I could pursue that dream, and that is what I will continue to do. I’m not interested in college because it would not meet my needs or help me meet my goals at this point in my life.

What would you like readers to know about unschooling… Any myth you’d like to bust?

BRRC: I want readers to understand that unschooling is not merely a style of “education”- It is the most natural way of learning and it is the optimal way to give children joy in everything they do. I want parent readers to understand that you do not have to “teach” your children. We have been “taught” that learning must be taught, that learning just can’t happen as a result of living. Whereas, unschooling allows children to reap learning as a result of living our lives. Children need to be given the freedom to play because that is where real learning actually manifests.

Anything else you’d like to add?

BRRC: I do not consider video games to be playing. Video games shut my brain down as opposed to lighting it up. Playing- dramatic play, building, exploring, inventing and having fun outside all engaged huge portions of my brain and is how I naturally learned most everything I know now.

AAP = No Ethics Campaign photo by The EPICoutures for The WHOLE Network

On August 27, 2012, the human rights of children and gender equality for boys took a devastating and shameful blow: The American Academy of Pediatrics released a position statement sanctioning the outmoded, ancient practice of genital cutting of male children. Their new statement shockingly reversed their former position of discouraging male circumcision which had already fallen short of promoting genital integrity. The community of children’s rights activists known as “Intactivisits”, was shocked to the core. This community of Intactivisits includes scientists, doctors, nurses, mental health counselors, human rights activists, parents and victims who have worked tirelessly for years to educate the public about the dangers, trauma and suffering caused to boys and men of Male Genital Mutilation. It seems almost surreal; nightmarish, in fact- that a physicians organization as powerful and influential as The American Academy of Pediatrics would support legalized sexual assault, torture and permanent penile mutilation of boys under 18.

In this post, I will refer to cosmetic, routine, religious and traditional circumcision of boys under 18 as Male Genital Mutilation (MGM) or genital cutting, in order to be truthful and clear about what is actually being done to boys. Words like “circumcision” candy-coat the violence, sexual violation and the human rights implications of amputating a critical and significant part of a boy’s penis without his consent and (in the case of infants), often without anesthesia.

The amazing foreskin

The intact human penis is perfectly equipped by nature with a foreskin that protects the glans and urethra and allows the penis to comfortably expand fully into erections. In early childhood, the foreskin is fully attached to the glans. As a boy grows older, the foreskin begins to separate naturally, allowing retraction. The age for this is different for every boy and retraction should never be forced. Usually by the end of adolescence, boys have a fully retractable foreskin. It is as easy to clean the intact penis as it is to clean a finger.

The adult foreskin contains 80% of a man’s sexual sensitivity, plus the erogenous areas of the ridged band and frenulum. The foreskin is a mucous membrane and muscular structure like the eyelids or lips, meant to keep the glans moist and covered like an internal organ whenever the penis is flaccid. The foreskin allows the penis to function perfectly during sexual intercourse, providing the penis with natural gliding action inside the vagina, which keeps both partners comfortable, naturally lubricated and positioned correctly to maximize pleasure for both him and her.

Cutting off the foreskin is a significant loss to a male physically and sexually, in how he looks, feels, functions and performs sexually. Amputating the foreskin removes body parts that are critical to penile and urethral protection, sexual functioning and male sexual pleasure. Loss of the foreskin costs a male 80% of his erogenous nerves, the erogenous frenulum and ridged band, mucous membrane, muscle tissue and enough skin that by adulthood, would cover a 3×5 index card. Loss of the foreskin causes psychological and sexual trauma to a boy, and can lead to shame and issues with self esteem and body image. Loss of the foreskin often causes an increase in uncomfortable scar tissue sensitivity and overall loss of sexual sensitivity that can lead to sexual dysfunction in later manhood. Additionally, the procedure puts boys at risk for a long list of complications, including painful and tight erections, loss of his entire penis or even death.

How can the AAP say “the benefits outweigh the risks”?

A practice with sexual shame at its roots

Male Genital Mutilation, like Female Genital Mutilation, is an egregious violation of human rights that leads to psychological trauma to the victim and permanent disfigurement and dysfunction of the genitalia. Genital mutilations of all types against children began in ancient times and continued through Medieval times for both religious and social purposes. Male circumcision was commonly used at different points in history as a punishment, a deterrent for masturbation and as a way to desensitize the male from experiencing the full range of sexual pleasure. In the mid-1800′s, with ties to the medical doctor who invented Kellogg’s corn flakes, the modern wave of Male Genital Mutilation took hold as one of the painful punishments recommended for children caught masturbating.

Genital cutting has at its roots sexual shame and passing that shame onto the bodies of children. It is illegal in the USA and in much of the Western world to perform genital cutting on girls. The fact that it is fully legal in the USA and other Western countries to violate boys by mutilating their penises should be the first priority outcry of anyone who claims to fight for gender equality. Now, not only does the law support sexist practices against male children under 18, but The American Academy of Pediatrics have added their support to promoting violent and damaging attacks against the bodies and sexual development of boys.

Shockingly little concern for the human rights of boys

Shockingly, there has been little concern from the medical establishment, mental health professionals, human rights organizations, feminist groups, The United Nations, WHO, UNICEF and Amnesty International and other mainstream researchers about MGM. All all of these professionals and organizations are opposed to and speak out against FGM, but seem blind and apathetic to the social and cultural implications of boys suffering this psychological, physical and sexual trauma.

Outrageous medical claims

The medical establishment has a financial stake in keeping MGM a routine part of the birthing process in hospitals. Their weak and unsubstantiated claims that cutting off a natural part of the penis prevents urinary tract infections, penile cancer and HIV are as outrageous as stating that cutting out the bladders of children would prevent urinary tract infections or cutting off part of the breasts of girls would prevent breast cancer!

Among the primary causes of urinary tract infections in children are unhealthy urine “holding” habits, often caused by punitive parents and school rules that prevent children from urinating when they feel the need. Encouraging frequent hydration, toilet use at least every two hours and allowing boys to urinate when their bodies feel the need, would prevent most urinary tract infections. If a boy does develop a UTI, naturopathic remedies or the medically standard practice of antibiotics are easily available!

Avoiding inflammatory foods such as refined sugar, gluten, grains, dairy and soy can go a long way in preventing conditions in the body that support cancer. Parenting your son in a way that conveys positive, healthy attitudes about his body, genitals and sexuality will cultivate the emotional and spiritual conditions that promote lifelong health and wellness.

HIV can easily be prevented through the use of condoms and by partners agreeing to be tested prior to having unprotected sex.

Prevention of disease and illness does not require preemptive genital cutting!

A trauma that the mental health field totally ignores

The mental health establishment totally ignores MGM when evaluating and treating boys for mental, emotional and behavioral symptoms, despite that early PTSD and attachment disruption from genital cutting could be a major implication for the youth’s presenting challenges. Although many mental health professionals do developmental assessments on new clients, in my 15 years in the fields of human services I have not heard of one clinician or evaluator inquiring about MGM.

Many mental health professionals are completely ignorant of the fact that the medical procedure of infant male “circumcision” involves strapping down an infant spread-eagle, administering partial or no anesthesia, forcibly handling the boy’s penis, forcing an erection, tearing the foreskin from the glans, crushing the blood vessels, skinning the penis with a scalpel and leaving the raw, bleeding, injured penis exposed to infection, urine and feces. Often the boy screams so hard during the procedure that he dissociates or goes into shock, indicated by falling asleep. Until the open wounds heal, every time the boy urinates, his penis experiences another wave of intense pain. Parent-child attachment and bonding is disrupted, as is the critical breastfeeding relationship.

It is legal for a parent to force a boy of any age to have his penis cut, even in adolescence, when a boy cannot understand the adult implications to his future sexuality. Doctors are often more than willing to comply with parents.

Older boys who experience foreskin amputation as part of religious ceremonies are often fully conscious for the procedure. As part of some Orthodox Jewish bris ceremonies with infants, the mohel even sucks the boy’s raw and mutilated penis!

Despite the horrific realities of MGM, in which a boy’s first experience with his penis is one of suffering, force, violation, rape and pain, the mental health establishment ignores the practice. In doing so, they also ignore the unconscionable and overwhelming implications to a boy’s mental health and sexual development– and to society– of Male Genital Mutilation.

Total silence from gender-equality political groups and human rights organizations about legalized sexual violation of males

In their philosophies and policy statements, powerful, influential feminist organizations ignore decades of research about all forms of male victimization, including Male Genital Mutilation. These groups influence political and social policy, university curriculum and even pop culture with sweeping, one-dimensional and factually inaccurate theories about gender. Their dichotomous theories stereotype females as benevolent victims and males as  malevolent aggressors. As a rule, feminist theories ignore male suffering and the barbaric sexual, psychological and bodily traumas that boys and men have suffered since the dawn of agriculture at the hands of both women and men. Feminist theories, as a rule, also ignore the holistic, social and historical implications of mother-son attachment disruption and childhood trauma on males. The fact that these “gender-equality” groups also ignore (and in some cases, support) something as unjust as legalized genital cutting of boys is unacceptable and appalling to humanitarians such as myself.

Human rights and social justice groups are often feminist influenced and often do not dare take the political risk of speaking on behalf of boys and men. The United Nations, World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and Amnesty International are organizations that generally champion the causes of girls and women. These organizations research and speak out against FGM, but are silent and indifferent to genital cutting of male children.

Gender-bias against males by research professionals

Researchers of all types, in every human-focused field, favor female causes and female concerns. This gives the impression and perpetuates the social stereotype that our girls and women are suffering while our boys and men don’t suffer and need nothing– no concern, no protection, no compassion– from society. In fact, male concerns, if noted at all, are generally trivialized, minimized and even mocked by professionals, human rights groups, law enforcement, political groups, the media and society. Why? Political, financial and social interests want society to falsely believe that boys and men do not and cannot suffer comparable to or more than females. We must speak out against these irresponsible and unethical political myths! ALL humans suffer when even ONE person suffers.

The research is sobering: MGM is traumatizing to the male psyche and destructive to the penis

Despite professional ignorance and political indifference, there has been some significant research by enlightened medical, mental health and legal professionals that supports the need for society to prioritize abolishing Male Genital Mutilation. I will be highlighting this research in my second and upcoming book that I am in the process of writing, Nurturing and Empowering Our Sons. Below, I will list some of the most critical sources to consider (some of which will require you to pay for the full research paper):

Male Genital Mutilation and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Male Circumcision: Pain, Trauma and Psychosexual Sequelae

The Psychological Impact of Circumcision

Circumcision: The Hidden Trauma

Study Links Circumcision to Personality Trait Disorder

Lack of Pain-Relief/Anesthesia During Genital Cutting of Infant Boys

Circumcision Practice Patterns in the United States

The Critical Function of the Penile Foreskin

Anatomy of the Penis: Penile and Foreskin Neurology (Video)

Functions of the Foreskin (Video)

The Circumcision Decision Maker: Foreskin Facts (Video)

Sexual Dysfunction after Male Genital Mutilation

The Penis- Sex Education 101 (Video)

Anatomy of the Penis, Mechanics of Intercourse

Legal Issues of Unconsentual Genital Cutting of Boys

Circumcision Causes Lifelong Harm, Concludes New Research, US Attorney Warns Doctors, “The Foundation is Well Laid for Lawsuits”

A Bill to End Male Genital Mutilation in the U.S.

(Man) Sues After Forced Circumcision (Video)

Brit Shalom: Jewish Ceremony Without Cutting

Beyond the Bris: Questioning Jewish Circumcision

Brit Shalom

Care and Hygiene for Your Intact Son- Infant to Teen

Foreskin Care Brochure

Proper Care of the Intact Penis (From Baby to Teenager)

Intactivist Organizations and Foreskin Restoration Info

List of organizations compiled by The WHOLE Network

MGM is a human rights issue

It is elementary science in the medical, mental health and human services fields that childhood trauma leads to mental, emotional, psychological, behavioral, neurological, sexual and social problems, including violence. Medical professionals take an oath to do no harm; in the case of professionals who work with children, this oath should be especially sacred and critical. When the AAP, a powerful medical association that provides membership and training to pediatricians, makes it a policy to support a practice that has the potential to cause life-altering trauma to male children, loud and assertive social outcry must happen.

Professional, social justice, gender-equality and human rights groups must be loud, vocal and assertive about protecting boys from Male Genital Mutilation. Considering that MGM is a permanent, disfiguring, life-altering, traumatizing and potentially deadly tragedy, protecting boys from MGM should be a top priority. Silence, feigned ignorance, indifference and apathy from these groups should not be tolerated by true humanitarians and children’s rights advocates. Join the cause to protect boys from legalized sexual assault and torture: Raise awareness of the right of boys to genital integrity!

Watch the powerful AAP = No Ethics video, Wash Your Hands Clean of the AAP! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApGYjkSXDQE&feature=player_embedded

Back-To-School? Or Nature’s Intent for Learning?
(Laurie’s son, Brycen, joyfully exploring the wonders of nature)

I revel in the embrace of summer, when children are again a part of the community and a part of the natural landscape! It brings me such joy to see children jumping in the waves at the ocean, running through a wooded trail, exploring plant and animal life, digging in the sand, climbing trees, creating artistically in the community or leaping from boulders into a rocky basin gorge. I reflect with warmth and love at how September for my unschooled son has always been a relaxing and relieving time- yet another month to extend the joys of summer; the beginning of another cycle of him living and learning in freedom.

However, for the majority of the children in society, the “Back-To-School” nightmare seems to get an earlier start every year. Many schools are forcing children to return to school in late August, two weeks earlier than when I was a child. In mid-July, advertisements on TV, the radio, online, in stores and in junk mail flyers begin threatening children a month too soon about the impending dread of school. It strikes me as very passive aggressive that our culture takes a condition that most children find so distressing- being confined against their will for nine months of the year- and throws it in their face relentlessly during the second half of their summer time.

Last year, I wrote a three-part post about how the mainstream media presents “Back-To-School” with as much fanfare as if it were a holiday– I discussed how such media saturation perpetuates a cultural myth of school being an inevitable duty of life to which families must succumb. Perhaps more concerning is that even independent media sources, such as natural health, natural parenting and natural family living magazines, present traditional schooling as if it is positive, necessary, inescapable and obligatory.

By mid-summer, sharp photos of children holding notebooks and pencils, wearing freshly purchased clothing and awkward, posed grins plaster magazines, supplements and free monthly papers. The pages are packed with light, upbeat (and trauma-oblivious) articles about “preparing” children for “Back-To-School” routines.  Whether the magazines are mainstream or natural family living, the same “Back-To-School” article themes recycle every year:

• Lessening the trauma of “The First Day of School” (yes, some articles actually admit that school is traumatic, yet push school anyway!),
• Getting your children’s bodies back on a “school schedule” (despite how unhealthy this is for your children’s bodies),
• “Easing” (downplaying) the anxieties your children feel about school (as if being confined to a chair in a concrete building for six hours a day, being forced to be in conditions that are completely opposite of everything that nature intended for a child’s body, mind and emotional development, isn’t something anxiety-inducing!),
• Getting ready for “the homework battle” with your children (rather than getting ready to advocate for your children’s need for play and free time),
• “Dealing with” peer bullies (while ignoring that being subordinated by disrespectful adult bullies is what causes peer bullying in the first place), and
• Packing “healthy lunches” (while ignoring unhealthy school rules that won’t allow your children to eliminate bodily wastes, exercise or have snacks and drinks when needed).

All of these school-submissive articles miss a critical point: None of these traumas of separation, “preparation”, anxiety, unhealthy school schedules, ridiculous rules, homework and bullying are necessary because schooling isn’t necessary!

The carefully selected stock photos of happy-looking children give parents the impression that “Back-To-School” is good for their children and that children should be agreeable to surrendering their freedom, playtime, bodily integrity and basic needs in order to conform to the factory-process of schooling.

Parents, it is time to tune into parenting instinct rather than media conditioning! Traditional schooling is developmentally inappropriate at ALL ages and hurts children on so many holistic levels, including physically, emotionally, socially, cognitively, intellectually, neurologically and even sexually. Traditional schooling disrupts and injures the parent-child attachment relationship which is meant to be intact until the adolescent child reaches adulthood on his or her own timetable. The thousands of school children diagnosed with behavioral “disorders” and learning “disabilities” and subsequently drugged with dangerous chemicals are evidence of these facts.

Would you rather your child be stuck inside a classroom? Or free in nature’s wonders? (Laurie’s son, Brycen, in awe at nature’s possibilities)

Nature Has the Answer: Unschooling!

Nature doesn’t put out monthly magazines, newspaper supplements or grocery-store-freebie-rack circulars with articles about children and learning. Nature doesn’t put out cheery office supply store flyers and frenzied clothing store commercials to advertise its NOT-Back-To-School offerings. However, nature has the same educational advice for September 2012 that its had since the first child appeared on the planet: Let children play.

In other words, nature has always “said”, let children at all ages live and learn naturally, in freedom and in joy, through exploring, creating, investigating, observing, collecting, inventing, musing, dreaming, running, leaping, jumping, climbing, shouting, singing, laughing and being. Nature has always intended that children of all ages spend their time primarily in the loving embrace of close parent-child connections, family bonds, mixed-age friends and involvement in a vibrant community.

Brycen and his friend are frozen with respect when they discover the largest tree they have ever seen.

Nature has always intended that children’s time be balanced with the solitude to metabolize deep thoughts, insights, feelings and experiences. Nature has always made clear that the needs of the body and the psyche are to be met when when the needs are first experienced.

Through the phenomenon of play, nature has the only “curriculum” sophisticated and advanced enough to simultaneously meet the holistic, learning and developmental needs of all children at all ages. When children follow their own interests and passions and have intense fun in the process, they learn, excel, achieve, grow and develop to their highest potentials!

Memorize from a textbook? Or experience from real life? (Laurie and her son, Brycen, explore one of the largest trees in their state)

Unschooling’s “curriculum” of play and child-directed learning is congruent with nature’s intent for children. Despite its growing popularity, however, unschooling isn’t a trend, a philosophy or even a “style” of education. Unschooling is simply a new name for ancient wisdom. Learning through interacting physically, emotionally and mentally with the natural environment, following interests and passions, or, playing, is how children lived for thousands of years.

With the onset of agriculture, adults began to interfere with childhood by forcing children to work for them. At the dawn of civilization, adults also began to force children to train and apprentice for military and religious purposes. At the height of industrialization in the mid-1800′s, the United States government began confining children to developmentally inappropriate, prison-like schools in order to produce obedient military, factory and labor forces. In the consumeristic new millennium, most citizens are addicted to material objects, electronics, digital media and junk food. The obsolete, 1800′s-style obedience training system is still maintained to ensure the perpetuation of a global society of heavy consumers, workers, political soldiers (of all types) and media watchers.

Despite what the trendy commercials and smiley magazine articles tell you, school isn’t about your children’s education, learning or healthy development. School’s entire purpose is to separate your children from you, their families, friends, communities and from themselves in order to train them to take their place in the global marketplace, as both workers and consumers. “Back-To-School” should be appropriately renamed “Back-To-The-Conditioning-Cell”.

I encourage you to look past the grinning stock photos, bubbly commercial actors and flimsy, child-denying articles and realize that “Back-To-School” isn’t a holiday, a celebration or a fun time for children- It is a marketing goldmine for those who profit from the materialistic, academic and social anxieties it triggers.

“Back-To-School” excitement is short-lived. Soon, children long for the freedom of summer again. Unschooled and homeschooled youth are able to relax, play and enjoy friends and family year-round.

After the September fashion show fades and the bland tedium of nine months of schooling solidifies, most children will be longing for every weekend, snow day and vacation week they are allowed… And longing for next summer!

Live the joys of summer all year long! This September, celebrate NOT-Back-To-School by allowing your children to experience the exciting, inventive, freeing, fun and playful experience of unschooling, or, learning naturally. Revel in the adventures you and your children can find in nature and in your community and be sure to connect to your local homeschool groups.

My six free So You Want to Unschool Your Child or Teen? videos can help you get started on your family’s unschooling journey. My unschooling coaching services will provide in-depth personalized support to both new and veteran unschooling parents with every step of the unschooling process, from start to graduation.

Laurie’s son, Brycen at his unschool graduation ceremony, June 2012

“If every action you made had loving intentions, if every move we made was born of love, the world would be healed, the world would be whole.” -Brycen R. R. Couture

On June 9, 2012,  our family and friends gathered at a beautiful ocean side park to celebrate and honor my son’s unschooling journey with an unschool graduation ceremony. A month prior to the celebration, Brycen was chosen to be featured as a Youth Luminary on Inspire Me Today.com. His profile and his 500-word essay were featured on their site, today, 6/30/12!

Unfortunately, some of Brycen’s words about traditional school were edited out of the Inspire Me Today.com posting. Below is Brycen’s entire, unedited essay on achieving world peace through love and treating children with respect. To see the Inspire Me Today.com post as well as his profile, please click here.

My Vision for World Peace: Love and Respect All Children

by Brycen R. R. Couture

The first and most obvious thing is that love is the single element that can heal the world. Most people aren’t sure where to put the love, how to cultivate it or how to feel it. Allow me to tell you: You need to start by loving your children.

If you give unconditional and total love, nurturance and meet the needs of your kids, then they are going to grow up and be able to pass that on to their kids. The children of today are the entire population of the future world. If everyone treated their kids with total unconditional love and met all of their needs, we would have a full world population of people who have been loved, who have had their needs met and they would believe and trust in the natural coexistence of all life. How monumental is that?

When I say children, I mean from zero to early 20′s. The needs I believe children are not getting met in this society are, first and foremost, from [a lack of] Attachment Parenting. Children are made up of needs and whatever you put into them. If you meet those needs, then children are full of met needs and love. If you are putting shame, hatred, anger, punishment or violence into your children, then they become full of that negativity. Most of the culture sends children off to public school- That system is punitive. It is a very solid box into which we try to stuff these very creative individuals…

Laurie and her son, Brycen honor his unschooling journey with a graduation ceremony. June 2012

One of the worst beliefs that adults have in the mainstream culture is that if you give kids freedom, they are not going to know how to handle themselves. “Freedom” is a concept that adults in a sick culture have concocted. While you are still innocent, freedom is just living, its not something you obtain or can have or abuse; freedom is just what life is. It’s constraint that destroys innocence and restricts life. Constraint can be punishments, school, when your needs aren’t responded to and other forms of child abuse; those things constrain freedom, so they also constrain lives.

What matters is love, what doesn’t matter is superficial material objects such as designer clothing, video games, computers, technology, TV- Things like that don’t meet needs. Schooling does not meet needs. School is something that was obsolete ever since it was created and needs to go. There’s the idea that getting a good job means success. That is so wrong-minded. What matters is happiness and joyfulness with your life and doing what you are passionate about and that you love. Again, the whole love thing- If it has to do with love, its good!

Goodness is love just as love is good. It’s a circular thing. If you give $100. to a charity because it soothes your conscience that’s not necessarily out of love. Everyone should cherish the world and the world will be healed. If you loved your children with irrational abandon, if you loved all people, the world and yourself, if every action you made was made with love, the world would be healed. If every action you made had loving intentions, if every move we made was born of love, the world would be healed, the world would be whole.

Laurie and her teen son: Attachment Parenting is embracing nature’s intent for children

Humans have become a species that have lost almost complete awareness of our nature and of our mammal instincts. In our efforts to prove superior to nature, we have created a twisted wreck of an alternate reality, where we kill anything “nature” inside of ourselves and in others and we replace it with a synthetic, prosthetic lie. When the “nature” in us whispers and the void begins to burn, we violently attempt to drown the thirst and gorge the hunger with more of our plastic paradigms, our digital addictions, our helpless civilizations and our neophyte attempts to transcend biology, holism and life itself. We have reduced our awareness of our nature to some nice patch of green outside of ourselves. Our nature has become a foreign backdrop where we visit, snap cellphone photos and condescend the “pretty” sights and creatures like some museum of what we’ve rejected and drugged ourselves to believe we’ve improved upon.

If the natural world around us could convey their critique of how we must appear to them as we stand on this stage of concrete, steel, philosophy and technology, what would they say? No doubt humanity’s story would be described as a tragic slap-stick comedy, propelling itself into a compulsive self-sabotaging drama that seems to endlessly implode into its own obliviousness.

We are a species that has built the technology to blow up the planet 100 times over, yet, we are a species that does not even know the most rudimentary facts about how to be human. By rejecting our awareness of and connection to our nature, we have lost our humanity.

Last week, in typical domesticated human style, the United States mainstream was in a heated frenzy over a magazine cover depicting full term breastfeeding.

While humans, like all mammals, were full term breastfeeding their young for millennia, suddenly, the new-and-improved humans who believe they’ve upgraded obsolete nature screamed out the following (paraphrased) dirges:

“Breastfeeding on a magazine cover is obscene!”

“Breastfeeding a four year old is extreme!”

“Attachment Parenting goes too far!”

“Attachment Parenting oppresses women!”

“Attachment Parenting spoils children and makes them dependent!”

Decorated by the provocative title and subtitle, “Are You Mom Enough?”, a buzz-haired older toddler sporting army camo shorts looks bored, arms drooping. He stands on a chair, propped up to reach the breast of his mother who stands, posing guardedly with one arm on her hip as if she is about to drop into a martial arts stance. The pop-cult-ish pose was no doubt part of the intent to make Attachment Parenting appear like the latest fad that TIME was the first to report. It was as if TIME was implying that sticking a breast in a child’s mouth without warmth epitomizes Attachment Parenting.

It is interesting to me that basic Attachment Parenting principles, such as full term breastfeeding and unschooling, are finally beginning to seep into the mainstream this year. However, like any other piece of ancient wisdom picked up by the mainstream media, Attachment Parenting’s principles are being butchered, sensationalized and sliced into empty, candy-coated scraps. Mainstream media serves to pamper and coddle the politically correct, obedient masses in attempts to make money. The controversies they create do not really stimulate any intelligent discourse, but simply trigger predictable, scripted tantrums from ideologically, politically and religiously motivated sub-masses. Emails pour, talking heads babble, blogs churn, Tweets tweet and statuses update. Yet, nearly all of this hissing down the triggered fuse ends up pooling into the same chlorinated conclusion: Human belief is superior to nature’s wisdom.

Laurie and her son, at age 12: Are we human enough to meet our children’s needs?

TIME challenged, “Are you Mom enough?” However, I’d like to challenge, are any of us HUMAN enough? Are we human enough to realize that mothering and fathering are the greatest honors, the epochs, of being mammals? Are we human enough to understand that when we take the colossal responsibility to have a child, that how we parent that child affects humanity as a whole? Are we human enough to entertain the thought that most of civilization’s parenting compulsions, beliefs, trends and philosophies (that we justify with endless excuses) are contrary to what human children actually need? Are we human enough to consider for a moment that our ideological bickering is deforming and enslaving our species into an engineered nightmare? Are we human enough to accept that nature already had it perfectly right and that if we align ourselves with nature, our philosophies might die, but our children and our species will thrive?

Are we human enough to parent the way mammals are intended to parent; the way humans are intended to parent?

Attachment Parenting isn’t about doing a few showy tricks for five years of a child’s life. Attachment Parenting begins in the womb and continues through late adolescence. It is a conscious connection, an intimate symbiosis of empathy, meeting needs, soothing distress and being present. It begins at the top of the circle when one’s child expresses a holistic need.  It continues with the parent empathizing with the child’s need and then meeting that need as nature intended. It is completed full circle while feeling the deepening bond as one’s child is soothed to homeostasis, joy, trust, safety and calm. That cyclic dance is called attachment. It is delicate, primal and precise. Nature intended for it to be a natural instinct for mammals; it intended it to be serious business. In fact it is so serious, so delicate and so precise that very serious consequences result when parents decide they know better than nature.

Since the origin of agriculture, every culture has been moving further away from our natural instincts. Everywhere we look we see humans hurting humans, humans hurting the planet and children growing up being shown how to do the same. Perhaps worse than the violence itself are all of the excuses that people make for playing their part; all of the justifications humans give to convince each other that their special form of contempt or aggression is necessary, acceptable and noble. At the root of this suffering is a multi-generational, multi-cultural cycle of child trauma that became the norm many centuries ago with the birth of the agricultural lifestyle.

Hospital births, minimal breastfeeding, bottle feeding, Male Genital Mutilation, crib sleeping, ignoring cries, rushing development, “potty training”, obedience, punishment, shaming, spanking, day care, forced schooling, compulsory academics, sitting at desks, involuntary same-age peer grouping, parent-child emotional disconnection, lack of touch, no time to play, religious and political indoctrination, pathologizing distress, psychiatric drugging, junk food, materialism, pop culture addiction, media intoxication, family violence, abuse, neglect and pushing teens out of the nest: These are the modern conditions for attachment disruption, disconnection, suffering, trauma, depression, addiction, rage and violence. With these conditions, we are not meeting even a fraction of children’s holistic needs at any age or stage.

Laurie and her son, age 11

Are we human enough to put our children’s needs before our convenience and beliefs? Conscious pregnancies (and conscious adoptions at any age), gentle birthing, leaving our sons’ penises intact, baby wearing, full term breastfeeding, cosleeping, the family bed, trusting each child’s unique developmental time table, elimination communication,  democratic parenting, parenting for connection, meeting needs, honoring children, unschooling, youth-led learning communities, passion-driven learning, mixed age friendships, deepening parent-child connection as children grow older, physical and emotional closeness, snuggling, compassion, organic living food, dramatic play, playing outside, physical activities, the arts, community, spiritual principles, parental modeling, family peace, honoring  interdependence and holding our older teens close while allowing them to fly at will: This is Attachment Parenting, the way of life intended for us by nature. These are the conditions for joy, compassion, brilliance, holistic health, peace and connection to self, family, community, humanity and to the planet.

As Attachment Parents, we are not expected by nature to be perfect, extreme or self-rejecting. We are only expected to be human.

Laurie A. Couture on Anderson

Here is Part II of me discussing my appearance with my son, Brycen on the Anderson daytime show. Below I respond to some of the common questions and comments raised during and after the show.

What is unschooling?

Unschooling, or radical unschooling, are the trendy terms for the way children learned for thousands of years- up until fairy recently in human history- by playing and actively pursuing their passions and interests all day, most of the time. Nature intended children of all ages, from infants to teens, to learn through play and physical activity. Humans and other mammals have learned this way since the dawn of time. Unschooling has at its core living authentically and freely as a family, nurturing close, connected parent-child relationships that meet children’s needs.

Unschooling looks different for each family and each child. For many children, it means high energy play, creative projects, heavy involvement with the community, socializing with a diverse age group of children and adults and an abundance of outdoor time. Most unschooled children spend their time inventing, creating, exploring, researching and having one or several concentrated passions that become specialties. Some unschooled youth start businesses, are involved in the arts, run groups and clubs, take college classes, volunteer in the community, travel or play competitive sports. Some are involved with the media or apprentice in careers of their interest. With unschooling, whatever your children can imagine, they can pursue!

Anderson Cooper and Brycen talk on Anderson

Unschooling isn’t a “free-for-all” where children are allowed to grow up neglected, illiterate and uneducated. Unschooling is about meeting each child’s individual needs, respecting each child’s developmental timetable and viewing living and learning as the same, not as separate activities. Many children need to be wild and free in order to learn, needing to be outside, physically active, with no textbooks, learning mainly through the body and senses. Some children need structure and routine… and a small percentage even enjoy textbooks and tests! Most children like a little of both in different areas of their lives.

My son learns best by directing all of his learning activities in his own way, using a variety of resources and hands-on approaches, but no textbooks or anything schoolish. In fact, unless I am genuinely expressing an interest or excitement about something myself, Brycen is turned off when I try to artificially “teach” him something unsolicited. Yet, he gets excited by things that I love as much as I am excited by the things he loves. He also has me direct his band practices, advise with art and writing technique and he has me help him set up a daily calendar and hold him to commitments to accomplishing certain tasks each week. Brycen’s learning style could never be accommodated in public school. Without freedom to explore topics and subjects through his own creative channels, and express his knowledge through his own brilliant perspective, he would wither.

Like most children, Brycen learns best by being wild and free to explore the world

Unschooling accommodates all styles of learning. It is about parents respecting each child’s unique time tables for learning to  read, write and calculate, and allowing children to determine how and what they wish to learn, whenever it is relevant to their lives. Unschooling respects the natural fact that some children naturally learn to read, write and calculate as early as age three while other children learn at 14.  Public school forces all children to learn everything by a certain age, and those who are not developmentally ready are labeled as “learning disabled”! This is criminal in my opinion. Children who learn to read, write and calculate later are just as competent at or are even gifted at these skills in adulthood. Most unschooled children delve far deeper into subjects like literature, science, history, math, art, music and technology than schools could ever imagine, but unschoolers explore these subjects when they become

Brycen hand-crafts these beautiful chainmaille pendants and sells them. Research on Medieval maille styles has lead to intense research on Medieval history.

of interest to and relevant to their unique lives.  As long as it is child-led, then unstructured or structured, unschooling fits all!

The term “unschooling” was coined in the late 1960′s by the “grandfather” of the modern homeschooling movement, John Holt. Contrary to popular stereotype, homeschooling started out in the 1960′s as a grassroots unschooling model by progressives. In the 1980′s the homeschooling movement became of interest to religious conservatives and the unschooling focus was largely replaced by the “school-at-home” stereotype of which homeschooling is still wrongly associated. However, in recent years, unschooling, often accompanying organic or Attachment Parenting, has been gaining momentum as a movement made up of  people of all political, social and spiritual orientations. For over a decade, there have been unschooling conferences, groups and online support resources springing up all around the world. All of the stereotypical myths you’ve heard about homeschooling are 90% just that- Myths. However, unschoolers transcend the homeschooling myths even further and are becoming a cohort of youth who are brilliant, confident, empowered, innovative, creative and who think outside the box.

Laurie A. Couture on Anderson

(From show:) “There are some people out there who are meant to teach and they have the patience and will and the desire to teach and then there’s some that aren’t. They don’t know to explain things properly.”

Traditional compulsory schooling was instituted in 1852- That means we have only been mass schooling for just 162 short years, yet humans have been around for thousands of years. Although there were places of study and non-compulsory, locally run schools, the majority of learning and education through out human history was done outside of school as unschooling or some form of homeschooling! Natural learning (unschooling) does not require anyone to “teach” a child. The myth of homeschooling is that it is “school-at-home”. Children resist teaching, as it interferes with their natural process of learning. It is only the parents’ responsibility to support their children’s interests and provide resources, opportunities, connections in the community and a deeply connected parent-child relationship. No teaching is necessary- In fact, when parents attempt to “teach”, they may see some of the same “symptoms” of distress that the child showed while in school!

Laurie A. Couture on Anderson

(From show:) “This whole homeschooling thing for everyone in the world, its just not going to work, I’m sorry!”

(My quote on show:) “How did you think people raised their children for thousands of years? Every mammal raises their young!”

I want to add, it “worked” for the thousands and thousands of years that our species has been on this planet. The fact that most people in industrialized countries believe that they have no ability to support the learning of their own children is a tragic symptom of public schooling. It is our schooling and our culture that has caused us to believe that we as parents are not capable of  one of the most fundamental elements of mammal parenting- Helping our children learn. What does that say about the public schools that after 13 or more years of “education”, we graduate unqualified and incompetent to guide the learning of our own young? Why would we want to send our children to such a grossly inept institution?

(From show, Anderson Cooper stated:) “I’m telling you point blank, my Mom who didn’t graduate high school, I wouldn’t want her educating me! …At age nine, I shouldn’t be educating myself…”

Isn’t your Mom Gloria Vanderbilt? I’m going to assume for the sake of argument that you were close to her as a child. She was an artist, actress, author and clothing designer! Imagine the amazing creative environments to which you  could have been exposed and the creative adventures you could have added to your repertoire had you had the freedom at age nine to learn on your own without school! Nine year old children are perhaps the most brilliant, passionate and industrious learners, creators, inventors and explorers when they are allowed to learn and live naturally. I can’t imagine anyone better to guide a child’s learning than a successful and creative artist, author and designer!

Isn’t it unrealistic to assume that most parents can unschool? Are there other alternatives?

As I’ve stated above, it isn’t unrealistic, because that is how humans lived for millenia. Unless parents are abusive, neglectful and do not care to meet their children’s needs, any parent, regardless of education, can unschool their children because it isn’t about “schooling” them. What would you do if traditional school wasn’t an option? Unschooling is not the only alternative to traditional schooling! There are democratic schools where each child gets an equal vote in all school matters, regardless of their age. Children at democratic schools spend their school days learning, exploring and creating whatever they wish. There are also child-centered private schools, charter schools, early college, independent study, online schools, virtual schools and relaxed homeschooling.

Laurie A. Couture on Anderson

(From show:) “You have the luxury to unschool!”

I am a single Mom living on an extremely challenging income with very little family support. I also have had the personal challenges of life long Crohn’s Disease, severe asthma, Asperger’s Syndrome and parenting a child with a major trauma history. It isn’t “luxury” but love for my son, determination and passion that allow me to offer unschooling to Brycen. I don’t see public school as an option. It is an oppressive environment that fails to meet children’s physical, emotional, creative, intellectual, social and holistic needs. By their very nature, most public schools violate children’s basic human rights- What adult would tolerate the conditions of public school? I would not want my child in an oppressive environment that would fail to meet his needs, would stifle his passions, interfere with his learning, cause symptoms of “ADHD” and would treat him as a subordinate, regardless of my financial, work or outside support situation.

At age 11, Brycen attended a small child-centered, play-focused private school on a scholarship until our adoption was legalized. The scholarship was something I had to negotiate, beg for and finagle- It wasn’t offered. In preparation for unschooling, I had to network and get creative to orchestrate a child care plan and a way for me to schedule my work that made unschooling a reality for Brycen. My consulting services can tailor unique options and a plan for you and your family to help your reach your goal of making unschooling or other alternatives to public school possible. If I can do it, so can you!

Brycen, in 2012, interacts with “the real world”: Brycen performs live with his band project

How will your son fit into the real world?

Brycen will be part of the generation of Attachment-Parented, unschooled and democratically educated young people who will be creating and innovating a more fulfilling and compassionate world. The world he will help create will be a  world not based on offices, cubicles, draining hours and unfulfilling jobs, but a world based on meeting people’s needs; a world where people make a living at their passions and interests. Public school has little to do with the real world- It is the least real world experience there is unless you are choosing to work in an 1800′s factory assembly line! We live in a democracy, yet everything about public schooling is oppressive and opposite to a democracy. Brycen is a musician and an artist. Creative people tend to start their own businesses- as he did at age 12- and work for themselves. Public school did not prepare me to be a writer, it actually stood in my way and wasted my precious time! Brycen would not be able to do a fraction of what he does now if he was in traditional school. Living one’s life is the “real world”.

(From show:) “How are you ensuring your son stays competitive once he gets out to the work place, for example, reporting to work on time, making sure that he works well with others?”

Laurie’s son, Brycen R. R. Couture on Anderson

(My quote on show:) “I don’t want my son to be competitive and take his place in society, I want my son to be happy. My son actually is already living his life- he’s not waiting to live it in the future: He’s a performing musician, his passion is to be a musician. He already has his own CD out; he recorded a CD in the studio- He’s already living his dreams! He was running a business at age 12- He’s already been a business man- He makes and sells chainmaille, and he makes money doing this. He’s already “making a living”. I don’t want my son to have to conform to somebody else’s schedules, I want my son to be happy, that is my only desire for my son.”

Brycen at age 12, in 2006, running his business, Feendz, making stuffed toys and selling to stores

I want to add to my quote that in addition to running a stuffed toy business, Feendz, from ages 12-15, being a performing metal vocalist and a medieval chainmaille artisan, Brycen has done outside work as well.  When he was 15, he worked for the furniture store my mother and her late boyfriend once ran, helping with deliveries and customer service. He also worked for a local farmer, helped a family friend restore a house for resale and he currently works at an indoor sports center- He usually arrives to work early! For anyone who knows Brycen, the question of “how will he get along with others?” is comical- My son is one of the most personable, friendly, kind and peace-making people I have ever met- And that is the result of unschooling, our close mother-son relationship and the abundant socialization opportunities of unschooling. When I first met my son, he was locked in his own internal world. Now he is the clown, the peacemaker and the negotiator in his wonderful circle of diverse friends, and in fact has so many friends that we can barely schedule them some weeks. My son can put a smile on anyone’s face! Unlike some of the rude, disrespectful, aloof, vicious and hateful attitudes that youth pick up in public school, unschooled children as a group have some of the best and most inclusive social skills I have witnessed.

This is not joy: Brycen, age 11, three days after we met, under the influence of Adderall. He was free of the Adderall by his move in day.

( From show:) “What if the cure for cancer is in some child’s head but they are so unfocused (due to “ADHD”) that they can’t get it out?”

This is a two-part answer. In my last blog post, I debunked “ADHD” as a disease or disorder. Genius and innovative and creative ideas flow much more freely when  children are in natural learning environments, environments where they can follow their own passions and interests. It is more likely that cures and inventions are stifled and strangled by all of the time children waste in public school and on homework, being taken away from their unique callings and subdued on psychiatric drugs. Do a Google search for “famous homeschoolers”- The list is impressive and amazing- Some of the most brilliant and wild minds in history were stimulant-free, minimally schooled or totally un-schooled.

Brycen, age 11, thriving. He was 10 months free from Adderall, living a life of play, creativity and loving mother-son connection

The second part of my answer is that there have been many “cures” for cancer and other Western diseases already “invented”. Search for the Paleolithic diet or the Gerson diet.

How can dietary changes help “ADHD” symptoms?

I am not a dietician, however, my son and I eat an organic or all-natural Paleolithic diet, which is free of toxins and inflammatory substances- In other words, our food is free of refined sugar, gluten, dairy and soy. We supplement our diet with rice products, as we have both been tested and are not sensitive to rice. Many people suffering from Autism, mental health and medical symptoms have obtained relief from cutting out refined sugar, gluten, dairy and soy from their diets.

I have “ADHD” and I can tell you that it is a real disorder! You don’t “get it”!

Laurie “gets it”: Here’s Laurie at age 11- Few children could match her quirkiness and “hyperactivity”!

I was diagnosed with “ADHD” as a child and thankfully by the grace of my skeptical parents, I avoided being drugged. I was possibly the most “hyperactive” child in  school from kindergarten to high school. I could “out-do” any child in the “hyperactivity” department! My mother said recently, “You were climbing the walls”- Literally! I certainly DO “get it”. However, it wasn’t a disorder, it was my nature mixed with my environment. As an adult, the very qualities that incurred punishment at school have helped me become a successful adult, a master at my creative talents and a playful parent. If you haven’t been Attachment Parented from infancy, unschooled, free of  refined sugar, gluten, dairy and soy and free of TV, then there is no way for you to rule out that “ADHD” isn’t environmental or dietary- You’ve been living an unnatural life, which naturally will result in distress. I want to also add that “ADHD” is often wrongly diagnosed when a child actually has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, anxiety, a medical problem, food allergies or low blood sugar.

We’ve tried everything and nothing worked, that’s why we had to medicate our child!

Have you specifically tried Attachment Parenting, unschooling, democratic schooling, the Paleo diet, the NonViolent Communication model and creating an environment that allows children to be children? My consulting services and my book, Instead of Medicating and Punishing, can help you try things that can naturally help your child heal and feel excited about learning.

Kimberly, Trent and Laurie A. Couture on Anderson

What is the binder you showed on the table?

The binder on the table was Brycen’s “11th grade” unschool portfolio from last year. It represents a collection of photos, artwork, writing, books, graphs, brochures, programs, fliers, events and opportunities Brycen created or engaged in from June 2010-June 2011. It is packed with samples of his music performances, a copy of his CD cover, photos of his chainmaille creations, examples of his studies in a variety of fields and subjects and photos of friends, family, communities, places, events, groups, clubs, programs and achievements from that year. This is a portfolio we do to honor, chronicle and document his amazing life each year. Each state has homeschooling requirements that may require a small portfolio (MUCH smaller than ours)- Check out video #5 of my “So You Want to Unschool Your Child?” YouTube video series to learn more about unschool portfolios: http://youtu.be/zdnm4ZR5FvE

“My unschooled children spend hours a day watching TV and playing video games- Should I just let them?”

The unmistakable “video game stare”: Brycen at age 11, about a year before he decided to pull the plug on home video gaming

While many unschooling advocates approve of regular, daily video game and TV use as part of unschooling, I strongly disagree. My son and I both choose not to play video games or watch TV at home at all.

My son, Brycen dislikes TV, home video gaming, Facebook, social media, texting …and he won’t buy a cell phone. However, he isn’t devoid of media. He runs a state-wide Dungeons and Dragons campaign via Skype and he uses Skype to conference call with friends who live in separate locations. He researches music, art, history and science online and enjoys exploring music and chainmaille technique on YouTube. He watches movies with me, we bust out the Nintendo DS on airplane trips and we both enjoy our summer treks to the beaches and their vintage arcades. So why don’t I recommend TV and video games?

The brain science

There are numerous studies indicating that the brain goes into a hypnotized, numbed, suggestible, brain-depressed state when watching TV and playing video games. The body is generally sedentary when playing video games and watching TV. In contrast, when reading a book, even if the child is physically sedentary, the brain is fired up, stimulated and activated in every region. When reading, imagination flows, critical thinking is strong and readers feel elevated  and engaged when the book is put down. After watching TV or playing video games, a sense of slight lethargy or restlessness comes over the viewer when the screen is turned off.  The effects of stimulating the right brain while shutting down reasoning ability makes viewers more susceptible to suggestion, propaganda and mainstream cultural conditioning. In fact, the TV advertising industry successfully invests billions of dollars into exploiting these very effects on the brain!

Regardless of whether or not studies can be generalized conclusively with children not subjected to public school, a regular diet of TV and video games has physical, emotional, social and cultural consequences. Sedentary hours staring at a screen’s small field of vision, being fed violent, sarcastic, dehumanizing and materialistic messages and being onslaughted with incessant “gotta have more” advertising interferes with cultivating compassion, critical thinking, face-to-face socialization time and physically active, hands-on pursuits. While unschoolers demonstrate that genius is common, human brains and bodies are vulnerable, unschooled or not.

Television

TV is entirely passive and one-sided, with one goal in mind: Getting you to buy, watch and believe something. TV is perhaps the most insidious of all media because of this passive effect and the negative implications of a passive, distracted population on culture and democracy. One of my primary concerns about TV are the increasingly negative, aggressive, violent, sarcastic and apathetic themes and behavior portrayed in children’s cartoons and shows. Themes of one-upping, hurting and mocking others seem to dominate every show.

Some of the most damaging themes in youth programming include:

• Pain as comical,
• Human suffering as a joke,
• Pink saturation of girls,
• Hatred of boys,
• Polarization of gender,
• Polarization of “good” and “evil”,
• Dehumanizing “the bad guy/bad girl”,
• Justifying the violence of “the good girl/good guy”,
• Following the crowd and the masses,
• Discouraging critical thinking,
• Omitting compassion for others, and
• Mocking sex and the human body

Girls portrayed as “divas” or as entitled emotional bullys and boys portrayed as incompetent buffoons or as socially acceptable targets of abuse shape our children’s view of gender and gender roles. The constant mockery and objectification of the human body, bodily functions and human sexuality shames our sons and daughters and shapes their views of themselves and others. Justifying protagonist violence and discouraging empathy for the antagonist conditions our culture to accept conflict, aggression, rudeness, divisiveness and war in the name of some “noble” cause.

For those of us who have left behind the mainstream in order to pursue more organic, authentic ways of living through Attachment Parenting, unschooling, organic eating, holistic health, naturopathic medicine, peaceful communication and higher consciousness, why would we not question the mainstream culture’s number one way of controlling and shaping the population?

Home video games

Video games simulate reality while your body sits either totally passively or it moves according to commands on the screen. While video games are fun and hone hand-eye coordination, they carry far more risks than benefits. Not only are today’s video games graphically violent (which can cause mild trauma in children), their addictive qualities have increased with the popularity of live and online gaming. As a former video gamer myself, if the old games could easily suck up an entire day, today’s games demonstrate no restraint in the amount of a youth’s childhood time they steal. Unlike developing real skills in real life, video games seduce players into a virtual world of building skills and embarking on adventures that are meaningless and mere mirages once the switch is turned off. In other words, Kinect Sports doesn’t prepare you to play a real game of tennis anymore than Guitar Hero III teaches you to play a real guitar.

The EPICoutures, former video gamers

Prior to Brycen joining my life through adoption, he spent hours each day with TV and video games. He remembers years of being unable to focus on play because he was craving to watch a show or play video games- and he remembers the media “zombie effect” similar to Adderall. TV wasn’t an option when Brycen joined my life- I simply did not have cable. He was, however, in awe at my collection of game systems. How could I deny him the option to play them when I clearly was a gamer myself? Video games were initially kept to a minimum in our home; a half hour per day by mutual agreement and eventually, only on weekends. Even still, I could see that Brycen would become restless and hover by the TV, sometimes for an hour or more before the agreed-upon video game time, being unable to focus on outdoor or indoor play. While video gaming, he looked entranced and he was unresponsive, regardless of whether or not I flamboyantly joined in the game, whether or not he “versed” a friend or played alone.

I recall debating whether or not to ban video gaming all together. However, as a democratic parent who parents with respect and for connection, I knew a ban would harm our relationship and only increase the video games’ allure.

Brycen made the decision to stop playing video games when we began our unschooling journey together, after our adoption was legalized- In our early days of unschooling, he was too young and emotionally tender to leave home alone. On days when my child care plan fell through, I would take him to work with me.

One day, he accompanied me to a professional conference. He had art supplies, toys, books and paper and plenty of room to explore, lots of breaks with me outside, plus a building filled with adults in the mental health field to talk to who lit up to see a child. However, he often chose to attend the professional workshops with me, and seemed to grasp the Master’s and Doctorate-level information with ease! He listened in on the workshop about media’s effects on the human brain. While taking a break and running around the conference grounds, he kept dialoging with me about his concerns about TV and video games, how he felt while gaming and how some children watch TV and play video games for hours a day and no longer play with toys. On the drive home, he said, “Mom, I want to stop playing video games. I don’t want you to let me play them anymore.”

We did some further research at home together to get multiple views of the effects on the body and brain of video games, and he stood his ground. His only exceptions were times when guests would find and pull out one of our game systems. Now, Brycen doesn’t let anyone even know we have the game systems!

So while our game system collection and our out-dated analog TV set might be bored and feeling neglected, Brycen has the full span of hours each day to fill with healthy, active living. When he uses the Internet for Skype and research, he generally chooses to use it at the end of his day, or as a reference to an activity of which he is already engaged. He expresses his concern for the youth who spend hours gaming with strangers over XBox Live, cultivating unhealthy self care habits. It hasn’t escaped Brycen’s notice that most people in our culture spend more time watching shows about the outdoors or using a control pad to simulate physical activities than actually being outside and doing real activities!

Laurie loves vintage video gaming at arcades- When the tokens run out, its time to go do something active!

Lest someone believe that I don’t understand the allure and excitement of video games and TV, I grew up with the TV as background noise. I am a video gamer, a vintage game system collector and I am still the unofficial, undefeated Tetris Master. I have played everything from Odyssey and Atari to the DS and the Wii and when I see an arcade asking for a few minutes of my time, I’m there. However, my home and my free time are sacred spaces where I will not invite that kind of outside control or the seduction of addiction. It stuns me that despite my years of detoxing from TV, when I am in a public building with a TV on, I can feel my eyes and attention being drawn up to the screen, entranced by the lightening fast images and constantly shifting video bites. That old sticky sense of “just look for another moment to see what happens next”  doesn’t take long to return if I stare for more than a moment. That’s not just how TV effects me, its how TV effects the human brain.

Keeping media in its place

In the year 2012, media is a part of our culture’s daily existence. It forms collective memes, shapes culture, influences cultural beliefs and it unifies the globe at the click of a button. Media is a powerful- even necessary- tool for learning, researching, networking and quickly disseminating information in today’s world. It can cause grassroots human rights actions to go viral, it can spread charity, connect people and it can help people build careers. As an author and parenting coach and the manager of my son’s band project, I have found that YouTube, Facebook, WordPress, Twitter, Google+, ReverbNation and search engines are invaluable resources for connecting with a world wide audience and building our family’s careers.

It is clear that most of us in the Western world need connection to some form of media in order to engage and function in our culture, especially those of us who run businesses and are artists and human rights activists. So where do we draw the line? What are the health, medical, social and cultural implications of using media excessively? How do we help our children make healthier choices about media? It is critical that we answer these questions by thinking outside of the box.

Reflecting on what we want for our children

If you still believe that regular TV watching and daily video gaming are harmless for your children, please reflect on the following questions:

At what point would you be concerned?

Would your children be able to easily “turn it off” for a month without missing the TV/Video games?

Do your children still play dramatically outside and with toys or is video gaming their primary mode of “play”?

If you believe that public school, mainstream parenting, the pharmaceutical industry, the food industry, the medical industry and our political system are toxic, why would the media be any less toxic?

If you disagree with the toxic “socialization” in public school, why  expose your children to the toxic socialization themes, memes and models shown on most of the TV shows?

What would you do if TV weren’t used as a “babysitter”?

How would your children fill their time if they weren’t playing video games or watching TV? What would you do together as a family?

Would you watch your favorite shows on DVD to eliminate commercials?

Could any benefits that you see in TV and video games be obtained in a more natural, hands on manner?

How is TV shaping your child’s view of people, material objects and the world?

What behaviors would you have to see in your children before you were convinced that TV and video games were having a negative effect on them?

Further Reading

The Effects of Electronic Media on a Developing Brain

Laurie A. Couture on Anderson

“We see a developing potential for nearly a total control of human emotion status, mental function and will to act.” -Wayne O. Evans, Ph.D. Psychotropic Drugs in the Year 2000 (1967)

“The way to sell drugs is to sell psychiatric illness.” -Dr. Carl Elliot, University of Minnesota Bioethicist The Washington Post (2001)

Drugging children for telling us our culture doesn’t meet their needs

“ADHD” is a fraud. It was a label concocted by psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical industry that allowed them to turn the distress of children held hostage to public schools (and other traumatic environments) into a financial goldmine. Manufacturing a label for the alarm signals of suffering children serves the needs, pockets and whims  of the pharmaceutical industry, the medical and mental health industry and of course, the factory public schools. The “ADHD” label does not serve the needs of children, who are suffering distress as a result of this unhealthy society we have created. Instead, the label draws attention away from children’s unmet needs and conveniently redirects the focus to stimulant drugs- a form of chemical restraint that requires no responsibility on the part of adults or our culture to meet children’s needs.

Laurie’s son, Brycen R. R. Couture on Anderson

On March 8, 2012, I was featured on the Anderson daytime show with my son, Brycen R. R. Couture to discuss how traditional schooling and disconnected parenting produces the very symptoms the medical industry packages as “ADHD”. Both my son and I debunked “ADHD” labeling and drugging by making it clear that when children live and learn in an environment of freedom and joy, following their interests and learning through play and movement, the symptoms dissolve.

Dr. Peter S. Jensen, Kimberly and Trent and Laurie A. Couture

The Disease and Drug Model vs. Nature

Dr. Peter S. Jensen of the Mayo Clinic, Founder of The REACH Institute and “lead Federal investigator for the longest study of ADHD treatment”, was also a guest on the show. Not surprisingly, he supported the “disease” explanation for children’s symptoms, as well as the psychiatric drugging of children. He insinuated that because his argument is about “listening to the science” that my argument in favor of unschooling, organic parenting, play, anti-inflammatory diet and natural remedies must be unscientific. I reminded Dr. Jensen that as someone who has worked as a mental health professional for a decade, I am a scientist. I hold a post graduate degree in psychology and obviously had to study rigorous scientific method and conduct research in order to obtain a Master’s degree. I am also qualified to evaluate, diagnose and treat the full spectrum of mental health issues and well as refer children to neurologists and psychiatrists for “ADHD” testing and drugging. However, what is different about me is that I am not a slave to the medical and pharmaceutical industry. I can correlate facts about child development, children’s needs and the effects of trauma to an explanation for “ADHD” and other mental illness. For psychiatrists and others involved with the psychopharmacology industry, there is no other authorized position but the “disease”, diagnose and drug model.

Laurie A. Couture on Anderson

I realized the seriousness of this “disease” and “drug” business when I spoke out within the system with the wrong ears listening: Years ago, I ran a training on alternatives to psychiatric drugging of children for a group of paraprofessionals working with families of children labeled as mentally ill. One of the jobs of these paraprofessionals was to provide information and resources to families about mental health issues and treatments. As a result of my exposé of the pharmaceutical industry, I incurred the wrath of two powerful state agencies: the paraprofessional program which was contracted by the state and The Department of Mental Health in that state. I had to obtain an attorney when these pro-drug agencies banded together to threaten a side job I held with a state-contracted mental health agency and to bully me into removing ChildAdvocate.org, my former personal children’s rights website that had nothing to do with my job.

Going against the authorized position can get people into trouble at a governmental level.

Did Dr. Jensen admit that “ADHD” is a symptom of traditional schooling?

I can understand why Dr. Jensen, like other psychiatrists and doctors, won’t admit the obvious- That trauma, poor parent-child attachments and unnatural environments like traditional school produce mental and cognitive distress in children, and that changing those environments will heal children’s distress- Too many psychiatrists making such statements would bring down the entire industry! However, Dr. Jensen did unintentionally contradict his entire “ADHD” labeling and drugging argument by admitting the following,

“Laurie is absolutely right, nature didn’t wire us to sit in large groups and be very quiet, it kind of wired us to be romping and hunting.”

“School is pretty boring”.

“Laurie makes a good point. It depends on the nature of the task. So if you give the child a chance to go out and romp and play you don’t see ADHD difficulties… ADHD is a problem with paying attention not to things in the environment but things that you have to study and concentrate on with your brain and learn.”

“Johnny just can’t contain himself because he just wants to be in the wild.”

I almost feel that this post could end with the words, “I rest my case”.

A real disease doesn’t go away when you’re on summer vacation

Kimberly, the other mom who appeared on the show with me, was in favor of using stimulants to address her son’s reported symptoms. She stated that her son’s therapist used a diabetes metaphor to convince her to put her son on stimulants: “[The therapist] said, ‘Kimberly, if your son was diabetic, you would give him insulin.’ And, that was a light bulb moment for me when I realized that I was denying my son the tools that he needed to succeed.”

I felt so sad for Kimberly and her family that a therapist irresponsibly placated the system by convincing this intelligent mother to override her natural instincts rather than empower her and her husband to find a learning environment that met their son’s needs. When Dr. Jensen grabbed the metaphor and mentioned that children don’t require drugging when on summer vacation, I stated, “Diabetes doesn’t go away when you’re on summer vacation”.

Laurie’s son Brycen on Anderson

My son, the “ADHD” expert

If “ADHD” was a true “disease”, it would not disappear during summer vacation, or when children are free, happy, safe… or when children are unschooling. My son commented this morning, “If you take ADHD at face value, its more like an allergy to boredom and the inappropriate environment of school.” I would consider Brycen an “expert” on “ADHD”, as he was given this label in early childhood, prior to him joining my life through adoption.

My son, who was a severe trauma survivor, could not tolerate the environments where he was forced to live and “learn” for the first 11 years of his life. These school and foster environments did not meet even a fraction of his needs, yet his intense alarms signaling his distress were labeled as “ADHD” and drowned out with a number of chemicals over the years. Labeling and drugging a free spirit like Brycen made him more manageable to the adults in those environments and abdicated their responsibility for not meeting his needs.

Laurie’s son, Brycen at age 11, on the very first day that they met

The day I was matched with my son in November 2004, my first parental decision was to have him tapered-off the stimulant drug he was on at the time. Due to legal protocol of adopting a child through the foster care system, Brycen and I would not officially be allowed to meet until January 2005 when certain inter-state paperwork was processed. In the months leading up to our special day, I met with his public school teachers and others who had made decisions for his life. I informed his 5th grade teacher that Brycen would be removed from the stimulant drug and would be attending a child-centered, play-based private school until our adoption was legalized and then would be unschooling once our adoption was legalized. I reminded the teacher that my almost-11 year old son weighed only 68 pounds due to failure-to-thrive syndrome; him being on a stimulant drug seemed to exacerbate the below average weight and height he had at the time. The teacher stated, “I know he’s only 68 pounds, but its easier on the teacher when he’s medicated.”

Laurie’s son, Brycen, thriving after just 11 days of visits together

I wished that day, in that moment, that I could have located Brycen in that school and taken him home with me. However, he would have to remain there for two and a half more months. In January 2005, after 11 days of visitations, my son was already showing signs of holistically thriving. By the time he officially moved into our home in early February, he was free of the stimulant drug, beginning his healing journey and detoxing from public school.

There is no conclusive evidence that “ADHD” is anything other than natural boy behavior or children’s distress signals

My statement on the show that there is no conclusive evidence that ADHD is a brain disorder is factual. There is no evidence that ADHD is anything other than natural boy behavior or a collection of distress signals of children in highly distressing and unnatural environments. Dr. Peter Breggin is one child psychiatrist who has boldly spoken out against labeling and drugging of children. He remains firm that despite heavy funding of studies by the pharmaceutical industry, no conclusive studies have found that “ADHD” is a disease. In fact, he debunks the “brain scan” studies stating that the differences seen in the brains of children with “ADHD” (vs. children without “ADHD”) were due to the effects of psychiatric drugs on the brain over time. Dr. Breggin was featured along with me in Cevin Soling’s powerful documentary, The War on Kids, which addresses the imprisoning aspects of public schooling.

Laurie A. Couture on Anderson

In an upcoming blog post, I will be addressing some of the questions and comments raised during and after the show about “ADHD”, drugging, anti-inflammatory dietary interventions, Attachment Parenting, unschooling and how I believe that most families can live an unschooling lifestyle as humans did for millennia.

Watch Clips of Laurie and Brycen on the Anderson Show!

http://www.andersoncooper.com/2012/03/07/unschooling-is-one-moms-solution-to-adhd/

http://www.andersoncooper.com/2012/03/07/teens-with-adhd-discuss-their-meds/

http://www.andersoncooper.com/2012/03/07/adhd-is-it-a-real-disease/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSJRXfFf0cY

Further Resources

Laurie A. Couture, Attachment Parenting and Unschooling coach- Learn drug-free solutions to “ADHD” behavior: http://www.andersoncooper.com/2012/03/07/laurie-a-couture-attachment-parenting-coach/

Instead of Medicating and Punishing: Healing the Causes of Our Children’s Acting-Out Behavior by Parenting and Educating the Way Nature Intended by Laurie A. Couture

Talking Back to Ritalin: What Doctors Aren’t Telling You About Stimulants and ADHD by Peter Breggin, MD

http://www.adhdfraud.net/

http://www.breggin.com/

http://www.scribd.com/doc/38079763/Psychological-Fraud-Debunking-the-Science-Behind-Adhd-as-a-Brain-Disorder

http://www.scribd.com/doc/38663395/The-ADHD-Fraud

Laurie’s son, Brycen, involved in social justice work

Why allowing children to live and learn freely nurtures progressive values

The institution of forced school is in panic mode right now. More and more parents are taking action to protect their children from a largely unaccountable environment that is responsible for inflicting intensifying distress upon young lives. Increasing numbers of parents are opting for arts-based charter schools, child-centered private schools, democratic schools, homeschooling and the most natural choice, unschooling. The institution of public schooling has been responsible for child abuse, human rights violations, epidemic psychiatric drugging, health risks, violence, enforcing increasingly stressful time expectations, developmentally inappropriate curriculum, lack of play and physical activity, destroying creativity and dulling children’s interest in learning. The Slate article, Liberals, Don’t Homeschool Your Kids by Dana Goldstein seems to minimize many of these human rights concerns and instead begs progressive parents to do what is in the best interest of the public schools. As a progressive parent who is unschooling a happy, socially conscious, community-involved, socially adept and creative teen son, I am asking you to instead consider what is best for your children and what is in the best interests of children’s rights in our society. Does public school nurture or violate progressive values?

1. Forced confinement and regimenting children’s basic biological needs is a human rights violation

First and foremost, your children’s health and well being are more important than anything. In public school, your children’s bodies are at risk for harm; when children’s bodies are in distress, children are additionally at risk for psychological harm. It is no secret that school teachers, especially in the higher grades, deny children the right to use the toilet when needed. Teachers also deny children the right to eat, hydrate, move around and be physically active when needed. Physical activity, if it is allowed at all, is often regimented to one 10 minute time period per day. Toileting is according to classroom regiment in the younger grades and in the higher grades, there is no humane time for toileting at all. All of these practices of distressing the body not only interfere with learning, but these practices put your child at medical risk and psychological risk and violate their basic human rights. Only prisons and factories treat people in this manner, and factory workers have OSHA to protect them from being denied use of the toilet. To put it bluntly, schools deny your children their natural biological needs, which constitutes a human rights violation; if you can’t trust teachers to take care of your children’s basic needs, how could you trust them with their learning needs?

2. Forced schooling has no place in a democracy

The entire concept of compulsory schooling- forcing a certain segment of the population who have committed no crimes to be confined against their will with no say or choice in what is done to them- is the antithesis to democracy. To teach children about life in a democracy by holding them hostage until age 18 with no right to participate in a meaningful democratic environment is nonsensical and bizarre at best. At worst, public schools have served the purpose of engineering a very apathetic and uninvolved population who seems content to go along with the herd mentality and consumerism. Children in the Sudbury Valley private school actually live democracy- They have at all ages, total freedom to direct their day any way they please, with play being the main modality of learning, as nature intended. In democratic schools, each child has a vote equal to that of adults in all school matters, including whether to keep certain teachers, classes or policies. Unschoolers who build networks in the community have an even more authentic learning experience than children in these democratic schools.

3. Creativity, love for learning, play and critical thinking all suffer in public school

The United States is rapidly losing its creativity and its ability to think critically. Children, who are born insatiable learners, lose the desire for self directed learning often prior to the 6th grade. Play, which is the way children of all ages, from infants to adolescents, are wired to learn and make sense of life, is ironically regimented, banned and bled out of schools. What kind of environment won’t allow children to learn in the fun way they are wired to learn, in the way that stimulates passion and intense energy? When children are forced to sit sedentary at desks most of the day taking orders, creativity and learning are stifled while children become adept at being conditioned. Do you want your child to be merely conditioned, or do you want your child to be passionate about learning?

4. Increasing numbers of children, especially boys, are being pathologized for developmentally appropriate behavior

Boys and their human rights are being trampled in schools and sadly, few progressives are sounding the cry and standing up for them. Natural, healthy boy behavior (and the healthy behavior of highly physically active girls) are being pathologized as symptoms of the questionable and unsubstantiated “ADHD” diagnosis and subsequently drugged with dangerous chemicals. Additionally, children, usually boys, who cannot conform to the developmentally inappropriate environment and painful regimentation of schooling will begin to display distress signals that are misinterpreted as “ADHD” or a series of mental illnesses. Schools pressure parents to have their children diagnosed and drugged so that the children will conform to the school, rather than the school conforming to the needs of children!

5. Public schools do not support progressive ideals, human rights, social justice or positive attitudes about human needs

By violating children’s basic human rights, schools certainly don’t support progressive ideals. Public schools are ageist against children, sexist against boys and they violate children’s civil liberties and human rights in some of the most primal, core ways. Some public schools have even suspended boys for long hair- in this decade! In 19 states in the USA, schools actually are allowed to physically assault children with wooden boards- In all 50 states, this barbaric practice is illegal against any adult, even prisoners! There is also increasing physical and psychological abuse of developmentally disabled and emotionally disabled children in public schools, which in some cases has resulted in fatalities. Public schools tend to have a very negative view of humanity, sexuality and human interactions, even punishing youth for showing “public displays of affection”. Children are criminalized for age-appropriate touching or sexuality and children of all ages are being punished, restrained, tazered, handcuffed and criminalized for emotional cries for help or for symptoms of their disabilities. Most tragically, sexual abuse of children in public schools by male and female school teachers is more common than most parents wish to realize- When female school teachers sexually abuse children, especially adolescent boys, they receive minimal or no jail time in comparison to male perpetrators and the incidents generate little media attention. This is certainly not social justice or equality!

6. The progressives of the 1960′s began the modern homeschool movement

Although religious zealots appear to be the primary homeschooling cohort, this is a myth. Children have been living and learning in freedom since the dawn of time, but it was the progressives of the 1960′s that began pulling their children out of public schools to provide them with a freer, more natural childhood. It was progressives who revitalized the modern homeschooling movement, and they held that title until the late 80′s when homeschooling began to get stereotyped by the media as a tactic by the religious Right to isolate their children from society. Although extremists exist in every facet of society, this is a false impression of the homeschooling movement. The millions of homeschoolers around the world make up a vastly diverse mosaic of families, peoples, lifestyles and political orientations. Many of the wild, brilliant, joyful and free children in the unschooling movement are the children of progressives, Leftists, liberals, intellectuals, crunchies and others who believe that children deserve the same human rights as adults.

7. Children are more likely to take part in social justice issues if they are being treated justly and are involved in the community during the day

When children spend the best of their growing years in conditions that render them powerless, the results are social apathy, not empathy. There is a phenomenon referred to as The Stockholm Syndrome in which people who are held captive by an all-powerful captor begin to align with the captor and take on the captor’s ways rather than show empathy for their own suffering or the suffering of other captives. Tragically, public school children seem to have some mild form of The Stockholm Syndrome phenomenon when they grow up, as they send their own children to the same environment that caused them such distress and bored them to tears as children. In the the movie Spirit Bear, the teen environmental activist was forced to put his intensely passionate efforts to save the endangered white Kermode bear on hold during school hours. I was struck by a scene in which the school teacher cynically demands that the teen activist put his schooling before his critical advocacy phone calls. Children who are homeschooled and unschooled are able to be active and conscious participants in social justice work in the community. They have time, motivation and energy to devote to causes of which they feel passionate. Often, these youth make an impact in the media and in their local communities. My own son, Brycen, an unschooler, began speaking publicly for children’s rights alongside me starting at age 12. Now, he focuses his time on writing music and being active in the community for children’s rights. This would not be possible for him if he was in public school all day and laboring over irrelevant homework at night.

8. Homeschoolers are some of the most diverse, empathic and best socialized children in society

Most homeschooled families roll their eyes and try to hold back sighs of exhaustion when the inevitable stereotypical question is asked by non-homeschoolers, “What about socialization?” I often laugh when I hear this, as my unschooled son has so many friends and such a diverse peer group that we literally do not have enough hours in the week to schedule in all of his  friends! At his recent 18th birthday indoor rock climbing party, the gym’s cap of 10 kids was stretched to 11, as my son could not decide which 10 of his circle of close friends to bring. When people ask, “How do homeschooled kids meet friends?” I answer, “How do YOU meet friends?” My son has friends that share in his diverse and vast array of interests; most are artists, some are rising or professional musicians, some are into Dungeons and Dragons, Medieval chainmaille, fort building, books, Live Action Role Play (LARPing) and some are into sports. My son has met his friends at the many community events, homeschool groups and activities of which he has been involved for years, or through groups he started on his own. All of my son’s friends treat him with respect and kindness and their relationships are based on having fun. Contrast this with the toxic dynamics that are viewed as “socialization” in public schools and it is like life on two separate planets. While public school youth segregate according to “coolness”, clothing labels, materialism and looks, my son and his peers are accepting and compassionate towards all people. While public school youth are trying to dull their boredom and angst with rebellion, defiance, substances, premature sex and peer bullying, most homeschooled youth, like my son and his friends, are close to their families and are busy playing, living and shaping their lives and their communities.

9. Learning without school is natural and its how children in Hunter-Gatherer cultures learned for millennia

Compulsory schooling is a relatively new experiment in the span of humanity- In the USA, Massachusetts was the first state to force schooling in 1852, modeled after the fascistic model of forced schooling in Prussia. Human children have been learning on their own, directed only by their own passions and interests (with support from family and mentors) since the beginning of time. Many of the most brilliant and famous minds in history were homeschooled or minimally schooled. Shakespeare only attended school a few weeks per year! Today’s homeschoolers join the distinguished ranks of famous brilliant homeschoolers such as Leonardo DiVinci, Joan of Arc, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Booker T. Washington, Claude Monet, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Margaret Mead, Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Susan B. Anthony, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Agatha Christie, Whoopi Goldberg and so many others!

10. The purpose of childhood is to be joyful and to grow into an adult who is happy and fulfilling personal dreams

It is not our children’s responsibility to “take their place in the global economy”. Children have a basic human birth right to choose their own dreams, paths and lives and to engage in what makes them happy. Children will learn everything they need in order to fulfill their dreams- Adults who insist upon forcing a curriculum only interfere with that process. Rather than ask how children will be “competitive” in the job market without school, ask how your children will possibly find happiness and fulfillment if they remain in an environment that literally steals away most of their family time, free time, play time, social time- their childhoods. Your children’s well being and happiness must be the highest priority. It is not your children’s role to make a political or economic statement for you, for the school system or for the global market place. It is children’s role only to follow their individual callings in their own unique ways.

Segregating an entire cohort of people in society based on their age and forcing them into conditions of confinement, oppressive treatment and fascistic governance is not congruent with progressive values. The public school system is financially and socially invested in NOT changing its ways- Instead, they are pleading with you to keep handing over your children as fuel to keep the machine running. It is not possible for an institution built on a hierarchical model of subordinating youth to reform itself to one that is democratic for youth unless the paradigm defining “education” completely shifts. Education reform has been tried and has failed for half a century. Reforms continue to work within the paradigm that education is something homogenized that must be forced upon children by experts; that children can’t be trusted to learn what they need by having fun, playing and following their own passions. If you feel strongly that “public education” should be free and available to the public, work in your community to create and facilitate public, non-compulsory, democratic learning communities where children and adults are free to learn and teach others democratically- without school. However, in the meantime, treasure your children’s precious few years of childhood, especially if they are older, and release them from the oppression of public schooling. Don’t allow the school to damage your children any further while you wait around helplessly for the schools to change.

“Wait, I know something you can’t be if you’re a girl!”

“What?” I asked quizzically, eager for the sake of our game that a possibility for further examination had been found.

“You can’t be a daddy.” Toby suggested proudly.

I thought for a moment as I scratched the annoying New England mosquitoes out of my ear canal. Then, I realized I had an idea, too!

“Wait!” I exclaimed loudly, my entire body readying for my unintentional witty quip, “I know something that you can’t be if you’re a boy!”

“What?” The little five year old boy asked innocently, his full head of  straight brown hair shining in the the sun.

“Well,” I began, as my blond curls became mixed around my ear while I scratched at the mosquito bites, “You can’t be a mommy.”

Toby thought for a moment, chewed sweetly as five year olds do, then he swallowed and agreed: “Yeah…”

We looked at each other and then we both nodded our heads and agreed, “Yeah…”. We felt  so grown up in our insight. We had both realized in that moment that boys and girls could grow up to be and do anything we desired- with minimal exceptions. More importantly, we concluded that girls and boys  were both equally valuable and alike in so many ways.

Sadly, over the years to come, I would be increasingly perplexed and shocked as I watched boys being treated in a harsh, aggressive, inhumane and restrictive manner by adult society while girls were empowered, celebrated and nurtured. This seemed to run contrary to the seemingly obvious insight that Toby and I had come to that warm day, an insight that matured over the years into an understanding that girls and boys equally need to be empowered, nurtured and celebrated. My close friendships with boys from early childhood through adolescence allowed me to appreciate how tender, sensitive and compassionate boys are and how deeply wounded they are by society’s ignorance of their needs.

As a youth I had also observed with glaring horror that many girls and women were just as violent and aggressive as boys and men could be, but girls and women were not held equally accountable for acting-out, aggression, emotionally tormenting, dating violence, date rape, domestic violence, child abuse, child neglect and even child sexual exploitation and rape. I didn’t understand this double standard, but I realized as a rebellious teen that I could exploit the adults’ sexism to my advantage when I acted-out in school or fought with other girls- or the occasional boy- who mercilessly harassed me and my friends.

As I came into young adulthood in the early 1990′s, I was appalled at how hostile and negative our culture was becoming towards boys and men, as if the only way to empower and serve the needs of  women and girls was to disempower, pathologize and ignore the needs of men and boys. As I became involved in the next several years with children’s rights work, providing childcare and mentoring and then working professionally with youth of all ages, the more I learned, the more serious I saw the gender bias against males was becoming.

For example, in my previous work in social services, when the charts of  violent teen girls came across my desk,  their histories of being victimized by sexual and physical abuse were prominently stated on the front page and repeatedly stated throughout. When the cases of violent teen boys would come to my desk, I would often need to read ten or more pages of history in these charts before I could locate one passing sentence indicating that a boy was raped by a woman or severely abused by his family. Sometimes, there was no mention of boys’ severe abuse history at all, and many times, boys had not revealed their sexual abuse histories in any assessments. In my later work as a mental health counselor, this pattern continued. In the human services and juvenile justice fields, a girl’s acting-out or violence is viewed as a symptom of her being abused; a boy’s acting-out or violence is viewed primarily as a behavioral or neurochemical problem for which he is solely accountable.

By the turn of the 2000′s, I realized it was becoming a political agenda, an educational paradigm and a pop-cultural and mental health goldmine to push a diva-ish “girl power” persona onto girls- and to ignore, shame and pathologize boys.

I am passionate about raising awareness to the rights and needs of all children, girls and boys, from pregnancies and the youngest babies to the oldest teens, and all of the ages in between. In 2008, I released my first book, Instead of Medicating and Punishing: Healing the Causes of Our Children’s Acting-Out Behavior by Parenting and Educating the Way Nature Intended.  The intention of my first book was to compile the research from science, anthropology, psychology, neurology, trauma healing, child development and learning theory to support natural parenting and learning, or Attachment Parenting and unschooling, for children of all ages. My book also covered in depth how to heal the emotional, behavioral and learning trauma that children sustain by being raised in a mainstream cultural manner.

However, it has become increasingly urgent and clear to me, being the mother of an adolescent boy, that adolescents as a group and boys of all ages need special protection in our culture right now, from an Attachment Parenting and natural learning perspective. I realized this past summer that two new books were in order and had already been forming in my mind for years, all while I have been compiling a library of research, unreleased commentary and notes. I decided that I would focus first on the book about boys, and then write Attachment Parenting Our Adolescent Children, as my third release.

This is the official announcement of my second book, and its working title:

Nurturing and Empowering Our Sons: Healing and Celebrating Our Boys Through Attachment Parenting and Unschooling

My book will cover as many issues as possible pertaining to the suffering and harm of boys in our culture today, especially overlooked issues such as Male Genital Mutilation, the shaming of boys, their maleness, their bodies, their emotions and their sexuality; the dangers to boys of public school, the mass labeling and drugging of school-age boys, the trauma of corporal punishment and other forms of child abuse; sexual abuse of boys by men and women, derogatory portrayal of boys in the media; violence, behavioral and emotional problems suffered by boys;  gender identity struggles, and the political lobby to block awareness of and funding for male victims of trauma, abuse, sexual assault and domestic violence. The book will focus on the attachment needs of boys, their developmental and holistic needs, the need for boys of all ages to learn through freedom, play and physical activity (unschooling), the critical need for nurturing and affectionate mother-son and father-son connections, the natural empathy of boys; healthy sexuality, body image and gender identity formation; positive boy empowerment; the need for a cultural paradigm shift to heal and meet the needs of boys and… so much more.

This book is obviously for parents. However, it is also for grandparents, aunts, uncles, mentors, educators, mental health professionals, social workers, researchers, attorneys, child advocates, community members and anyone who cares about boys. If you have only daughters, this book is also for you, as it will help you help your daughters to understand their male friends, future partners and spouses better- And who knows, you may have a grandson or nephew someday! As of this blog post, I am nearing the end of writing what is now the lengthy Chapter One. I hope you will share in the journey by sharing any relevant stories or resources you have about the harm done to boys in Western culture, including media that is derogatory towards boys. I will be doing a few short interviews with people as well. As you await this book, please read Instead of Medicating and Punishing, as my new book, Nurturing and Empowering Our Sons, will build upon and greatly expand from the foundation of basic principles covered in my first book.

The Left appears to support human rights but fails to work for equality for children and men. The Left supports the reckless termination of living human fetuses and does not allow a teen boy or man the choice to raise his own child if his female partner wants an abortion. The Left does not campaign against Male Genital Mutilation (“circumcision”) which is legal in all 50 states, campaigning instead for her body, her choice, but not his body, his choice. While the Left supports social services, they support compulsory schooling which terribly oppresses and harms children. The Left also supports the egregious anti-male climate of this society which fails to fully recognize male victims of sexual abuse, rape and domestic violence, the fact that women commit sexual and physical violence and the fact that men bear the brunt of the most violent body and heart-crushing burdens in our society, (Male Genital Mutilation, child abuse, suicide, early mortality, injustice in the courts, life-threatening physical labor, military service, abuse without services and impossible gender expectations).

The Right has a deplorable human rights record in all areas. All too commonly in history the Right have supported child abuse, war, religious extremism, mass political and corporate corruption, human rights violations, racism, gender stereotypes and discrimination against GLBT people and immigrants. They also support exploitation and destruction of the fragile and beautiful natural environment for business “development” and value money over the needs of human beings. Although they fight for fetuses to have the choice to live, their caring for children tends to end at the womb. Many GOP supporters affiliate with religious organizations that have had rampant child abuse scandals. Many on the Right believe that parents have a right to hit and hurt their children and that Native American and African American people should “move on” and forget the egregious trauma and losses of their ancestors.

Although Libertarians support homeschooling rights, they support the parents’ right to homeschool, not the child’s right to UNschool without a parent-driven curriculum. Children have a birth-right to direct their own lives, but Libertarians believe that only adults have the right to direct their lives. There is an assumption that children are the property of parents, therefore parents have the right to raise children as they please, regardless of whether or not that way meets the needs, desires and freedoms of children. Libertarians focus so much on individual rights that they do not believe they have a responsibility to work  for human rights and social justice issues and for the environment and planet.

Independent candidates often support the ideals of the people they hope to serve, such as peace, governmental approachability and transparency, but Independents rarely have enough supporters to leverage substantial votes. An Independent vote is often viewed as a “wasted” vote.

Is the Green Party even around anymore?

My son and I are both so concerned that President Obama signed “indefinite detention” into law. It should be clear by now that United States Presidents are only pawns in an already established system with an agenda that runs so deep into the labyrinth rabbit hole that it is beyond the scope of a blog post (or my interest) to discuss it. Any viable candidate must already be a part of that system. What I do realize is that it doesn’t matter which side wins, Left or Right, because they both end up doing very little for the most vulnerable of the people they are entrusted to serve; their job is to serve political and corporate interests.

I’ve discussed with my son the importance of voting, but, like in every Presidential election, is it only a choice of determining the lesser of two “evils”? What is the choice for those of us who don’t support “isms”, political agendas, violence, or ANY argument for the oppression of ANY person or living thing? I believe that we must vote conscientiously, not for a Party, but as a statement for human rights. We can make that statement by writing-in a peace activist, such as Marshall Rosenberg. Then, after, we must not sit back and watch our TVs night after night while “other people” try to fix the world. We must become heavily involved in doing the work that leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi challenged us to do- To “be the change we wish to see in the world” (-Gandhi).

Let’s call these acts what they truly are:  Assaultive, hurtful, distressing, traumatizing and violence against children. These acts are cruel and considered acts of assault or even torture when inflicted upon adults. Despite that 31 countries have abolished the use of pain infliction to control or punish children, Americans continue to believe that controlling a child through pain infliction is acceptable.

The fact that people are still believing that committing violence against a child is an acceptable way to raise them is tragic to me. Over 60 years of research has consistently shown that deliberate pain infliction on children in the name of parental or school punishment and control has long term traumatizing effects on children. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, suicidal or homicidal thoughts, depression, anxiety, mental illness, shame, lowered IQ, aggression and future violence are all effects of trauma and are all linked to “corporal punishment” and other forms of pain infliction.

Trauma alters a child’s neural development, causing psychological symptoms such as anxiety, fear, panic, avoidance, depression, anger, rage outbursts and other trigger-responses. Trauma scars and stunts psychological development, stifling emotions and causing layers of complicated defenses. These defenses become character traits in people that negatively affect their relationships and can unleash when anyone  triggers an unconscious reminder of the past trauma. Most adults have no conscious awareness that when they become angry or enraged in the present, it is often due to a past traumatic memory becoming triggered.

Additionally, inflicting pain on children as a means to punish and control has  been consistently linked to children developing complicated and confusing sexual feelings and associations.  Mixing pain with pleasure, control with care and fear with love can cause sexual fetishes to develop in children, especially when pain infliction involves hitting the buttocks or controlling or denying bodily functions such as elimination and even eating.

Parenting and educating with violence guarantees harm to the parent-child attachment relationship and puts your child at risk to become rageful, angry and rebellious or  depressed, passive and subservient. Being the victim of a violent childhood puts children at risk for being victims or perpetrators of emotional, physical or even sexual violence.

Most parents who hit and hurt their children lack a basic understanding of child development and of their children’s needs. When children of any age have a need, it is a parent’s job to meet that need. If children’s needs are not met, they will naturally display alarm signals, often in the form of protesting, withdrawing, apathy, emotional instability, aggression or other acting-out behavior. If we meet our children’s needs, we can heal the damage done by punitive or aggressive parenting and reduce acting-out. The goal of parenting should never be obedience and conformity to a parent’s needs and wishes- The goal of parenting is to raise happy, holistically healthy, emotionally stable and compassionate people- You cannot do this with violence, punishment and force.

A secure and deeply connected parent-child attachment relationship is the best way to prevent trauma and behavioral and emotional problems in children. My book, Instead of Medicating and Punishing: Healing the Causes of Our Children’s Acting-Out Behavior by Parenting and Educating the Way Nature Intended, can help parents who wish to parent in a compassionate, natural manner begin the journey of listening to nature’s intent and healing their relationships with their children. For parents who would like deeper support, my parenting coaching and consultation sessions will compassionately guide parents in learning and applying natural parenting skills and healing the parent-child attachment relationship, regardless of the age of your child. It is wonderful that no matter what your child’s age, healing can begin!

Laurie’s son displays his Occupy Education post

Talk of “education reform” is viral all over the internet. Despite multiple failed attempts at “reform” over the past decades, society refuses to think outside the “box” of schooling and consider a radical return to how children learned for millennia- By playing, living and doing! Teachers and others in the field of education continue to propose that the oppressive, prison-like institution where children are forced to stay seated in a building all day pumping out paperwork can and should be reformed! When democratic schooling, homeschooling and unschooling advocates attempt to join the conversation and offer models that are successful and truly radical, they are often met by educators and their supporters who dismiss these models as idealistic and not “realistic” for “everyone”. Additionally, people seem not to be aware of the fact that despite talks of reform, the needs, voices and leadership of the people who are the most adversely affected by public schooling- youth- are left out of the conversation. Sadly, when the voices of public school youth do reach the movement, they often represent the most compliant and academically engaged students. Their requests tend to be benign, suggesting that minds and bodies trained by the system for so long are unable to fathom what they have lost of their childhoods and what they truly need in order to thrive. The cries of “end school!” from the voices of the artists, rebels, misfits and other children failed most severely by schooling rarely make it to the table. In this post I answer questions about how “education reform” can be truly child-centered, radical and real.

How can we save our public schools and reform them?

How can we reform a system that was historically founded (in 1852) for the purpose of oppressing children, preventing critical thinking and engineering a more obedient citizenry? How can we reform a system where, in 2011, children need a doctor’s note to go to the bathroom when needed, a federal “504 Plan” to eat when hungry, a diagnosis of being brain disordered with a subsequent federally mandated special education “IEP” in order to be taught in a hands-on manner and where a teenager has to be diagnosed as “severely disabled” or unteachable and sent to a “therapeutic school” in order to have physical activity between classes? Do we truly believe that a place that runs this contrary to the needs and humanity in children can be “reformed”?

“Adults would not get the severity of the human rights violations in the public school system even if they were put back in it (this is not referring to all you epic radicals out there- you know who you are). The reason? The boiling frog syndrome. The adults who don’t get it are already broken and they would be mentally blind to all of the wrongs that go on, including to themselves.” -My son, Brycen R. R. Couture

How can we teach so that children care about their education?

The belief that children need to be “taught” is based on the arrogant, adult-centered belief that children are unmotivated, blank slates who will not learn unless adults force it upon them, usually in unpleasant ways. Nature endows ALL children with the passion and ability to learn what they need and want to learn on their own. Adults should not “teach” anything unless it is requested by the child- Teaching interferes with the child’s natural process of learning, inventing and creating. Unsolicited teaching interferes with children following their own innate ideas, hunches, interests and modes of expressing their conclusions, brilliance and creativity. Youth care about learning when they are the driving force behind their learning process and when they are doing what they love. Adults can be the guides and facilitators if children desire their help. In public school, education is about force-feeding children, then expecting them to swallow what is irrelevant without gagging, regurgitate it for a grade- and act like they care!

Will allowing children to use technology such as iPads, iPods and smart phones in the classroom transform public education?

I don’t see how adding devices could “transform” anything; lap tops have already been added to some schools; adding hand-held devices simply adds technology to the building, like adding paper and pencils and other inventory. Adding technology doesn’t change the power structure. Teachers dictate the use of every single object in a school, so how could adding devices “transform” anything? We had a Commodore and an IBM PC computer in my elementary school, supposedly revolutionary. Nothing changed- School was still just as oppressive and abusive, we simply had a distraction from the tedium. I’m sure when toilets and ovens were added to schools, people thought that would revolutionize schooling too, but children soon found out that no one could use those appliances without permission.

Teachers use technology to control children, and hand-held devices would be no different- Teachers control the activity and purpose of the device and how and when it will be used. No doubt any use outside of the teacher’s prescription would be cause for punishment. Technology can also be used to abuse and violate children as well. For example, one high school issued bugged laptops to children. The web cams in the laptops were randomly activated by school authorities to spy on youth in their own homes, often in their bedrooms, with some allegations that youth were being photographed undressing or in other  situations intending to be private. The issue came to light only after a youth was punished at school for allegedly being caught “taking drugs”; the boy had actually been eating Mike and Ike candy!

Rather than a gesture of bringing technology into the classroom, technology should be used to eradicate the classroom and the prison model of “going to school”.

Will changing middle school and high school scheduling to allow for longer classes, labs and more time for research and inquiry lead to radical change in public education?

Proposing a mainstream solution like tooling with already oppressive systems such as scheduling, is not a radical solution. Block scheduling, six-day scheduling, 90 minute classes and any other type of scheduling at the middle and high school level creates an environment that fails to respect the basic physiological needs of older children. As children are shuffled further up in the 12 school “grades”, it becomes increasing difficult, if not nearly impossible in some schools, to meet their basic health and biological needs. Most teachers at the higher grade levels refuse to allow children to use the toilet in class, and the three to five minutes between classes makes it nearly impossible for children to use the toilet between classes. The youth that I have worked with over the years report that ninety minute classes only increase this distress. Likewise, scheduling at the higher grades leaves some youth with lunch times that are well past noon time. Some youth report eating as late as 1:30 with, of course, no snack time in the morning! Finally, “block scheduling” or 90 minute classes mean more time that children are sitting sedentary and immobile. Truly, “block scheduling” is a health risk to youth! A true radical solution is to abandon the current institution entirely.

Laurie A. Couture displays her Occupy Education post

If we tore down the current public educational system, what would replace it and how would it work?

John Taylor Gatto proposed a radical solution that would be in alignment with nature, humane treatment of children and a democratic society: Abolish forced public schooling as it is now and establish the entire community as a community learning experience for people of all ages. Children would lead their own learning in a non-compulsory manner. Everyone, from the youngest child to the seniors in nursing homes would be welcomed to facilitate classes, and children and adults can attend – or opt out- at their choosing. Public dollars would be used to fund the necessary supplies and assist mentors of any age or specialty.

If the entire city or town were set up as a learning community for children to explore, apprentice, find resources, collect mentors and to be free to teach, attend or not attend classes, this would be the “educational reform” that would truly heal children and our culture. In open learning communities, children would have all of their bodily, developmental, emotional, social, intellectual and creative needs met. Art galleries, libraries, historical centers, community centers and cafes would all be hubs. Hopefully, diverse businesses would open their doors to be part of the process as well. The now abandoned school buildings would be used as resources and spaces, not as prisons. Anyone would be free to facilitate or attend classes, play in the gym, use the equipment, cook meals, hold meetings, clubs, groups, shows, etc.

What about children who are abused and neglected at home or who are living in poverty?

In the case of children who are abused and neglected at home, or who are living in poverty, these learning communities would be able to embrace and care for these children and identify their families for help much more genuinely than the current public school system. The current system abuses and neglects children in so many ways, causing double the distress and trauma to children already suffering at home. In 19 states, it is actually legal for children to be beaten by school staff with a wooden board. Boys and African American children are the primary targets of all forms of school corporal punishment. Even in the case of a special teacher who provides comfort, the distressed child is still expected to focus on and keep up with irrelevant school work to maintain “grades”. When learning communities encompass use of all of the public spaces in towns and cities (including hopefully businesses as well), there are more places of refuge and resource for impoverished families and children suffering abuse and neglect.

How will learning disabled children get services?

Children are born to be natural learners. It is forced education that destroys this and creates the idea of “learning disabilities” and “under-achievement”. It is the public school system’s unnatural method of forcing all children to perform certain mental functions all at the same ages in the exact same developmentally inappropriate manner that produces the illusion of “learning disabilities”. There are no learning disabled people. Every human child is born with the capability to learn, regardless of their organic intellectual endowment. If allowed to learn through play and by following their interests, children of any ability will naturally learn in the ways that best suit their unique learning style and sensory modality. Loved ones and community members can support, mentor, scaffold and celebrate children’s developmentally appropriate learning processes in manners more diverse and helpful than the current system offers. Children will not be forced to endure rigorous testing that leads to labels (such as “ADHD”) and drugs, nor will their parents be forced to fight Goliath special education teams to win a few token “services”.

It is a democratic society’s duty to educate its children- How will children learn if they aren’t taught?

Point blank, children have a birth right to live their lives in freedom and with joy, through play. That is true democracy! Children should not be forced to go to any building, or be forced to “learn” anything any adult believes they should “learn”. The element of force immediately negates democracy and becomes the antithesis to freedom. That homogenized education for the masses is possible is a myth; forced “education” is inhumane and immoral on so many levels. It instantly indicts and imprisons all children for the implied “crime” of being under the age of 18 and dictates them under the control of adults who should have no natural power over their lives. There should be no “debate” about human rights issues. Forced education causes apathy, docility, obedience and lack of questioning and critical thinking. It destroys passion, natural learning ability and interferes with the individual “callings” of each human being. Children learn what they need to learn by being loved and cared for by their parents and loved ones. Children learn by living, playing, exploring, creating and being a part of their families, circles of friends and communities. This delicate process must be restored, because this is how true learning occurs.

That all sounds idealistic. In the meantime, don’t we need to start slow, educate people and reform what we have to work with now?

I will say it again and again, we have to stop talking about reforming the current system- You can’t reform a system that was BUILT with the INTENT to oppress children! “Reform” has been attempted over and over since forced schooling was instituted in 1852. The pendulum has swung in all directions, but most aggressively since the 1980′s towards increased drudgery and developmentally inappropriate practice for children. The only function of “reforms” is to lightly shuffle a few cards to quiet dissent, prime children to take their place in the “global marketplace” and to make matters easier for the adults. The end result is always the same: Children are oppressed, stuck in buildings, sitting in chairs, with teachers forcing upon them something irrelevant to their lives. School continues to steal their free time, commit human rights violations against their bodies and minds and confine them. School continues to prevent children from doing what nature intended- Playing, running, jumping, climbing, exploring, creating, socializing and inventing… We can’t reform a paradigm that runs as deep and as thick as this one. The “free school” movement of the late 60′s and early 70′s showed that public schools want no part of democratic learning environments; the federal government uses public education as a tool for their much larger agenda of globalization. As long as we look to the problem as a solution, we will never get out of the boxed idea that children must have something done TO them by “expert” adults. The belief that adults must educate, confine, deprive, “discipline” and force is the paradigm that needs to change.

How can children playing all day, doing whatever they are interested in doing, be realistic for society?

The question is, how have we allowed our society to get to a place where what is natural is not realistic for society? All mammal children learn by playing. Human children learned through play, exploration and interest-led pursuits since the dawn of humanity because this is nature’s intent for children. Should we be questioning why our society thinks it is unrealistic for children to learn the way they are wired to learn?

This idea of democratic learning sounds too radical and experimental- Can it be done in modern times?

Unschoolers, relaxed homeschoolers and children in democratic schools demonstrate everyday, year after year, as they have for decades that interest-led, play-based, democratic learning grows joyful, intelligent, creative, brilliant, confident, successful and passionate children! Summerhill, The Sudbury Valley School, The Albany Free School and many other democratic schools highlighted in books by A.S. Neill, Jerry Mintz, Ivan Illich, Matt Hern and others have been running democratically, with children learning freely for years. If these schools can pull it off with such success, why not public schools? Some of the most innovative minds in history and in the world today never attended school. In fact, many unschooled and homeschooled children run businesses, are public speakers, authors, performing musicians, artists, artisans or inventors and some even attend college early. Homeschoolers and unschoolers are diverse and come from every political orientation and walk of life, including single, low-income parents.

If we eradicated public education as we know it, would society collapse?

The institutionalized oppression of children will hopefully collapse and lead to a return to more natural ways of parenting, learning and living. Children raised in environments with strong parent-child attachments and joy based living and learning will thrive! They will give way to a compassionate, empowered, innovative generation who actually cultivate a more humanitarian and environmentally sensitive society!

“I used to think it was impossible to collapse the school system… not anymore. Now I can see just how possible it truly is! School is obsolete.” -Laurette Lynn The Unplugged Mom

How can I get involved in real educational change?

Listen to the children and what they are telling us about what they need! My son, who was in public school prior to him joining my life through adoption, endured day care, preschool and public school. As an unschooler who has “detoxed” the past seven years from schooling, here are his words: http://www.laurieacouture.com/2011/10/what-children-really-want-to-tell-teachers/

Join the Occupy Education movement! Start by uploading a photo of how you occupy education. Here is my “How I Occupy Education” photo: http://occupyedu.tumblr.com/post/12095324731/i-occupy-education-by-unschooling-my-teen-son-and

Here is my son, Brycen’s “How I Occupy Education” photo: http://occupyedu.tumblr.com/post/12095357337/im-brycen-and-im-a-17-year-old-boy-i-occupy

Write a blog post about how you are occupying education.

Organize an Occupy event at your state’s Department of Education and literally occupy by educating others that reform of the current system misses the point.

Of course, the best way to “Occupy Education” is to walk out of the school system hand in hand with your children and begin an unschooling journey!

“The choice is in our hands. We can continue the 19th century-style sausage factory method of schooling. Or we can tear down the institutionalized barriers that impede learning and create a 21st century-style learning society.” -Wendy Priesnitz, Author of Challenging Assumptions in Education and Editor of Life Learning magazine

Laurie's teen son, Brycen on one of the few recent playgrounds that offer a challenge

The rich, vibrant primary colors and the allure of the tube slides make today’s playgrounds appear at first glance like jungle gym paradises. But run over to one, climb aboard via one of the two or three meager challenges, drop through the tube slide and you’ve virtually exhausted the potential of the entire structure! Although attractive, today’s playground structures are becoming less and less challenging and are catering to younger and younger children.

Many of these attractive plastic structures now come equipped with signs that declare, “This playground structure is intended for use by children 12 and under.” The structures seem to be purposely built to keep adolescents, challenge, daring feats and any possibility of injury out of the park. Although minimizing injury is a laudable intent, the anesthetizing manner in which recent playground equipment is designed prevents any real physical challenge and limits the way the actual structure can be used. If you climb aboard, it doesn’t take long to realize that essentially the entire structure is just a long platform with a set of steps and a few simple one-use only ways of getting on and off. The structures are built to prevent high jumping, challenging climbing, flipping or twirling over bars, and falls. If there is a swing set on the playground, the swings are often equipped with short chains that prevent aerial stunts such as “under dogs” and gravity-defying jumps.

Our natural Earth is the best playground for children of all ages- There are few challenges more exhilarating than climbing a leviathan tree, launching ones self off the edge of a rocky cliff and splashing into the ocean below, scaling a mountainous glacial boulder, running through a wooded trail or riding a gushing mountain stream across the flat, slippery rocks of a gorge. Nature as a playground is open-ended and allows limitless possibilities of physical challenge, including the possibility of getting injured. I believe that children who play in nature develop a strong sense of body awareness, groundedness, mindfulness, awareness and innate knowledge of how their bodies move in time and space.

However, for children in the city, children confined to school or children who do not otherwise have access to a natural space, playgrounds can offer a place of immediate respite, fun and physical activity. Even for children who do have regular access to natural spaces, playgrounds can be a fun source of quick physical challenge when out in the community, visiting friends, on camping trips or taking a break while parents run errands. Playgrounds also offer great places to hold homeschool groups, clubs and other gatherings of children and families.

Playgrounds originated in the late 1800′s as a method of exerting social control over the immigrant and lower class children roaming the city streets. Like public schools, playgrounds provided a structured, rule-based environment designed to  control and shape children’s behavior and activities and provide “socialization” that was in line with adult expectations. The positive aspects of playgrounds are that playgrounds provided children with physical activity, promoting better health. Another positive aspect is that playgrounds were  designed in the early years to attract older children, too.

Playgrounds have changed a great deal since their origins, starting with sand boxes and eventually adding swing sets, slides, see-saws, teeter-totters, spring ride-ons, horse-shaped swings, merry-go-rounds, basketball hoops, jungle gyms, monkey bars, climbing domes and in the mid 80′s, tire structures. The most drastic changes seem to have occurred in the mid-1990′s when the steel metal playgrounds that once functioned as stunt havens for children ages five to 18 were quickly replaced with the now ubiquitous plastic pre-fabbed playground kits fit for children ages 2-8. These new plastic kits, which create an instant draw mainly due to their colorful slides, are as unsatisfying to older children as an electronic toy- They offer novelty and instant gratification, but almost as instantly they lead to boredom unless used instead as a fortress for hide-and-seek.

Laurie's son does a back flip over vintage monkey bars

The steel playground structures of the 60′s, 70′s and early 80′s allowed for dangerous feats that much of my son’s generation has not discovered. I will never forget the thrilling shot of fear of  locking my feet around the top rungs of a seven foot tall steel jungle gym, leaning backwards until I was hanging upside down, my head rushing with exhilaration, reaching my arms back until my hands grasped the cold metal bar below my head, and then kicking off,  flipping and landing on my feet! That was almost as exciting as the sets of lightening fast twirls we would do around a metal bar: I recall I would sit perched on a bar a little wider than my body, my forearms wrapped under the bar. My toes, pointed knock-kneed out to the sides, gripped the poles running down the sides of the bar. When we would release our toes, we would plunge head first towards the ground, sometimes over seven feet off the ground, and then the sudden catch of our inner elbows would launch us into a spin around the bar. Some children could manage five spins in a row or more before their toes would frantically jut out, feeling for the security of the poles. We would do this until the insides of our elbows were red and bruised and we were gasping for breath from the spins.

As a youth I remember gracefully flying high through the air on swings with chains that seemed to climb up as high as the sky; being launched skyward on see-saws, seeing my own laughing face reflected in the joyful face of a laughing friend dropping down on the opposite side– then just as fast I’m being dropped to the earth as my friend hurtles up and touches the sky… I remember the long ascent to the top of the metal slide, flipping over the bar and shooting down the hot metal that would burn my legs in the summer sun. I recall the dexterity, agility, power and strength required on the high climbing domes, knowing one wrong move could mean a fall… I remember laying on my stomach, hanging off the top of the monkey bars, reaching my hands underneath, flipping over and landing on my feet. I remember being whipped off the merry-go-round and bouncing off of the tire structures. I remember all of these challenging, elating stunts my friends, sister, cousin and I used to do together on playground equipment that has since been torn up, carted away and replaced with glorified platforms challenging to no one past the age of eight.

At age 10 I broke my ankle riding with two other children on a sled launched by two other children off of the high metal slide, and my sister once disclosed that she fell from the top of a jungle gym while doing that twirling, spinning stunt. Injuries as well as schools, towns and businesses fearing lawsuits, are probably the biggest reasons for the demise of the retro playground. Allowing children to approach challenges when they are ready, without adults expressing fear or “helping” but with adults encouraging and spotting, can minimize injuries. Removing places and opportunities for adolescents to obviously congregate seems to be another insidious goal of the new toddler-esque playground kits, of course making it more likely that bored youth will have to find less desirable things to do in the community. Creating playgrounds with multiple levels of challenge for all ages is far more inclusive than giving adolescents the message that they are not wanted at playgrounds.

Thankfully, my son and I are within driving distance of a large wooden obstacle course playground and a large rope structure playground where children of all ages can have fun and create group challenges. However, the steel and tire playgrounds of my generation are a rare find. When my son and I are driving and we see a “retro” playground, we make an effort to stop. My son is well aware that at anytime, these few remaining gems that still accommodate big kids could be excavated and replaced with something more fit for his toddler cousin.

Knox Freed After Conviction Overturned http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44752948/ns/world_news-europe/#.TopOqnJVXYg

Casey Anthony Freed From Jail http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=14089837

Debra Lafave: Probation Ended for Florida Teacher Guilty of Student Sex Scandal http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/218521/20110922/debra-lafave-probation-ended-for-florida-teacher-guilty-of-student-sex-scandal.htm

Female Teacher Avoids Jail Time in Statutory Rape Case http://www.bostonsexualabuselawyer.com/2011/01/female-teacher-avoids-jail-tim.html

Women frequently get away with or receive light sentences in comparison to men for child abuse, assault, murder, rape and sexual crimes. A female criminal may realize that she can manipulate the process of justice by crying or presenting as helpless, innocent and weak. When the tears and the helplessness are turned on, male and female jurors and judges alike seem to find it difficult to believe that the woman could do the atrocious crimes for which they stand accused.

Women who abuse or murder their children, female school teachers who sexually assault teen boys and girls and women who physically assault, sexually assault or kill partners, family members or citizens in the community of any age or sex should not be allowed to walk away without paying adequate consequences and restitution to their victims or victim’s families. Likewise, men should not be viewed by default in our society as guilty until proven innocent. If a man is guilty, then the courts should show just as much concern for how his circumstances, such as a traumatic childhood, impacted his behavior, as they do in some cases of women.

Gender biases in the justice system that fail to hold women fully accountable and punish men more severely than women are disgusting and must not be tolerated by courts. I believe in Restorative Justice for all people who commit crimes, but this can’t occur if women get the message that being a woman gives them license to commit violent crimes without being held responsible to their victims or victim’s families!

Here are some links to more information about violent female criminals:

“86% of the victims of female sexual predators aren’t believed, so the crimes go unreported and don’t get prosecuted. Considering these facts,  arrest statistics for child sexual offenders by gender are meaningless.” - “The Sexual Abuse by Women of Children and Teenagers“, UK TV programme – Panorama – BBC1 – 10 pm Monday, October 6th, 1997 http://www.canadiancrc.com/Female_Sex_Offenders-Female_Sexual_Predators_awareness.aspx and http://www.canadiancrc.com/Newspaper_Articles/BBC_Child_sexual_abuse_by_women_06OCT97.aspx

“Even more disturbing, these female teacher sex offenders have even gained pop culture status through intense media scrutiny regarding their arrests and sex crime trials. Contrary to their male sex-offending peers that are often deemed as “predators” by public and judicial consensus, female teachers involved in sex scandals tend to receive lighthearted, even flattering press coverage and minimal jail sentences that make them memorable pop culture stories, instead of being reviled sexual predators forgotten by the public as they serve out their criminal sentences.” : – LawFirms.com, Teacher Sex Offender List, http://www.lawfirms.com/female-teacher-sex-crime-offenders-and-scandals.html

Female Perpetrators and Male Sexual Abuse Victims: Society’s Betrayal of Boys http://kalimunro.com/wp/?page_id=1550

Florida Epidemic: Teachers Sleeping With Students http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1901762,00.html

Goffstown Teacher Arrested a Third Time http://www.newhampshire.com/article/20110928/NEWS03/709289947/0/newhampshire03

The big list: Female teachers with students, the most comprehensive account on Internet of women predators on campus http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=39783

Female and male teaching couple in California lured a 17 year old boy and raped him several times: http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-04-23/news/29484681_1_hot-tub-teaching-couple-school-and-davidson-shepard

Choate Stepmother Charged, Pleads Not Guilty http://chicagoist.com/2011/05/11/choate_stepmother_charged_pleads_no.php and http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/gary/article_b1fdc580-8a7d-50f4-b9a7-0503202d0f9f.html

 Police: Mother, boyfriend caged and starved 5-year-old boy http://www.imperfectparent.com/topics/2011/04/26/police-mother-boyfriend-caged-and-starved-5-year-old-boy/

“Dynamics of Female Perpetrated Abuse”, from The Invisible Boy http://www.aest.org.uk/survivors/male/ibc3.html

November 7, 2011

Here is an updated story of a group of women in Zimbabwe who raped at least 17 men at gunpoint: Notice how the charge for serial rape was “aggravated indecent assault”, not rape! http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/15/world/africa/zimbabwe-sperm/

December 8, 2011

Stories of women who abuse and rape boys and men have been increasingly in the news. Here are some updated stories:

Ohio Mother Charged with Raping Infant Son http://www.mlive.com/news/us-world/index.ssf/2011/09/ohio_mother_charged_with_rapin.html

Wife Cuts Off Husband’s Penis, Throws in Garbage Disposal http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wife-cuts-off-husbands-penis-throws-garbage-disposal/story?id=14055080#.TuDUVHqy-Ah

Mom Pleads Guilty to Raping 4 Sons: In this case, the mother, who plead guilty to raping her four sons in 1997, is allowed to walk for 16 years of time served. Her conviction was originally overturned:  http://www.wmur.com/news/29886665/detail.html

Photo by photl

I have received a blizzard of positive and negative feedback from my two controversial blog posts, What Teachers Really Need to Hear From Parents and What Parents Really Want to Tell Teachers: What You Do Hurts Our Children. Both of my posts were in response to the exasperatingly child and parent-disparaging CNN post, What Teachers Really Want to Tell Parents by Ron Clark.  The most common complaints from people were:

1. “You are over-generalizing all teachers in your post- Not all teachers believe/act the way you and Ron Clark presented that they believe/act”,

2. “Teachers hands are tied- they can’t be blamed for what the system forces them to do”,

3. “You should encourage people to try to fix the system rather than blame teachers”,

4. “Parents are the ones who are the problem because they aren’t involved”,

5. “Democratic schooling/Unschooling is only possible for a privileged few families and isn’t realistic for society as a whole”.

Sadly, the actual impact of the school system on the human beings who are the most damaged by it was glaringly left out of these types of arguments.

I will respond to these common complaints about my aforementioned posts:

1. “You are over-generalizing all teachers in your post- Not all teachers believe/act the way you and Ron Clark presented that they believe/act”

The public school system is the biggest offender of “over-generalizing”! The system generalizes the majority of the human population under the age of 19 into mechanical categories, numerical statistics and machine-like expectations. Every child’s body is expected to function in the exact same, inhumane manner, every child’s emotional and behavioral state is expected to present in the exact same, manageable way and every child’s brain is expected to produce in the exact same, assembly-line fashion- all based on age!

Not only are children collected, sorted and processed like objects into arbitrary age, “grading”  and “performance” categories, nature- children’s humanity- is kicked to the curb! There is a total disregard for the laws of nature concerning children, the needs of their bodies, the needs of their hearts, the needs of their minds and the needs of their unique, individual time tables for emotional and intellectual development.

That each individual human child develops, grows, learns, explores, understands and creates on a different time table is inconvenient for factory schools. They hide the fact that the time frame for literacy and math spans twenty years or more, that it is unnatural to expect all children to be producing reading and writing by age five or eight. Schools, in their drive for conformity and numerical results, label any child who is not developmentally ready to read, write or calculate as “learning disabled”! Have you ever heard of any other “learning disabled” species? Is our species really so defectively “learning disabled” or is the system learning ignorant?

I met Ron Clark’s article by trying to condense the most common school human rights violations into one post, based on my years of work with over 1,000 youth and families, my own son’s experiences prior to me adopting (and unschooling) him, as well as my own concerning experiences in public schools as a child. (If you want to learn more about my credentials, please read my Bio). I find it curious that defensive teachers insinuate my post is “over-generalized”, when what I wrote is standard public school and classroom practice. When a single teacher tells me their classroom “doesn’t look like that”, it doesn’t negate the fact that most classrooms do look as I described.  Laurette Lynn, host of The Unplugged Mom Podcast, commented that if individual teachers work as part of the mass system that commits these violations, then they need to expect that they will be “generalized” with the practices of the majority.

2. “Teachers hands are tied- they can’t be blamed for what the system forces them to do.”

Many terrible crimes against humanity have been committed under the excuse of , “I was just following orders.” Children are hostages of the system, teachers are not. No teacher has to work in that system or do inhumane things to children in the name of “policy”. I wonder if Stanley Milgrim’s study on obedience to authority is taught to prospective teachers? Milgrim’s study showed the dangers of the “I was just following orders” mentality and the lengths people will go in hurting helpless people under their power in order to “follow orders” from their own higher authorities.

Every teacher has the choice to leave the system rather than perpetuate it. They have no right to hurt children whether they are following policy or not. If they don’t like what they are forced to do then they should all stop doing it. If every teacher subverted the system (do teachers still assign Civil Disobedience by Thoreau anymore? Maybe they should re-read it) then the system could no longer enforce inhumane policies against children. Now that would be a REAL education that teachers could give their students- fit for a democracy!

Desiree Alonso, producer of The Unplugged Mom Podcast, wrote on a thread, “Teacher, YOU are what keeps the system alive. YOU are the problem. YOU have a choice. Stop making excuses and if you really want to inspire, motivate and support children’s learning… then DO THAT. Teachers prove over and over again that they are NOT any agents of change, they are pawns of the system, the very system they support and endorse every day.”

Lisa Nielsen, author of The Innovative Educator, is an example of an educator that subverts the system!

3. “You should encourage people to try to fix the system rather than blame teachers”

How many epic fails at education reform does it take before people are willing to wake up and realize that the system cannot be refromed? The school system was DESIGNED to be oppressive to the child! The system was designed not to help children learn, but to crate a docile, obedient citizenry who would mindlessly conform to the demands of consumerism, the factories, mills, mines and the military of the mid-1800′s Industrial Revolution.

Consider the quotes of William Torrey Harris, the U.S. Commissioner of Education from 1889-1906:

“The great purpose of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places…. It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world.”

“Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.”

“Our schools have been scientifically designed to prevent over-education from happening. The average American [should be] content with their humble role in life, because they’re not tempted to think about any other role.”

Read John Taylor Gatto’s massive compilation of research, The Underground History of American Education for more enlightenment!

I unschool my son because he and his life are too precious to me to put at risk by sending him to a system that guarantees to harm, confine and take him off course from his passions and his own natural learning process. Other Moms wrote,

“The partnering that teachers are asking for here is nothing less than submission to the system. Laurie is simply throwing the chess board over. We will not play this game with our children at stake.” -Christeil Figueroa Gota

“It is my personal opinion that the VERY BEST schools are abusive. I will not work with that, I will not try to understand that. I will (and have) remove my child and pity those left behind. Don’t agree? Great… Good luck changing things…” -Marie Benesch Scott

4. “Parents are the ones who are the problem because they aren’t involved”,

Interestingly, the parents these teachers point at are probably a product of the public school system. What does that tell you about the apathy the school system produces in people? The school system works perfectly, as it was intended! Many of the parents I work with stay away from their children’s schools because they say that it literally makes them ill to walk in. They report that they still feel coerced, bullied or steam-rolled by the school “authorities”.

5. “Democratic schooling/Unschooling is only possible for a privileged few families and isn’t realistic for society as a whole.”

Unschooling was how human beings learned, like other mammals do, for millennia- Compulsory schooling in the US has only been around since 1852- How did people learn prior to 1852? Why were there so many geniuses in history who were minimally or not schooled? How can it not be “realistic” for a democratic society to learn democratically?

I am a single Mom on a very tight, dollar-to-dollar income and I unschool my son. When I first adopted him when he turned 11, I put him in a child-centered private school on a partial scholarship while I worked out child care for the hours I needed to work outside the home while my son unschooled. I was willing to do anything and everything to make it work, and we did it- Through creativity and networking.

Parents must be willing to make a plan to make it work. If you understand that the public school system is too dangerous a risk to take, then you will do whatever it takes to protect your child. Laurette Lynn once said on one of her podcasts, “What would you do if public school wasn’t an option?”

___

The overwhelming defensiveness of teachers and their supporters to challenges to their way of operating their classrooms should be enough to raise concern- Why would parents want to put their children under the near constant control of people who so fervently defend their harmful practices? Parents, protect your children and stop trying to be a polite parent to the school system.

Teachers, if you do love and care about children at the holistic, personal level, then work for change OUTSIDE the system by joining with others (especially children) who are already creating child-centered learning communities all over the globe.  If you don’t wish to be “over-generalized”, then stop over-generalizing children; stop seeing them as one collective, cartoonish unit lesser than yourself. View children as equals, deserving of the same human rights that you enjoy. See children as individuals and respect their needs, their development, their interests, their ways of learning and their unique callings in life.

Laurie’s son, Brycen R. R. Couture, 17 year old unschooler and musician

I am sharing the words of my 17 year old son in response to Ron Clark’s article, What Teachers Really Want to Tell Parents. Brycen is an unschooler and the vocalist and songwriter for his Glam Metal band project, Serenade II Darkness.

What Children Really Want to Tell Teachers

by Brycen R. R. Couture

This is my second response to Ron Clark’s article, What Teachers Really Want to Tell Parents. My Mom, Laurie A. Couture, also wrote a response to his article, What Parents Really Want to Tell Teachers. This is what I say from a child’s perspective to Ron Clark and to teachers like him.

Ron Clark: “So, what can we do to stem the tide [of teachers leaving the profession]?”

BRRC: Why should we stem the tide? If all the teachers leave, there would be no school and if you really stop and think about that, think of how wonderful it would be! People need to gives kids a child-centered life- And you can’t do that in school! Even at my friend’s arts charter school they say, “The first year you’re in love. By the second year its not as good as the first year. By the third and fourth years you’re like, okay, graduate me, I’m done! You hate it.” If it wasn’t for the arts charter school, my friend’s only other option would be the public high school.

Ron Clark: “What do teachers really need parents to understand? For starters, we are educators, not nannies. We are educated professionals who work with kids every day and often see your child in a different light than you do. If we give you advice, don’t fight it. Take it, and digest it in the same way you would consider advice from a doctor or lawyer.”

BRRC: That sounds like a perfect set up for a really abusive situation. That sets it up so that the teachers who teach for the power trip (those really mean spirited teachers who never got over their own school experiences) can use kids in any way they want with out getting in trouble from the parents. If the child tries to say anything to the parent, the parents could say, “Well, we were told to listen to the teacher!” The teacher can do whatever they want to the child and the child has no voice, no ability to protect himself. The child having no voice in a situation where the teacher is controlling and saying negative things about the child to the parent sets up a situation for a lot of hatred from the child towards the teacher. It sets up the family dynamic of adults against kids in this crazy fanatical world that Ron Clark is creating with his article.

With adults vs kids, child says “A”, teacher says “B”, parents say, “Well, we’re supposed to listen to the teacher!” That’s really, really bad because the child has no one to turn to because he can’t turn to his parents… and his friends are in the same boat! With all of the kids in the same boat you have peer harassment where the kids are divided amongst themselves, as well, because of the school environment. Kids are kids and will react to their environment in a perfectly appropriate manner. It’s the adults that we need to worry about.

About the “doctors and lawyers” comment- There is that stereotype that sometimes proves true- “Those who can, do, and those who can’t (or won’t), teach.” Traditional school teachers have set themselves apart from children, parents and society by becoming teachers and being part of a system that kids hate and that is wrong on every level.

Ron Clark: “Trust us. At times when I tell parents that their child has been a behavior problem, I can almost see the hairs rise on their backs. They are ready to fight and defend their child, and it is exhausting. One of my biggest pet peeves is when I tell a mom something her son did and she turns, looks at him and asks, “Is that true?” Well, of course it’s true. I just told you. And please don’t ask whether a classmate can confirm what happened or whether another teacher might have been present. It only demeans teachers and weakens the partnership between teacher and parent.”

BRRC: “Trust me.” Is that not creepy or what? That’s like the winning line in every horror movie! Is he trying to incriminate himself? Seriously, doesn’t anyone look at that? That has, “Don’t trust me” written in big fat red letters! May I ask why it’s a bad thing that parents want to protect and or defend their kids? That’s nature at work! By denouncing that as “exhausting”, troublesome and wrong, the school system is finding just another way to demean nature and stifle natural responses like they already do to things like, gee, I don’t know, going to the bathroom, getting up and moving, PLAYING, eating when hungry… And now its also going to be, “Don’t defend your kids, Parent”? There are already enough clueless parents that already do not defend their children- Why are we trying to create more of that? IF ANYTHING, if there is to be a school system, why is it not teaching us what nature intends for us to live? Why doesn’t school “teach” us how to live in a harmonious way, spiritually, emotionally, physically and with rest of the world?

Ron Clark: “And if you really want to help your children be successful, stop making excuses for them. I was talking with a parent and her son about his summer reading assignments. He told me he hadn’t started, and I let him know I was extremely disappointed because school starts in two weeks.

His mother chimed in and told me that it had been a horrible summer for them because of family issues they’d been through in July. I said I was so sorry, but I couldn’t help but point out that the assignments were given in May. She quickly added that she was allowing her child some “fun time” during the summer before getting back to work in July and that it wasn’t his fault the work wasn’t complete. Can you feel my pain?”

BRRC: I’m feeling pain alright, but it ain’t yours! I want to talk to this guy. I want to get into a massive debate with him! If I were raised differently, then my verbal reaction to him would be lots of profanity inappropriate to an article because what he is saying is so ridiculous. Every human should have empathy: “Yea, this kid has been locked up in this environment for ¾ of a year, I think I can totally understand that at the beginning of the summer he is going to need some free time and then, oh, I’m terribly sorry with what ever happened with the family. That’s OK on the assignment, you can skip it.” (Personally I think there should never be any assignments in the first place. While we’re at it, let’s overthrow traditional schooling as a whole.) The pain I’m feeling- I’m feeling so sad for that boy having to deal with such an obnoxiously unemphatic teacher. The fact that this is not one but many teachers’ view points frightens me very much.

Ron Clark: “If you don’t want your child to end up 25 and jobless, sitting on your couch eating potato chips, then stop making excuses for why they aren’t succeeding. Instead, focus on finding solutions.”

BRRC: That just sounds like an ignorant statement. The only way I can see someone getting to that point of just sitting on couch eating potato chips is if they go to a traditional school and have all their passions drained out of them. I’m sorry. Just sayin’.

The road to success as I see it is being able to explore all of your wonderful passions as a child by playing and doing what ever your heart wills you to do, and then doing that as an adult.

Ron Clark: “Please, take a step back and get a good look at the landscape. Before you challenge those low grades you feel the teacher has “given” your child, you might need to realize your child “earned” those grades and that the teacher you are complaining about is actually the one that is providing the best education.”

BRRC: Well, I beg to differ with that because if the child is having a low “grade” then isn’t the education being provided of questionable quality? If it was the “best education” a.k.a, absolute freedom, playing, enacting your heart’s passions, then would there really be a “bad grade”? You can’t fail at your passions! You can only succeed with your passions…

Ron Clark: “My mom just told me a child at a local school wrote on his face with a permanent marker. The teacher tried to get it off with a wash cloth, and it left a red mark on the side of his face. The parent called the media, and the teacher lost her job. My mom, my very own mother, said, “Can you believe that woman did that?””

BRRC: I feel bad for that woman, too. I mean, that’s not right that she tried to help out and she loses her job over it. However, maybe we should be looking at why people take something like that so seriously. Perhaps it is all of the abusive teachers who have harmed kids that have caused parents to become so freaked out about situations like the one above mentioned.

Ron Clark: “If your child said something happened in the classroom that concerns you, ask to meet with the teacher and approach the situation by saying, “I wanted to let you know something my child said took place in your class, because I know that children can exaggerate and that there are always two sides to every story. I was hoping you could shed some light for me.” If you aren’t happy with the result, then take your concerns to the principal, but above all else, never talk negatively about a teacher in front of your child. If he knows you don’t respect her, he won’t either, and that will lead to a whole host of new problems.”

BRRC: It really sounds as if teachers are the parent figures. That’s just setting the situation up so that no matter what a teacher does, ill intent or good, the child who reports it is always held in question and always held in the wrong. I mean, doesn’t anyone else see that as sketchy? If I was a child in school in that situation, I know that I would feel pretty dehumanized and I’d feel a lot of hurt in my heart because my Mom is supposed to be MY champion, not the teacher’s. I would feel distanced, very betrayed, and “Well gee, I guess I don’t matter.” It’s just wrong on so many levels.

Ron Clark: “We know you love your children. We love them, too. We just ask — and beg of you — to trust us, support us and work with the system, not against it. We need you to have our backs, and we need you to give us the respect we deserve. Lift us up and make us feel appreciated, and we will work even harder to give your child the best education possible.”

BRRC: Again with the creepy comments, saying, “Trust us, support us”! I can just picture this sketchy looking character with a big grin saying, “We know you love your children. We love them, too. We just ask — and beg of you — to trust us, support us and work with the system, not against it. We need you to have our backs, and we need you to give us the respect we deserve.” The fact that this is a real life person saying this is the scariest thing of all- This isn’t just some parody of how bad the schools really are! With everything I know about how bad the schools are, from the bathroom denial issues to peer harassment, to the work to just the very power-trippy controlling environment- The fact that then this guy is trying to earn the support of the few parents out there who still want to protect their kids (despite putting them in school in the first place) is really freaking scary!

If I were in school and my Mom listened to this I would be completely lost. I am completely speechless when I think that there are parents that would actually listen to this propaganda. I would feel absolutely lost and devastated if my Mom was the kind of Mom that would listen to this. I’d feel like there was no connection I had to my Mom. This is a very hard thing to think about because I don’t want to picture my Mom and me in that situation. It’s very scary to picture my Mom listening to that and turning her back on me in favor of what teachers say. If I was a Dad reading this and for whatever reason my children were forced to go into public school (which they won’t ) I would feel shocked, indignant and very protective of my children, saying, “What do you think gives you the right?” I think it is more along the lines of, “What the hell?” There is a word that I don’t think exists, but its along the lines of, “Who do you think you are? And what gives you the right? And what’s so wrong with you that you are saying something so absolutely crazy?” The feeling I’d have is bordering on panic and horror- “These are my kids, I ABSOLUTELY AM NOT going to stop defending and protecting them! I will have my children’s backs, I will trust, help, support and respect my children, not a big giant system or some teacher who could care less about my children as individuals, as persons.

When you are living as in synch with nature as my Mom and I are now- And by no means am I saying I’m perfect or I’m everything I want to be- But with as far as I’ve come in my life, looking at an article like the one Ron Clark wrote is very disturbing to me. I find it very difficult to tap into and formulate my thoughts into something coherent because I am just flooded with emotions and something along the lines of horror.

So teachers, heed my words and question the system that you are a part of and try to- unlike what Ron Clark suggests- to see things from a child’s point of view. Thank you!

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs (Image by Factoryjoe)

Many parents are shaking their heads at the audacity and insolence of the CNN article, What Teachers Really Want to Tell Parents by Disney-and-Oprah-endorsed teacher, Ron Clark. His article is dangerous because it represents how the majority of traditional school teachers view children, parents and teachers’ roles as authorities over children’s lives. In my post, What Teachers Really Need to Hear From Parents, I challenge Ron Clark to consider the dehumanization of children and the undermining of the parent-child bond in the institution he represents.

Most parents in industrialized societies are conditioned by their own schooling to be obedient and unquestioning of their children’s schools and the so-called authorities therein. A frightening majority of parents are unaware that most everything that traditional school teachers do is developmentally inappropriate and even harmful for youth of all ages. However, a growing movement of parents are parenting through awareness, consciousness and connection to their children’s needs. Many of these parents are opting out of public and traditional schools are are seeking refuge for their children in child-centered and democratic schools or through homeschooling and unschooling. As a mother of an unschooling teen son, and based on the years of complaints I have heard from parents and their children about traditional schools, I have compiled a list of  concerns and presented them to teachers in the context of their own education:

1. In college and Grad school, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs was an elementary principle that you learned. Maslow stated that if basic physical and emotional needs are not met, a child cannot properly attend to higher level functions such as learning. Yet, despite your “education”, you hurt our children’s bodies, emotions, minds and spirits every day in the name of routines, rules and “classroom management”. Here’s how:

2. As “trained professionals”, you seem to be ignorant about the basic functioning of the human body. You deny our children their right to eat when hungry, causing their blood sugar to drop and putting them at risk for fatigue, nausea and mood instability. You deny our children their right to use the toilet when needed, causing them intense pain and desperation and putting them at risk for urinary and gastrointestinal dysfunction and damage. You deny them  hydration, causing them to dehydrate and putting them at risk for headaches, mental fog, lethargy and medical problems. You deny our children physical activity at their will, causing them distress and putting them at risk for hyperactivity, challenging behavior, inability to focus and obesity, weakness and medical problems. You also act oblivious as to how preoccupying and awkward sexual development can be in a school setting for our teen boys and girls, putting them at risk for shame, distress and early sexual activity.

3. You are responsible for referring our children to the mental health system to be labeled as “learning disabled”, “mentally ill” and “special needs”. Our children are prescribed  powerful chemicals that alter their natural neurological functioning and do harm to every system of their bodies. You do this rather than deal with the fact that children need touch, movement and play and are not meant to be away from their families all day or learn in the conditions you force upon them. (In 19 states, you actually legally assault our children! It is unconscionable that you have failed to learn from your Master’s-level training that violence physically and psychologically traumatizes children.)

4. Through your studies in college and Grad school you should be aware that  play is the very means by which all mammal children learn. You are aware that children learned for millennia through play and community interaction and that many of our world’s greatest minds were minimally or not schooled. You also observe every day how children long and beg to play and will, at all ages, risk getting into trouble to steal a moment of play. Yet, you refuse to allow our children to do as nature drives them to do- Play, move, jump, run, climb, explore, create and have fun. You seem to take the joy out of everything you give children to do and then you punish them when they act like children.

5. You know that one of the most dreadful times of the day for parents and children is homework time. You know that our children have been cooped up all day, away from their families, homes, friends, the outdoors, our communities and their interests. Yet despite the research that indicates that homework is not beneficial for children, you make our evenings at home a nightmare by forcing our children to do reading, paperwork and projects for you. You seem callous to the tears, tantrums and distress our children suffer every night and the helplessness we feel to be able to give them the time they need to be kids.

6. You are aware from your training that there are at least seven forms of human intelligence and at least three modalities of learning. You are aware that most children, especially our boys, are kinesthetic, hands-on learners. Yet you insist upon keeping children sedentary, all doing the same work, in the same auditory, linguistic or mathematical manner. You are aware that this sets up many children, especially our boys, for failure. You view most of our boys and our children who are artistic, musical, kinesthetic, creative, athletic, introspective, extroverted, quirky or perseverant as underachievers, lazy, learning disabled, mentally ill, behavioral problems or having “ADHD”. You view their passions as “hobbies” that do not count as “academics” and you rule out seeing that their “hobbies” are often more intricately academic than anything you are “teaching”.

7. You take our children away from us. They will be children for less than two decades out of a long adulthood, but you steal those critical years from us. Our children are touch and love starved all day in school. Your academic training taught you the vital importance of parent-child attachment and how a disruption can cause psychological problems. But you disrupt the parent-child bond by infringing upon our family time, causing emotional disconnection to deepen with each year. You subordinate children, causing them to form and focus on toxic peer networks. You can do little to protect our peer-tormented children because you have set yourselves apart from children, like another species. By the time our children are in their mid-teens, they are so depressed, angry and overwhelmed with busywork, pop-culture escapes and peer expectations that society has to write books to try to convince us that “pulling away” is natural in the teen years when in fact, it is not.

8. You talk to us as if you know our children, their needs and what is best for them better than we do. We assure you, you do not! Despite learning about Maslow, Bowlby, Ainsworth, Montagu, Harlow, Gardner and others in college and Grad school and despite your own common sense observations about children, you seem to do everything opposite of what our children need. Then, you gravely misjudge and punish their distress signals and define their humanity by their behavior.  You treat our children without respect, empathy, compassion or love unless they behave according to your rules and expectations. You seem oblivious to their pain, vulnerability and distress.

9. You cause so many of our most creative, spirited children to hate learning and to lose their passion, creativity, interests, motivation and their charismatic or poetic personalities. Everything you expect takes their attention away from what they were born to do. You replace that with some federal agenda to do homogenized work, pass one-dimensional tests and seamlessly usher children into taking their “place” in the economy, either as perpetual students, workers, laborers or drop outs. Children processed by your system have no time to make up all of the living they missed from preschool through high school graduation. From there on, unless they find themselves, they will have a life of perpetual work and consumption until they die.

10. Know that a growing movement is showing us that our children do not have to live this way. There are joyful, free ways for our children to learn; ways they can play, thrive and feel happy, safe and good in their own skin… Ways they can manifest lives of passion, creativity and ingenuity in their own ways… We also want you to know that you do not have to be a part of the school system. If you truly love children, you could help us raise awareness to how the education system harms children. You could work in a democratic school or become a caring mentor to children in need. If you agree with us that the system does not allow you to meet our children’s needs, then work to restore childhood back to our children.

Public schools are government institutions that have literally taken control of  much of the global population and most world cultures. By holding all children under 18 as hostages, against their wills, this infectious institution forces the population to deny the self, homogenize, obey and consume. By choking down an irrelevant, carefully engineered “education” in a factory-like environment,  children are conditioned to ignore their bodies, emotions, passions, interests, questions, ideas, creative impulses, purposes and needs. In the US, this multi-billion dollar social conditioning machine trains children to take their place  assisting the United States in remaining the World power through economic and political globalization. This control of the population was the intent of public schooling when it was made into law in 1852.

Ron Clark pulls rank and admonishes parents that because teachers are “trained professionals”, “don’t fight it” when teachers give you their advice about your children- to blindly and unquestioningly take teacher’s orders! He implies that teachers know each unique, living, breathing, holistic child better than his or her parents know them. Clark hypocritically insists that parents  unquestioningly accept the teacher’s accusations of their children as tried and convicted justice. Yet parents are told to stop believing their children’s complaints about the teacher or classroom and if they must complain, phrase the complaint as,

“I wanted to let you know something my child said took place in your class, because I know that children can exaggerate and that there are always two sides to every story. I was hoping you could shed some light for me.”

Not only does this dehumanize children, put them at risk for abuse and invalidate their feelings, emotions, perspectives and experiences, it undermines parental advocacy for their own children! For children under total control of both teachers and parents, it is a no-win situation.

Traditional school teachers routinely treat children with such a lack of compassion and empathy that if the children were adults, the situation might qualify as torture. Teachers routinely inflict an environment of chronic physical and emotional distress on children from kindergarten until high school graduation. Physiological needs are regimented and denied so that it hurts just to be alive- Children can’t eat when hungry, eliminate bodily waste when in pain, hydrate when thirsty, move their bodies when they are restless or play despite  explosive impulses. Emotional needs are ignored so that children must develop mental defenses just to endure- Children from tikes to teens are separated from their primary attachment source- their families- and are touch-starved and denied any nurturance, human respect or affection. Although schools claim to be the bastions of “socialization”, attempts beyond a few minutes each day to interact with friends are punished.

These physical and psychological needs are all survival functions intended by nature, yet schools cruelly ignore them or coerce drugs into those who can’t tolerate the pain of such an environment.

Summer is the respite that many children long for as the school year devours their free time. Summer is the time when children might possibly be able to bask in the freedom of what it means to be a child. Unfortunately, having less than three months to detox, many children still can’t rediscover their passions and interests. But to make certain that children remain programmed and conditioned, schools now enforce summer homework! Clark displays an infuriating apathy towards a child’s personal hardships as well as the child’s natural right to play and have fun when he sardonically writes,

“And if you really want to help your children be successful, stop making excuses for them. I was talking with a parent and her son about his summer reading assignments. He told me he hadn’t started, and I let him know I was extremely disappointed because school starts in two weeks. His mother chimed in and told me that it had been a horrible summer for them because of family issues they’d been through in July. I said I was so sorry, but I couldn’t help but point out that the assignments were given in May. She quickly added that she was allowing her child some “fun time” during the summer before getting back to work in July and that it wasn’t his fault the work wasn’t complete. Can you feel my pain?”

Ron, apparently you can’t feel the boy’s pain, the family’s pain or the pain of every other child who is forced to labor against their will, without pay, during their free time, family time, social time and play time, for no reason other than because a teacher said so.

With such dangerous power over children, it amazes me that Ron Clark dares to try to whip parents into aligning even more with teachers and abandon being their children’s last hope for a voice or rescue!

Perhaps the most creepy part of the article is how it ends, with an Orwellian dose of Double-Think, with Ron Clark massaging us parents to believe that teachers “love” our children (“too”) despite keeping our children in pain, miserable, stifled, imprisoned, silenced, immobile, distressed, overwhelmed,  scheduled- even diagnosed and drugged- from morning till almost bedtime for the majority of our children’s childhoods! Despite this daily disrespect and abuse of our children, he manipulates your sympathy and implores you to join the system, work with it and give teachers the respect he claims they “deserve”:

“We know you love your children. We love them, too. We just ask — and beg of you — to trust us, support us and work with the system, not against it. We need you to have our backs, and we need you to give us the respect we deserve.”

Parents, I might not be Disney and Oprah endorsed, but I have worked with over 1,000 youth and families in my 15 years of professional experience and I have worked on the front lines with the children who suffer at the hands of school teachers. I recommend that you distrust the school system, remove your children, yourselves and your lives from it and unschool. I recommend that you trust your children, support them, have their backs and give them the respect and love they deserve. You can do this best by restoring their lives to what nature intended for them- To be with family and friends, to learn through play, to have their needs met with compassion and to live in freedom and joy.

Laurie’s 17 year old son, Brycen is holistically healthy because, as an unschooler, all of his physical and emotional needs are met

The August 2011 issue of Parenting New Hampshire stood out as a perfect example of mainstream media presenting traditional schooling as inevitable for children in September. This is Part III of my blog post discussing the way the media presents Back-To-School fervor and traditional schooling issues and the detriments to children.

Failing to Bring Attention to How Dangerous Public Schooling is For Children’s Health

Towards the end of the August 2011 issue of Parenting New Hampshire is an article that, without intending to, underscored the irony of how schools fail to meet children’s basic biological, physical, psychological and developmental needs, often contrary to health care advice. Traditional schools are regimented in a manner that forces children to deny their bodily functions and emotional needs and contort these needs to the system rather than schools conforming to children’s needs.

“Potty Training Made Easier” by Bridget A. Logan, APRN, PhD recommends under a heading, Teach “Listen to your body”, “Our goal is to teach children to listen to body cues about hunger, thirst, sadness, anger, fatigue, and the needs to pee and poop. When you see your child squirming, crossing legs and squatting to suppress bowel and bladder urges, remind him/her to listen to his/her body”.

Pediatric urologists recommend that children of all ages, including adolescents, should urinate about every two to three hours, or sooner if needed. Pediatric urologists and gastroenterologists  recommend that children should respond to the urge to eliminate and not delay. Delaying elimination is dangerous to the body! Children who are forced by teachers to habitually delay their need to eliminate are at risk for poor bladder and bowel habits and elimination health problems. Delaying elimination puts children at risk for infections, dysfunction and damage to the bladder, kidneys, bowels and epididymis (in boys).

How can children be taught to “listen to their bodies” and follow the natural, healthy needs of the body when school teachers routinely regiment, punish ration, delay or deny toilet use or even reward children who don’t use the toilet?  Some middle and high schools actually lock school toilets! I have received pages and pages of email over the years from parents reporting that their children, from preschoolers to 18 year old 12th graders, were forced to urinate in their pants, in seats, trash cans, bottles, stairwells and outdoors due to teachers refusing to allow them to meet this basic survival need.

In addition to being denied the right to eliminate bodily waste when needed, children are also routinely denied hydration, food, physical activity, rest and fresh air in public school. Denial of these needs causes distress and pain in children. Sometimes the chronic distress leads to emotional, learning and behavioral challenges which are likely to be wrongly diagnosed as “ADHD”, mental illness or learning disabilities and subsequently drugged with psychotropic chemicals.

Failing to Bring Attention to How Dangerous Public Schooling is For Children’s Emotional and Psychological Well Being

Likewise, children of all ages have a basic psychological need for connection, attachment, affection and closeness with their families. Touch-starved schools that advocate for children “making that break” fracture the parent-child attachment relationship and leave children longing for connection, affection and comfort. They turn to peers and pop culture as a way to fill this void as the rift between parent and child becomes a deeper and deeper gulf. Traditional schooling is one of the most pervasive and devastating blows to the parent-child attachment relationship , but one that is totally avoidable.

If we can’t trust that teachers and schools will meet our children’s survival needs- their most basic physical and emotional needs- how can we trust these people and institutions with our children’s learning and education? Why don’t mainstream resources encourage parents to ask this question and demand answers of schools?

What if Public School Was Not An Option?

As long as mainstream media resources and greedy advertisers continue to ring the “Back-To-School” bell as if it is an unavoidable fact of childhood, parents will not know that there are alternatives to traditional and public schooling. Media resources must step up to the plate, stop serving the interests of public schools and stop accepting articles that seem oblivious to all of the issues raised in this three-part blog post.

To the credit of Parenting New Hampshire magazine, they did include a short article in this same August 2011 issue, “The Purpose of the Place: There’s a Difference Between Learning and Teaching” by Jeff Woodburn. However, this article was anti-climactic and it was unclear what type  of school they were discussing.

I challenge media resources such as Parenting New Hampshire and other mainstream parenting magazines and websites to align with children and families instead of with the school culture as if it was undisputed fact. Why not solicit articles that ask parents revolutionary questions such as, what if public or traditional private schooling was NOT an option? What would you and the children do?

Why not do a “Back-To-School” issue which focuses on alternatives to traditional schooling, featuring child centered schools, developmentally appropriate  Waldorf or Montessori schools, online virtual schools, arts-based charter schools, early college options or homeschooling? Why not do a September issue on democratic schools such as The Sudbury Valley Free School? Why not do a controversial issue featuring research on why homework is harmful to children, why denying children their basic survival needs is dangerous and why youth of all ages need parent-child connection, affection, play, physical activity and hands-on exploration as the foundation of their day? Better yet, why not do a “NOT-Back-To-School” September issue splashing the pages with the joys and the freedoms of relaxed homeschooling or radical unschooling? I’ll be the first family to volunteer our story!

That deflated “Back-To-School” depression, the attachment-disrupting “first day of school” and homework are NOT inevitable. There are millions of families all around the world for whom “summer vacation” lasts all year, where learning is authentic, playful and part of day-to-day living, not something that occurs in the confines of  a factory-like classroom. The mainstream media should do more than cater to advertisers and recycle stale yearly themes- The media has a responsibility to present information that is fresh, new, challenging and of value to society.

Laurie and her son Brycen have a close, connected and democratic relationship. Brycen’s needs, choices, requests, freedom and time are respected. (Photo by Joe Martin)

The August 2011 issue of Parenting New Hampshire stood out as a perfect example of mainstream media presenting traditional schooling as inevitable for children in September. This is Part II of my blog post discussing the way the media presents Back-To-School fervor and traditional schooling issues and the detriments to children of this view.

Advocating For Homework- An Exploitative Theft Of Children’s Free Time

Perhaps one of the most dreadful realities of “Back-To-School” is homework. Parenting New Hampshire again failed to recognize children’s needs and presented homework as an inevitable necessity of childhood. The title of their article on homework, “Get Ready for the Homework Battle: Tips for Parents on How to Win The War” by Karen Plumley, truly speaks for itself. This article, like many other mainstream media resources, ignores the research that indicates that homework has little to no educational benefits and actually may hurt children. Most mainstream media resources present homework as something that children must and should do rather than empowering parents to speak out AGAINST it. This article actually aligns parents with the schools and AGAINST their own children, encouraging parents to view homework as a war battle where they must prevail over their children’s needs and wishes.

Homework is a Big Brother-esque intrusion into a child’s home. After sitting still for six hours at school, children are now on house arrest for another  stretch of time. That parents allow the school to dictate their children’s lives from within the safety and privacy of their own homes strikes me as bizarre. After hours of school, homework steals what is left each day of children’s free time, play time, family time, peer time and time for physical activities, exploration, creating, resting and solitude. I have worked with children of all ages, from preschool to 12th grade, who were so distressed by this imposition of unpaid labor that they became physically ill and emotionally distressed to the point of screaming and sobbing and showing self abuse, violent explosions of rage, panic attacks as well as suicidal and homicidal ideation.

Parents should not need researchers to tell them that homework has no real educational benefits- Their children’s distress and loss of precious childhood time should be enough to convince parents that homework has no place in the home.

Pushing Teens Out of The Nest

Part of the myth of school being inevitable is that teens must become “independent” of their parents and leave the nest after the completion of traditional schooling. This is a Western, industrialized cultural practice, not a natural process for human beings. In indigenous cultures, especially peaceful tribal cultures, adolescent children remain interdependent with their parents and families well into adulthood, until they are married.

The article, “The Nest Is Now Empty” by Melissa Speeney, reinforced this Western cultural expectation that a child must become an adult and be free of his or her parents by age 18. Speeney writes, “Then she left me. While still retaining the title of “parent”, I now became deactivated. She needed me no longer. After 18 years of habitual participation in her life, the nest is now empty.”

Wow. My heart aches for that family. My teen son and I often critique mainstream parenting and schooling articles from his still-a-child perspective. When I showed that line to my son who will be 18 in four months, he immediately grabbed onto me, hugged me and said, “You’ll still love me, Mom, right?” I immediately assured my son as I have quite often in recent months, that I will always be here for him, that 18 is nothing but a legal milestone, that the nest will never be “empty” because he will always be welcome at home. We follow natural parenting principles, not mainstream expectations. Youth of legal age must be emotionally ready to move away from their parents, knowing that their parents will never become “deactivated”, but will be emotionally involved for life.

Please view Part III of this blog post to continue our discussion of the detriments to children of the mainstream media presenting traditional “Back-To-School” as inevitable for children…

Overriding Parental Instincts

The first article, “The First Day of School Made Easier… For Parents” by Michael Brindley encourages parents to override their natural protective instincts to keep their young children close to them. The article almost makes a parody out of parents who struggle to separate from their young children on their first day of public school. Quotes such as, “While parents may want to be there as long as possible on that first day of school, some believe they may be doing more harm than good by sticking around” intimidate parents into believing that their instinct to hold on to their children is harmful! An elementary school principal explains in the article that to prevent parents from lingering in the classroom, they have a “farewell” drop off in the gym where parents “wave goodbye and they make the break there” as teachers take the children away. The article states that the principal, Phil Schappler, “said its imperative for young students to be able to start the first day of school independently.” They quote him as saying, “If the parents were all in the classroom watching, its harder for the teacher to get started with the day and the routine of the classroom… At some point, you need to make that break.”

Does any parent ever ask themselves why “you need to make that break”? Do parents ask themselves, what is the life long cost of  children getting into “the routine of the classroom”?

Nature’s intent is for children to be in the primary care of their parents and other loved ones for their entire childhood. Nature’s intent is for children’s physical and emotional needs to be met as soon as possible.  The parenting instinct of passionately desiring to remain with one’s children is a primal instinct which ensures that children’s needs will be met and that the parent-child attachment relationship remains strong. When parents and children become distressed at separating on the first day of preschool, kindergarten or 1st grade, that is a natural, healthy alarm signal warning that something unnatural is about to happen and it needs to be avoided in order to prevent harm to the child. This is mammal parenting; it is the root of humanity. When parents succumb to the advice of “experts” that warn that trusting parental instinct is “harmful” to children, parents actually do real harm to their children. The fact that youth in Western societies increasingly break away from their parents as they move further up the grade levels is testimony to the damage that school does to the parent-child attachment relationship. It is Western cultural, not natural for humans, when children and parents pull away from one another.

Valuing Conditioning Rather Than True Learning

The same article mentioned above quotes another school principal, Pat Snow, as saying “We’re going from the parents raising that child to building a relationship with the school. For the children, that first day is their chance to explore and get into the classroom and begin learning.”

Really?

This quote again begs the question, why? Why should “we go from” parents raising their children to turning them over to the school? What is nature’s intent? From whom do all other mammals learn from if not their families? I find it chilling that principal Snow believes that being confined to a classroom for the first time is when learning “begins”. Does she believe that everything that occurred prior to the first day of school was NOT learning? Does anything outside of school count as “learning”? Are parents so incompetent that nothing they had done up until the first day of school counted as “learning”? Didn’t most of those parents graduate from public school, certified as “educated”?

Interestingly, nature’s intent is for children to learn through play, exploration, joy, freedom and hands-on experience relevant to their interests- These are literally the conditions a developing brain needs in order to learn. Traditional school is the antithesis to this! Snow’s mention of the word “explore” is not something that is allowed in schools outside of  a one-size-fits-all, homogenized curriculum. Do they allow children to roam the woods? Pull out all of the art supplies and create what they want with them? PLAY actively all day alone and with mixed age peers? Ride the physical therapy or gym equipment all around the building? If not, then there is no exploration, no true learning in school. It is simply operant conditioning disguised as “education”… with the goal to serve the aims of the global economy.

Please stay tuned for Part II of this three-part blog post to continue the discussion of the detriments to children of the mainstream media presenting traditional “Back-To-School” as inevitable for children…

Laurie's 17 year old unschooling son active at play

A post on Care2 states that the demise of school recess hurts student learning. It advocates that children should have “even 15 minutes” to “run around”. I believe that this article misses a major point- A few-minute gesture of respite or “recess” from hours of mindless busywork is not “recess” at all. The value of outdoor play is in realizing that children’s natural state of being is play and movement. Reversing the ratio of active playing vs. sitting down would be a wonderful start for schools: Freedom to play and move should consume the child’s day and “15 minutes” to sit in discussion (if children so choose) would be more in line with a child’s natural development.

Schools do not understand the fundamental basics of children’s needs or how children’s brains learn, nor do they seem to show compassion, empathy or caring about children’s needs or what is developmentally appropriate.  Children of all ages, teens included, learn BY playing- Play is the necessary means by which their brains process, understand, assimilate, store, recall and activate information. Anything they are forced to “learn” that is not through their own will is nothing more than conditioning. Conditioning is an aggressive way of forcing a child to consume, absorb or swallow information or mold to a pattern that is not relevant to their needs. The mass epidemic of labeling children with “learning disabilities” and chemically controlling them with psychiatric drugs is testimony to the failure of schools to understand the most elementary ABC’s of how developing brains learn.

Children’ are being harmed holistically, especially physically, emotionally, cognitively and socially in school due to being starved of play and physical activity in school and also due to the abusive practices in schools of delaying and denying toilet use, hydration, food and movement, especially in the middle and high school grades. Obviously, no youth can “learn” anything under those conditions of distress; their bodies literally go into fight-or-flight or shut down mode. Schools are dangerous places for children and are developmentally inappropriate at all grade levels. Lack of play, lack of physical activity, denial of bodily needs and the lack of compassion by teachers and school officials for these needs are the top reasons why my teen son unschools. Save your child’s childhood, protect your child’s body, mind and spirit and take your child back from this abusive institution- Unschool!

As a coach and consultant, I can help you get started and support you through your journey to rescue your child from public school. I can help you find alternatives such as unschooling or democratic schools, even if you are a single parent. Learn more about my coaching/consultation services here! You can also visit my YouTube channel, LaurieACouture, to view my six videos on the steps of unschooling.

Laurie and her 17 year old son

So many Attachment Parents start out so passionate about giving very young children the best start possible in life- Moms birth naturally, spare their sons the trauma of circumcision by keeping them intact, breastfeed for at least three years or longer, carry their babies at all times, cosleep for several years and they ideally are gentle and nurturing to their young ones as the children begin to assert their wants and express upset emotions.

Sadly, however, something happens between the ages of seven and 12 in far too many families who started out as “attachment”-minded families: Moms and dads stop parenting for attachment and connection and start letting the mainstream lifestyle creep in. This often translates into sending children to school to suffer with all of its toxic elements, passively allowing children to become saturated and enslaved by the media, consumerism, pop culture and peer culture… And most tragically, moms pull away emotionally and physically from their older children.

If children as young as ages seven to 12 are being slowly absorbed into the mainstream cultural ideals of consuming and “individuating”, where does that leave our teenaged children? Very lost and disconnected, for sure!

Even in the Attachment Parenting (AP) community, writings about adolescent children have a negative and anti-attachment twinge to them- Most writings about parenting teens advise that teens should be  “individuating” from their parents and parents should be “pulling back” and “letting go” of their adolescent children. Due to years of “letting go”, parents of teens seem to passively assume that the disconnected behavior of their teens is “natural” and they oblige- They pull away and let go of their child even more.

My beautiful 17 year old son, Brycen is a free spirited, self-directed child who revels in the freedom of unschooling. His expression of his individualism is unique, evolving and all his own creation. He is busy with endless creative pursuits, music, community activities and flexible work of his choosing. He can sometimes be gone for days with back-to-back plans with friends. He knows that if he wanted to travel, or manifest an opportunity in his life I would stand behind him in doing it. Brycen is truly a free child!

The most important essence of his life, however, is that he and I are deeply and closely connected. The parent-child attachment security and his needs are just as much my priority now as they were when he was little. Physically, emotionally, spiritually and creatively, I have not “backed off”, “stepped back” or “let go”. I have not relaxed my protection of him, diluted my delight in him or weakened my nurturance of him. Instead, as if he was little, I have remained a loving, nurturing, affectionate, compassionate, protecting, delighted, supportive and passionate Mom to my son through out his adolescence. In doing so, I have set him free to grow holistically.

What is your emotional reaction to this? Do you feel happiness, warmth and a sense of bliss? Or do you feel uncomfortable, anxious or defensive- A desire to  give me your contrary “opinion”?

Our society seems to feel very uncomfortable about parent-teen closeness, especially mom and son closeness. These are deep cultural wounds in the collective unconscious that continue to be part of our culture. Tragically, as a result of this harmful emotionally-charged bias, boys are often cast off physically and emotionally by their moms by their eighth or ninth year of life- a decade before they can handle such a disconnect! Teens who are disconnected from their parents are often stuck in a dynamic with their parents of push and pull, love and hate, compliance and rebellion, clinginess and aggression, being controlled and being pushed away.

Let’s return to nature for a moment. I stated in an earlier blog post, “Nature’s intent is the only parenting advice we truly need. Our parenting challenges, concerns and choices can become so simple if we consider, ‘What is nature’s intent for a child’s holistic development?’ Nature is our reference manual, our guide to mammalian and human needs.”

Our closest mammalian relative, a primate called the bonobo, is a great example of mother-adolescent relationships in the wild.  In bonobos, the mother is intensely affectionate to her young well into adolescence. The daughter stays with the mother for seven years, at which time she leaves her mother and joins a neighboring tribe of bonobos. The son, however, remains dependent upon his mother for ten years and as an adult will be joined by his mate to live with his mother for life.

What about humans? In the Yequana tribe of South America documented by Jean Liedloff in The Continuum Concept, adolescents and young adults remain interdependent with their parents until they marry. There is no teenage rebellion, no “individuating”, no mutual disrespect, no parental pushing away, “letting go”, “backing off” or “casting out of the nest”, even once the teen reaches adulthood. In fact, if an unmarried young adult’s parents pass away, another family in the tribe will “adopt” the young adult into their family until that adult marries. Parent-child affection, physical nurturance (especially during a time of injury or illness), support and protection continues in many peaceful, nonviolent tribal societies well into young adulthood, until the adult child marries.

But what about the American mainstream cultural phenomenon of “Helicopter Parenting” happening to Generation-Y and the “Millennials”? Isn’t attachment parenting adolescents akin to “helicopter parenting”? No doubt people’s fear of the unhealthy parent-child clinginess of “helicopter parenting” is what incites cultural backlash that is even more harmful. The imfamous “Tiger Mother” method, a new label on the old problem of child maltreatment, is one example (which ironically is opposite of how real tigers parent their young).

Both “helicopter parenting” and the “Tiger Mother” method are examples of parenting that is grossly contrary to nature’s intent for children. The children of families that interact in this manner are disconnected and insecurely attached. Such youth are all dependent upon their parents in an unhealthy manner, begging to get basic needs met that have never been met. These ways of raising children are stifling, suffocating, mentally crippling and, in the case of children treated harshly, traumatizing. Children parented in these ways will grow up incompletely, to be holistically wounded, unfulfilled, distressed, empty and stunted. In both of these extremes, children are not allowed to live and learn in freedom and in joy. Their holistic needs are not met and their passions are not guided and nurtured. In these cases, parents live their children’s lives for them, controlling them every step of the way, giving them only a mirage of a relationship and of a life that evaporates when touched. This is not nature’s intent for children. This is youth maltreatment.

Attachment parenting our teens means keeping the parent-child connection and attachment secure and strong all through out childhood from birth until adulthood. The behavior and emotional stability of our teens will reflect the quality of this attachment. Attachment parenting our teens means remaining physically and emotionally affectionate and nurturing, available, compassionate and sensitive. It means allowing them to unschool to keep them free of the toxic, stressful environments of school. It means allowing your teens to direct their own lives, learning, healthy interests and passions, while you support these endeavors as passionately as you did when they were much younger.

Attachment parenting means listening to your teens every day and getting excited about what they are excited about. It means talking openly and honestly with them about things they want to know about such as puberty,  masturbation, sex, sexual orientation issues, moral principles, social justice, world events, life and death, philosophy and spirituality. It means treating teens with respect, dignity, humanity and care, not speaking to them with sarcasm, irritation and disgust. It means understanding the incredible hormonal changes happening to your child that might mean they appear less responsible or helpful than when they were younger- Be sensitive to and celebratory with them of the amazing metamorphosis their bodies and brains are experiencing! It means protecting them online and in the community from sexually explicit media, predatorial adults (men and women), drug addictions, media addictions and sexually dangerous situations through dialogue, discussion and honesty about your feelings and principles.

Attachment parenting means allowing your teen children to unfold as they are, not what you wish for them to be. It means letting go of controlling them, but not letting go of them. It means guiding them in life and cultivating a loving, peaceful interdependent relationship with them, where they feel free to branch out, return, branch out again, return and fly when they are ready. It means holding them in an embrace of unconditional love and emotional support; an attachment bond that will last a lifetime!

This post appeared as an article on The Attached Family, the online journal of Attachment Parenting International

For ten years prior to Christian’s death, child protective authorities investigated and visited the family, most of the time concluding that they found “no evidence” of abuse and neglect. The Indiana child protective (DCS) spokesperson, Anne Houseworth claimed, “We followed all state laws, all policies and procedures.” She added, “If we don’t see evidence of abuse, and no one admits anything is going on, there is nothing for us to do.”

Children all over the country suffer the gross failure of the system to protect them, but it is only when tragedies occur, like the death of Christian, that the public becomes aware of the severity of the problem. In the interests of following protocol, even in cases when years and years of reports are made, child protective authorities refuse to remove children from severely abusive and physically neglectful environments. Terrified children rarely admit to abuse or neglect when questioned and parents are often notified ahead of time before social workers arrive.

Tell law makers to make it a felony if state child protective authorities fail to take action to protect children when more than two separate, credible reports have been made against a family or when there is strong suspicion by CPS that there is severe physical abuse, sexual abuse and/or severe physical neglect (not educational neglect) occurring in the home.
Protection can be a number of different services, such as daily in home visits from social workers to observe family dynamics over a period of time, mandatory parenting education with home observations, classes for the children teaching them about their right to be free from abuse and how to identify it, mandatory in home therapy from a team with the focus on attachment parenting education (not child behavior modification), placing the child with relatives while the parents receive treatment, placing the entire family in a “foster care”  situation with a supportive family modeling healthy child care, placing the entire family in a program with a small group of other families or, in the case of chronic abuse or chronic severe physical neglect, the parents refusing to cooperate with services or in a case of  life threatening torture, removal of the child from the parents.

Precious children like Christian Choate and Caylee Anthony, a four year old girl murdered in 2008 by her mother who was this month acquitted of all murder charges, deserve protection and justice. Please sign my petition: http://www.change.org/petitions/create-christians-law

Why “must” children do anything for the global market? I don’t understand this view of seeing children as cogs in the system or pawns for the government­. Children have a birthright to live and learn in freedom and in joy, according to their own passions and interests. They do not HAVE to “prepare” for anything, let alone to assist the government in staying a world power. The world can fit everyone’s needs. The school has never fit children’s needs, not even their most basic physical needs. It certainly does not fit children’s emotional, creative and intellectu­al needs and in fact mangles children.

The young human being is not born to be some cog in a system or some test score to increase globalizat­ion. The young human is born to play, explore, learn, create, invent, dream and receive love and connection from parents and support and inspiratio­n from friends and the community. Anything less is oppressive­.

I read this article in The Huffington Post about “education reform”: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/will-richardson/have-schools-reached-limits_b_853848.html. I don’t believe that a system designed to oppress children (and the population as a whole) can reform itself. Politicians have used the false promise of “reform” for decades now to gain votes. Politicians are aware that most people forget that “reforms” in the past have only worsened the school environment for children and caused it to be more oppressive.

Public schools are prisons and unschooling is the fastest, healthiest, most natural way out. My 17 year old son, an unschooler, has explored, invented, created and learned more in his young years than many Americans do in a life time. The most important thing is that he is HAPPY. Public school strips the joy out of childhood.

I have been researchin­g the alternativ­e school movements of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s for several years and the rhetoric in the Huffington Post article is nothing new- The “radical” change that they speak of was already attempted with passion in the late 60′s and early 70′s. The most successful of these attempts at radical change were grassroots efforts such as John Holt’s unschooling movement and the democratic free schools movement. Democratic free schools such the The Sudbury Valley School and The Albany Free School in the USA, The Windsor House in Canada and others around the world like it are still in existence. (The original democratic school was The Summerhill School in England founded in the early 1900’s by A. S. Neill). The book, “Everywher­e All the Time: The New Deschoolin­g Reader” edited by Matt Hern, highlights many grassroots deschoolin­g approaches still in existence, including unschooling­.

Deschooling efforts like successful democratic free schools must come from families. Any effort undertaken by the sick, oppressive­, dehumanizi­ng public education system to “reform” itself will be tainted with the sickness of its oppression of youth and its agenda of contracts, globalizat­ion and Capitalism­. At best it can only offer “alternatives” such as online classes- a situation that is still teacher-directed, teacher controlled. Compulsory education was instituted in 1852 for the purpose of oppressing children, stifling free thinking and creating a willing, unquestioning factory and military workforce.  Read John Taylor Gatto’s “Dumbing Us Down” for an in-depth, rouge history of forced public education. The system can’t be reformed, it must be uprooted and abandoned. Deschooling efforts must be community-based, using the vast amount of resources already in communities, including libraries, museums and all of the resources, space and materials in the public schools that sit dormant unless prescribed. Whether through unschooling or democratic schooling, the creation of child-led learning communities must be lead by children, their needs and their passions and by parents supportive of their children’s joy and passions.

Laurie and her son Brycen, 2006

Nature’s intent is the only parenting advice and “educational curriculum” we truly need. Our parenting challenges, concerns and choices can become so simple if we consider, “What is nature’s intent for a child’s holistic development?”

Nature is our reference manual, our guide to mammalian and human needs. I hear so often parents say curiously common phrases along the lines of, “There is no one right way to parent”, or “School works for my child- My child could never learn on her/his own.” Often those types of statements translate to, “Something in my past is being triggered and I am feeling defensive, so I am unable to consider alternatives.”

Yes, there are MANY human-invented ways to parent and educate, most of them punitive, coercive, harmful and downright traumatizing; echos of an adult’s own childhood pain. However, nature’s intent for children is authentic, congruent and always “right” because the child’s holistic needs, their unique passions, their innate wisdom of how to grow and the expression of their personhood is the priority of nature. Human-invented ways to parent and “educate” often have the goal of adult convenience, placating adult fears, catering to adult biases and beliefs and shaping the child to be or become something other than what or who that miraculous child is. Each child is a pure one-of-a-kind expression of universal energy- a miracle that if loved, nurtured and allowed to grow and develop freely and in joy,  innately unfolds as a beautiful three-dimensional person who meets all of his or her developmental potentials.

In everything that we do concerning our children, we must ask ourselves whose needs are being met. Are we parenting in a certain way to ease our own anxieties? To fulfill our own philosophy or hypothesis- or that of someone else? Are we parenting out of upset emotions, revenge or anger? Are we trying to shape the child’s future by causing suffering now? It can hurt so much as parents to let go, to slice away the baggage and false ideals of our pasts and of the mainstream culture in order to see our children’s true needs and trust our children enough to meet their needs. It is so freeing, so emancipating when we do! When we are able to see purely their needs, then we are tapped into our instinct- nature’s intent for how to parent and “educate” our children!

Nature’s intent for parenting and for children’s learning is a cycle that gently ebbs and flows, like the tides of the ocean: When a child has a need, the child will express that need to the parent in some overt or covert manner. It is up to the parents to decipher that need and keep their own judgments and filters out of the discovery process. If the parent immediately responds lovingly and supportively to a physical, emotional, creative or spiritual need, helps the child meet the need or helps the child make happen what the child is wanting to manifest, the child will feel homeostasis. Homeostasis is a state of holistic joy, calm, trust, safety and bonding. This is how secure attachment is formed and maintained. When children are distressed by our reactions to them, that is not homeostasis, “teaching”, a “lesson”, patience-learning or character-building, it is harm. Although parents need not be perfect, the parent-child attachment cycle must be honored from birth until the completion of adolescence for the child to grow up whole…

Attachment parenting and child-directed learning are not “parenting styles” or “educational philosophies”. Attachment Parenting and child-directed learning (unschooling, life learning, deschooling, relaxed homeschooling, democratic learning, etc.) are simply the words we use to describe the ancient Earth-wisdom that loving, connected, aware parents are rediscovering. (The words we use don’t matter as long as the actions we take are in harmony with nature’s intent!) “Parenting styles” and “educational philosophies” are all of the human-invented ways that have diverged from nature’s intent. If most of the time you are  passionately loving, physically and emotionally nurturing, generally sensitive and compassionate to your child’s needs, a guide and model rather than dictator and if you are a partner to your child’s goals and interests, you are in harmony with nature’s intent. If most of the time your children are connected to you, love to be with you (whether age two, nine, 12 or 17), take joy in play, have passion for something, are empathic, compassionate and are overall thriving holistically, your parent-child relationship is in harmony with nature’s intent.

If most of the times, these are not the ways of being for you and your child, then nature is signaling that something is out of sync its intent. Let’s celebrate that if our children are disconnected and are struggling holistically, re-syncing our parenting and their learning journey to nature is a simple and sometimes quick healing path. Let us celebrate the fact that whenever we resort back to our old fears, anxieties, defenses and beliefs, we can immediately get right back on the track of the parent-child attachment cycle! It is a gentle and quick process and our children will breathe a sigh of relief when we do!

Laurie's son Brycen with his Feendz creations, 2006

One of the coolest things about unschooling/homeschooling families is their creative, brilliant inventiveness! I have met so many homeschoolers- children of all ages- who have their own businesses selling beautiful handmade crafts, comic books, graphic novels, CDs, stuffed animals, jewelry, art work, films, books and helpful services. Children who are allowed to live and learn freely have the time, support and creative passion to devote to starting businesses or making and selling their unique art and craft works.  My 17 year old son, Brycen R. R. Couture, has been selling his artistic products since he started his stuffed toys business, “Feendz”, at age 12. As a metal musician, Brycen released his solo EP on 4/8/11 and he is now making and selling custom chain maille bracelets.

On April 12, 2011, at the Life Rocks! Radical Unschool Conference in North Conway, NH unschooling families set up a market place of stores selling artistic products or unique services. It was a wonderful opportunity for unschooling families to support one another.  I feel it is important for unschooling/homeschool families to support others in the unschooling/homeschooling communities in this manner, as it honors children and homeschooling families and such recognition allows children to see the fruits of their…er… Fun!

My son loves to call our two-person family unit, “The Epic-Coutures”, so I offer you now in this post, The EpiCoutures Family Store!

The EpiCoutures Family Store

Products by Brycen R. R. Couture, age 17

Serenade To Darkness: Divion’s Cut Glam/Goth Metal EP

$8. each

My son’s CD is a statement for children’s rights. His powerful, haunting lyrics are the voice for abused and oppressed children. Features five songs, two death metal, two rock and one acoustic song.

To purchase,  please email us or send payment via PayPal using this account: LAC@laurieacouture.com

Medieval Chain Maille Bracelets in Custom Styles

$15. to $90. depending on style and size

Brycen custom cuts and fashions each and every link used in his Medieval-inspired chain maille bracelets. Shown are some of the styles he offers, which he can custom fit to order.  (Pouches, necklaces and armor available for higher cost). To purchase,  please email us style and size preferences: LAC@laurieacouture.com

Feendz Stuffed Toys

$6. each

Brycen starting making Feendz and selling them in stores at age 12. Feendz are made of felt and can be color customized. Other custom options are available. To purchase, email us at: LAC@laurieacouture.com  (Recommended for ages 4 to 104)

Products by Laurie A. Couture, Unschooling Mom

Instead of Medicating and Punishing book

$25.  each (while in stock)

A must-read for all Attachment Parenting and unschooling, homeschooling and alternative education-minded families! This books assists parents in connecting to their children of any age, from pre-birth to late adolescence, and helps parents heal emotional, behavioral or learning challenges. For more info visit:

http://www.laurieacouture.com/the-book/

To purchase directly from us (while in stock), please email us at: LAC@laurieacouture.com

The Hypocrisy Chronicles Comics by Laurie A. Couture

$10. per booklet of comics

This hilarious comic series by Laurie A. Couture exposes the hypocrisy of public schooling, our culture’s disrespectful, subordinating parenting philosophies as well as our culture’s habit of closing its eyes to the abuse of children. A funny, moxie-ish and unforgiving laugh at our culture’s hypocrisy! (Comics come as a hand-stapled booklet). To purchase, please email me or send payment via PayPal at LAC@laurieacouture.com

I want to make two points about the media drawing attention to “homeschooling” in rare cases in which abused children were said to be “homeschooled”:

One, the media leads people to believe that school would have protected the child from abuse.  The harsh reality is that public and private schools have long, enduring histories of rampant and chronic abuse, trauma and exploitation of children physically, emotionally and sexually. Schools are also neglectful to children’s basic physical and emotional needs. In 19 states in the USA (mostly in the South), it is actually legal for school staff to beat children with paddles, sometimes to the point where a child is severely injured or falls unconscious! Teachers all over the country deny children the right to use the toilet to the point where some children have been forced to eliminate in their pants or urinate in trash cans or bottles to meet their needs.  Children are also denied the right to eat, get drinks and move around when needed. There are also thousands of cases of female and male public and private school teachers and staff over the past century who have sexually violated children of all ages. These tragic realities do not even include the relentless peer harassment, bullying and assaults with occur daily in schools around the country, in some cases tragically resulting in suicides and homicides.

School is not a safe place for far too many children. Let’s be straight up about this myth about school being safe!

Although sometimes a more caring school environment may provide an escape, a child abused at home who is in school suffers dual stressful environments, including the stress of homework, grades and performance. If school seems like an improvement over home, then something is certainly wrong and must be dealt with immediately for the child’s safety; school should not be seen as a solution! Also, if  an abused child attends school, it isn’t a guarantee that any teacher would suspect abuse. So many of the abused youth I’ve worked with over the years, especially older boys, showed multiple and chronic signs to teachers of abuse but the teachers never reported their suspicions.

My second point is that what causes child abuse and allows it to thrive is a cycle of trauma and violence that is passed on from generation to generation by our cultural beliefs and practices, namely, the belief that children are subodinate beings to adults and are in need of “discipline” and “education”. If our cultural paradigm shifted to, “Children from conception to late adolescence need to be loved, nurtured, honored, respected, protected from trauma and allowed to live and learn in freedom, joyfully, with their needs and passions as the priority”, child abuse and exploitation of all types would cease in one or two generations.

Parents who follow some type of parenting philosophy, religion, tradition or  belief system that parents must control, dominate, discipline, punish, teach, educate, shape, inculcate, subordinate or train children are the parents that are most likely to be abusive to children, whether they “homeschool” or allow their children to spend six hours a day in a traditional school. It is these dehumanizing belief systems resulting from generations of childhood trauma and cultural paradigms that are at the root of abuse.

Child-directed learning at home is nature’s intent for children’s learning- It is innocent. The vast majority of parents who allow their children to learn at home are passionate about their children, love them deeply and put them, their needs and their interests first. Child abuse is a tragedy that will continue as long as this culture supports power-over, punitive, subordinating ways of treating children. Unschooling and relaxed homeschooling are part of the solution!

My son covers all of the State required “subjects” on his own, but not in watered-down, irrelevant, lifeless public school form, but in a creative, hands-on, playful, deep, kaleidoscopic manner- often at the college or Graduate school level. This morning, after finishing his crafting of two chain mail bracelets, my son and I spent almost two hours in Socratic style defining and dissecting the words “existentialism” and “gestalt”. In the later morning on our hike, we observed that when trees begin their life inside of a dead tree’s stump and the stump later rots, their root system grows above ground, at a right angle, like a false trunk shaped like a chair. Tonight, my son researched castle floor plan blueprints and taught me that moats were built not to prevent people from getting across to the castle, but to prevent enemies from burrowing an underground entrance! (Who knew?!)

The only time I see my son distracted, unfocused and uninterested is when he is doing something artificial to meet State requirements in a certain “subject”. Otherwise he shows total focus, concentration, reverence and devotion to learning the intricate, complicated, mind-splitting details of things his spirit, mind and body call him to do, explore, play, make, think, invent and master. Learning happens all the time whether he is alone, spending hours with friends or family; whether he is singing, playing music, reading, playing D&D, inventing, crafting, writing, playing, running and climbing outside or building forts in the woods. What will help school paradigm-suffocated law makers and “educators” see and understand all of this? Much like the kids they try to force-feed “lessons”, if law makers and “educators” are not internally motivated to learn another way, they won’t. However, if they really do care about the “education” of youth, maybe the words of a child would “teach” these people that children must be the authors of their own learning.

Following is an editorial my son wrote. It was printed in the April 26, 2011 Foster’s Daily Democrat as a Letter to the Editor, almost exactly the way Brycen wrote it. Here is his original version:
.

Homeschoolers Should Live and Learn Freely
by Brycen R. R. Couture, age 17

I am a human being and I have feelings and thoughts. I am not some underling of society. As an unschooler, I feel that I should not have to perform for the State with their homeschool requirements; for what they consider education. How certain subjects are expected to be learned is less than relevant to my life and yet I find that I waste precious time of my life on these requirements when I could be enacting my dreams and passions.

I find it ironic that in the very state where its slogan is “Live free or die”, our youngest citizens are confined to a dark mockery of education. I’m referring to public school or any “educational requirements” put onto children who are unschooling or homeschooling. This most certainly is not following our state slogan, “Live free or die”. Shouldn’t it trouble you that this is the case? I can hear the responses now: “Children should be in school” or “These homeschoolers need regulations.” I disagree very strongly. Children should be free in all aspects, the way nature intended, whereas public schools and homeschool requirements are an imprisoning box of mediocrity.

As an unschooling family, my Mom and I are free-spirited, free-thinking people and the State homeschooling requirements are only a source of anxiety and annoyance. Unschooling is living and learning the way children have always learned and lived in nature-based societies. It’s being in harmony with our family and community. Unfortunately, due to residing within our out-of-touch culture, we are still forced to pamper and satisfy the requirements of the system. That is not living freely.

I don’t think I should have to meet prescribed requirements because I am busy living my life to the fullest right now. I am so far ahead of the State requirements that I feel held down and held back by being forced to demonstrate subjects in a way that is completely irrelevant to my life. I’m not internally motivated to meet a standard that’s given to the mass population but does not meet my needs as an individual. What right do people who haven’t met me have to impose these standards on me?

I’m sitting here crafting, building and creating the pieces of my life that are relevant to me. As a musician and song writer, my music takes up an enormous portion of my time because I want it to– because its my passion. When I have to stop living in order to please the State, I don’t feel good about it. It doesn’t feel right. Why should I have to stop living because you tell me I have to prepare for a future that I am living now?

I’ve released my first CD at 17 years old, now. I perform my music now. I’ve written a book which is in the editing stage now. I’ve been interviewed for a movie now. I do children’s rights work now. I’ve booked myself on the radio, now. I’m part of NH Media Makers now. I started a club and ran my own business from ages 12-15. I’ve been speaking to the public full of professionals since I was 12. I can’t count how many times I’ve been in the newspaper for my community activism, now. I like to bike, socialize with friends, make chain mail, calculate dice probabilities, invent games, build forts, cook, play Dungeons and Dragons and I have a close relationship with my Mom, all now. I am writing this to New Hampshire now; I’m not waiting around for the future!

Contrary to the sentimental, somewhat maudlin cultural imagery of school teachers pouring out selfless nurturance, tending to the needs of youth or lighting the passionate fires of inspiration in grinning, alert children, the youth I have worked with and met over the years have painted me a very different picture. And it ain’t no Mary Cassatt. For six plus hours every day traditional teachers indoctrinate, control, coerce, punish and regiment. They deny children their basic physical and emotional needs, hold children hostage against their will, stifle creativity and freedom of movement and force-feed them irrelevant, dull, boring theories and biased “facts” prefabbed by the government. They ooze ubiquitously into children’s home and free time with homework expectations that strangle play, exploration and family time. When children cannot tolerate the terrible, developmentally inappropriate environment of schooling, teachers are often the arm of the school system that coerces parents into believing their children are “disabled” and are thus in need of chemical restraint (aka: “medication”).

To give the obligatory “so-as-not-to-offend” disclaimer, yes, there are gem teachers; those rare one or two per school who help youth survive the institution. I had a few myself and they have the honor of still being discussed with fondness by me to this day. They were gems because they were not like school teachers, they were rebels. It was precisely because they were unschoolish that they were gems. They encouraged laughter, playfulness, fun, unconventional thinking and a little subversion of the system. And they always allowed youth to use the toilet and the water fountain. Aside from these rare gems, however, far too many traditional school teachers perpetrate boredom, regimentation, rigid arbitrary rules, subordination and bodily pain (denial of toilet breaks, food, hydration and movement… and in 20 states, infliction of corporal punishment) on children day in and day out.

Attachment Parents are the learning facilitators and mentors to emulate. They “get” Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Human Needs” instinctively. Maslow illustrated with a pyramid the priority of people’s holistic needs. He proclaimed what nature already knew, that human’s basic physical, emotional and safety needs must be met before any higher level functions, such as meaningful learning, can evolve and metabolize. Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Human Needs” is a basic concept every public school teacher was required to learn in college child development 101, but apparently forgot once they were faced with a roomful of squirmy or apathetic youth to control and “teach”.

Attachment-focused parents are, by nature’s bidding, the people on the planet best equipped for the job of guiding, protecting, inspiring and guiding children for the first 18  years of their lives. The primary priority of attachment-focused parents is their children’s happiness. This is contrary to the primary focus of school teachers, which is to control a large group of youth and force them all to conform to the school’s rules, grades, whims, curriculum and factory value system. Attachment-focused parents who unschool focus on love, connection and their children’s physical, emotional, social and creative needs. They prioritize play and fun and allow their children’s interests to guide the learning and living process. Learning is not separated from living in attachment-focused unschooling families because they understand that learning is about play and passion, not pain and tedium. However, teachers believe children’s basic needs are “privileges” that can be withheld, manipulated, regimented and denied. They view play as a waste of “educational” time and seem indifferent about tethering youth to “homework”  after an exhausting six hour school day. What loving attachment parent would deny children use of the toilet, food and water? What loving attachment parent would want their children to be miserable, exhausted, bored and held hostage for the best hours of the day?

Nature’s intent is for children’s true teachers to be their families, friends and communities, the way unschooling, attachment-focused families live daily. The parent-child attachment and bond should be celebrated and held sacred, as it was for millennia, in the way our culture now sanctifies schooling and school teachers. It is only when children are free, when they share a deep connection with their families, when their holistic needs are met, when they follow their own innate passions and interests that there is true joy, inspiration, learning and innovation. Children learn, develop and grow best when they are embraced by the loving nurturing of their families, the playful fun of friends and the enriching opportunities of their communities. The future of the world is deeply shaped in a compassionate, peaceful and profoundly creative manner at the hands of youth raised in this freeing, joyful embrace.

So you want to unschool your child or teen? Yes, you CAN do it!

I have uploaded six videos to my YouTube Channel, explaining the five steps to the unschooling process.

The Five Steps to Unschooling:

1. As parents, deschool your beliefs about education

2. Let your children play and follow their interests

3. Hook into resources in your community, provide materials related to your child’s interests and get involved in your local and online unschooling communities

4. Document your unschooling journey with a portfolio and daily log book

5. Trust nature’s learning process for your child!

Our Children Innately Know Best How to Learn on Their Own

Our children innately know their unique purpose. They know intuitively what they must learn, pursue, research, explore, create, compose and invent in order to unfold their inner joy, brilliance and genius. As parents, we must support this delicate process by allowing children to play and learn in their own way. Forcing academics hinders learning, harms natural child development and derails the natural process of self-awareness and self actualization. If we change our belief system about education and learning, we can let go and allow this wonderful journey of freedom and joy with our children to begin!

We trust that nature knows the process for orchestrating the most complex laws of the Universe, such as life, time, space, planetary orbit and galaxy formation. Just as we trust that the human body knows how to perform all of its functions in perfect symphony and grow, repair cells and develop from infancy into adulthood, we can trust that the human body also knows perfectly how to learn everything it needs to learn… As parents, our job is to love, cherish and support our children, guide, mentor and model for them, play with them, hook them into their community and provide them with the materials and means to do what they love (or to spark new interests). Involving ourselves and our children in our local and online unschooling communities will expand our social networks and provide support for the unschooling and Attachment Parenting way of life.

I posted the first video below. I hope you enjoy the six videos; please support the videos by sharing them, subscribing to my YouTube channel and “Liking” and “Favoriting” the videos. If you need any help getting started with unschooling, need assistance with the portfolio, are a single parent who wishes to unschool, are unschooling an adolescent, are considering unschooling your child who has been in school or traditionally homeschooled, or if have questions along the way of your unschooling journey, please feel free to contact me- I offer supportive unschooling consultation and Attachment Parenting coaching and would love to help you make unschooling happen for your children!

Laurie A. Couture is the author of Instead of Medicating and Punishing: Healing the Causes of Our Children’s Acting-Out Behavior by Parenting and Educating the Way Nature Intended. Her book was chosen as a finalist in the ForeWord Magazine Book-of-the-Year Awards in 2009. She appears as an expert in the documentary film, The War On Kids (2009) and is the host of The Free and Joyful Childhood Radio Show. Laurie was a recipient of the 2010 Manchester Union Leader’s Forty Under 40 honors.

1. The title of your book is pretty comprehensive and self-explanatory. Beyond what’s spelled out there in the title, how would you pitch this book to prospective readers? I pitch my book from many different angles—It is far more than just being the obvious parenting book—It is a book that challenges us all to look beyond what our culture has drilled into us as the only way to live and to instead realize that there is a much freer, more creative, more intelligent, more compassionate, and more fun way to live than the typical, “Be born, go to school, go to college, get a job, try to steal a few moments of recreation, go to bed, get up, do it again and die” scenario. My book calls for a radical return to parents focusing on their connection to their children and teens and trusting children’s natural intuition and drive to play, explore and learn in freedom, without forced “teaching.” Imagine what that would mean for adulthood!
2. At various meet-ups we’ve both attended, I’ve heard you use the term radical unschooling, but I’ve never taken the opportunity to ask you to define it. So, here I go: what’s radical unschooling? Radical unschooling is a return to how I believe nature intended humans and other mammals to live and learn: By having fun, by playing, exploring, examining, questioning, creating, making, musing, dreaming and inventing! It’s about allowing children the freedom and right to do this, with family, friends and the community as their mentors. Most children grow up being force-fed “education” and being held hostage for much of their childhood in an institutionalized setting where play and their talents and passions are seen as mere wastes of time or “hobbies” that children must wait to engage in until the “academics” are done. Children learn that their own interests are less important than the agenda of the school. With unschooling, the curriculum is directed by the child. I am always so inspired by the creativity of those of us who come together at NH Media Makers. Most of us probably found school to be tediously dull and an obstacle to our creativity. Imagine if children could do daily what we artists do now as adults!
3. Your son, Brycen, seems like a pretty remarkable kid. He’s a musician, writer, and one of the most pleasant seventeen year olds I’ve ever been around. What have been your biggest parenting challenges, and how much do you think the way children turn out has to do with parents versus the children themselves? Thank you, Chris, I think Brycen is a remarkable kid as well! My biggest parenting challenge has been watching my son endure the grief and pain of overcoming his challenging past from the years prior to me adopting him when he had just turned 11. I have realized that despite the abundance of love and support I give to him, I can’t shelter him from the grief process of all of the challenges that came before me. I can support him, his healing process, and his endeavors, but I can’t do it for him. On a lighter note, my other biggest parenting challenges have been in detoxing myself from my own upbringing and from the parenting and educational conventions of our culture. I have realized that the more I let go of “supposed to’s” and trust my son and allow our connection, his needs, his creativity, and his interests to lead the way, everything falls into place. If he wants to spend a month playing D&D with his friends and focusing primarily on his music, where is the law of nature that says that it shouldn’t be done? Really, he is learning far more by doing this and he is happy. That is most important to me—his happiness! I believe that how children turn out has everything to do with the quality of the parent-child connection and relationship. In our culture, what most people consider “connected” is actually dehydration. In peaceful nonviolent tribal cultures, a child or teen who is well connected to their parents is a happy, interdependent, cooperative and contributing member of the community. Teenage rebellion is a myth of our culture. Rebellious teens have dehydrated connections with their families, friends, and communities. My son, despite his early challenges and losses, is doing as well as he is because of the quality of our connection, his connection to his friends and community, and his connection to doing what he loves to do. Time with his friends and family and his creative ventures take priority over “academics.”
4. As you mentioned above, you are a regular at the monthly New Hampshire Media Makers meet-up. What do you get out of attending? What kinds of connections have you made there? I really enjoy the meetings and I am pumped by hearing about the creative projects people are doing involving multiple genres of the arts. It is such a cool, cutting edge group of artists of all types, and the youthful, creative energy really inspires me. I have become more involved in the local community arts scene because of people at NH Media Makers. I have met people who have been able to help me with projects relating to my business as an author, writer, and speaker, including making my professional Website a reality. Chris, you were a huge help to me at Podcamp 2010 in helping me venture out into podcasting. I also hope to continue to connect with people who will be able to work with me on some of my other creative ideas not related to my book, such as my interest in doing short, random, eccentric film clips in public or horror skits. Although I present more professionally when marketing my book and consulting services, I am eccentric as an artist and would like to find a niche online and in public with that side of me as well.
5. We had the pleasure of hanging out during the Generation Goat FunSpot meet-up back in January and you were quite the master at winning tickets from the games there. Any secrets you wish to divulge? And how important do you think it is that grown-ups like us connect with their inner child at places like arcades from time-to-time? Funspot is a mecca of 80s video game perfection and a great place for young adults to reconnect with a sense of being carefree and having pure fun. I think it was awesome that you set up the event because I do feel it is very important that creative adults get together and just goof around, get their “geek” on, play, laugh, and have fun in ways that do not involve a bar or alcohol. I had so much fun that day and I felt like a teenager again! Yes, I’m an 80s video game fanatic and I did score some mad tickets that day. My secret is that I’ve figured out the exact way to flick the lever on the Chicago Coins mechanical baseball game to score several strings of Homeruns and Cancel Outs, something I perfected when I was nine back when Dover had a Funspot. If you can hit a Homerun on both sides of the game, the next time you score a “Cancel Out”, your score will increase by ten. It also helps that the game glitches a lot and gives out free points and sometimes doesn’t count the Outs!

Laurie's son, Brycen in 2005

Have you ever pondered the redundancy of certain quotes commonly used by the education institution? For example, “Try to learn something new every day”. Have you ever tried NOT to learn something new every day? Is it even possible to NOT learn something daily? How about, “Children need to arrive at school ready to learn”. In my opinion, it is precisely when children arrive at school that beneficial, relevant learning stops!

Another common education quote that makes me shake my head is, “Children need to learn how to learn”! Are you aware of any child that actually doesn’t know how to learn? I read a magazine article in high school (on my own time, of course) about a child born with only a brain stem and flipper-like protrusions for arms and legs. He had no cerebrum, which is the vital organ of basic and advanced physical, emotional and cognitive functioning. His adoptive parents were told he would never do any more than lie motionless in a crib, nonvocal, in a vegetative state. This family had also adopted other children labeled as severely disabled. One day, one of this child’s  siblings who was also challenged with partially missing limbs removed him from his crib and laid him on the floor. Imagine their parents surprise when they came into the room after hearing banging noises, only to find their supposedly vegetative son vocalizing in delight, moving on the floor and pushing open a door with his sibling! This remarkable child learned by observing his siblings how to be mobile even though he was equipped with only a brain stem! If we have any brain hardware at all, it is impossible NOT to learn!

Humanity unschooled children alongside our other mammal cousins for millennia, but we lost our way as industrialization set in. When it became culturally imperative for people, especially children, to be controlled by various governments and work, class, race, military and consumerist agendas, forced schooling was a perfect way to slowly melt down the mind and spirits of children, dulling, diluting, taming, subduing and anesthetizing human creativity, thought, invention, inquiry, freedom, joy, passion and wildness. By regimenting and breaking the body and indoctrinating and coercing the mind, we have actually created a society of people who behave as if they cannot learn and are thus “learning disabled”.

As the radical unschooling movement takes hold, more and more questioning families are discovering that children and adolescents learn best by playing and by following their innate interests and passions. Play is nature’s way of educating young brains; school proponents who believe they have to “teach children how to learn” are ignorant of basic child brain development and learning theory. Society is slowly learning from research, observation, empathy and by tuning back into nature that children learn best by NOT being taught, but by being allowed the freedom to feel joy and inspiration. Children learn by being exposed to opportunities, resources, mentors and guides that inspire them to invent, question, inquire, experiment, read, create, muse, explore and wander. It is amazing to watch our brainiac culture having to come full circle to learn these obvious basics!

To those enlightened Attachment Parents who are watching, it must be awe-inspiring how the more technical, “advanced” cortex-oriented and “intelligent” that humans became, the more we lost our humanity, our lifeline to the Earth and our basic innate intuition. Now, humanity is realizing that to be intelligent, to be advanced, to be whole, we must recognize our oneness with nature and our desperate need to be in harmony with it. Unschooling is the natural next step in Attachment Parenting!

In our industrialized, disconnected culture, we are born into something very different. We are born into a world-view in which nature’s agreement has expired, is disrespected and long forgotten by the majority of the culture. We are born into the firmly established expectations of wounded parents and families who survived their own malnourished childhoods, and of a society that has one motivation in mind: Money. Despite all of the carefree childhood myths, before we even scream our first screams into the world of being born, our entire childhood has been decided for us- It is a preparation for “success”: Productivity, the workforce, a money-making machine.

Some babies and children are born into terribly abusive and neglectful families and suffer horrific traumas. We know their path will be an anguished one as they grow to try to find healing and wholeness someday. However, the average, “normal” life for the majority of children in our society is the subject of this post.

We are born, often into a frightening hospital setting, removed from our mother, who is the one person nature critically needs us to be with the most. Every nerve ending screams to be with her, and the first taste of pain and loss is felt when we are removed from mother and put in a bassinet or incubator. If a baby is a boy, the most sensitive, intimate part of his body is subjected to excruciating physical, emotional and sexual agony as the foreskin is amputated, further delivering the bond to the mother another wound. Before we are even brought home, our lives are already about pain and having to suffer the emptiness of unmet needs.

Once home, we will be put in an isolating crib, causing us to scream all the more for our mothers. We are unnaturally bottle fed liquid made in some factory, plastic in our mouths, transported in strollers and carriers and isolated in playpens and swings. We are wired to be with our mothers, we are wired to need her touch, her skin against ours, her breast milk and her emotional attunement in order for our brain and psyche to be activated, but we receive so little of her that it just can’t satiate the void. When we, two, ten 13 or 20 years later, begin to act out our pain and emptiness in ways that are self destructive or destructive to others, no one will make the connection.

We are rushed to develop, and shamed and coerced when we are not up to some pre-determined speed. We are taken away from our parents and families as early as possible. We are put in day care, then preschool. When we dissent, act our age or act out in anger in our unhappiness, we are shamed, punished or even hit. Despite this, we are forgiving. We long to be with our parents and siblings, but we are learning fast that life is not about what we want and need, it is some lightning-paced, chaotic cycle that is too self-important for our “petty” needs to ever matter.

When we are five or six, we are jailed for the next 13 years in public school, an institution that disregards everything in us that is human, child, needy, hungry, curious, excited, mobile, creative, brilliant and passionate.

Our basic physical needs will be progressively delayed, regimented and denied as we get older,  causing health problems in later childhood or in adulthood that no one will ever relate to the dehydration, urine retention, fecal impaction, low blood sugar, poor oxygen, lack of exercise and physical stagnation of 13 years of day-to-day school life. Our basic emotional needs will be totally disregarded, causing psychological and behavioral problems in childhood or later in adulthood that no one will ever relate to the punitive, touch-starved, joyless, monotonous, boring, judgmental, anxiety-provoking, emotionally abusive and neglectful treatment of us by teachers, peers or the institutional environment itself. Our basic developmental, creative and intellectual needs will be denied us, later causing us to be diagnosed with learning disabilities, behavioral problems and mental illnesses. When our bodies and minds can no longer contain themselves under such unbearable conditions, we may be drugged in efforts to subdue and control us. No one will choose to see that it isn’t possible to learn, develop or feel good when we are locked up for 13 years in a prison that numbs our minds, renders us docile, confused, apathetic and unmotivated. No one will realize that nature didn’t intend for children to grow in environments devoid of free time, joy or childishness.

If we can find some time outside of public school to play, dream, explore, invent, run around and revel in childhood, time will be stolen from us with homework, organized sports, TV, video games and media, all designed to keep us “busy” or craving and consuming more material objects.

We grow up on an unnatural diet of refined sugar, wheat flour and dairy.  We grow addicted. Slowly, overtime, we develop irritability, sluggishness, weigh gain and our bodies’ defenses break down. Inflammation will set in motion physical and mental health problems that we may not see for several decades.

Time with our friends is regimented, watched and limited. And as time goes on, our peer relationships can turn  superficial and even toxic, based on fads, clothing, gadgets, gossip, drama or cliques. After all, as comrades in a hostage situation, some youth can only find a sense of individual choice  or power through pop culture, materialism or bullying.

Time with our parents is less and less as we get older. Although we need them desperately, our parents treat us more and more distantly as we approach adulthood, telling us that in our empty, disconnected confusion we are just “individuating”, going through a phase and “being a typical teenager.” What they don’t know is that nature didn’t intend for us to stop needing our parents’ involvement and affection. However, if they didn’t want to caress us, rock us, hold us and share their attention with us as often as we needed when we were very little, they certainly won’t want to do it now that we are the same size as they are, or bigger. But our society’s focus on peers, media, material objects and buying confuses us into accepting this as “a normal part of growing up”…

We may turn to recreational chemicals, empty acts of useless rebellion, and put on a show of defying authority. We know this is as futile as anything else we try to do to put meaning back into our lives.

We graduate public school when we are too old to go back and relive all of the childhood that we have hopelessly lost. We are released into the world when we are too confused, apathetic and numb to remember what we really wanted to be when we grew up, or, when they’ve convinced us that it isn’t practical to do it if we do remember. Like a prisoner that craves the security of confinement, we go to college because we are told we “need to make something our of ourselves”, we jump through more hoops, earn more carrots and then we get our first real job.

We get up each day, we go to work, we take orders, we text, we type, we shuffle paper, we drink our lattes and we make small talk with people. We go home, watch TV, hoot at sports teams, blink at politics and social issues, go to bars and clubs on the weekend, eat processed foods, try hopelessly to work off the effects of those food in gyms, we shop, we grow addicted to distractions and we layer masks around our true identity. We start a family and maybe steal a little time with them on some occasional rushed vacation. We see counselors and doctors for all of the  health problems our lifestyle has manifested. Then, we go to bed, get up and start it all over… until we are too old to do anything different…

When we retire, we are too worn out to go back and recapture the youthful rapture we still had when we were  connected to our innate purpose in life. It’s too late now, our entire lives were lived for us… If we are religious, we sit and wait for the hope of being able to regain the joy in some other realm that nature intended us to have the moment we were to be born into our mother’s arms…

This depressing, sobering picture is the reality of far too many lives in industrialized society. This way of life is a waste of precious life and of precious lives…

Now, imagine how nature intended our lives to be: We are born into a loving family who attunes with our bliss, meets our needs and blankets us with the rapture of skin-to-skin touch, nurturing and affection. We are cherished. We are breastfed for three years, held constantly in arms our first year of life and are rarely put down. Our cries are soothed as soon as we breathe them and our connection to our mothers is warm, empathic, passionate and deep. We sleep in the family bed.

We grow and develop at our own pace. Nature, our communities, our homes, our lives are where we learn. We are with family, friends and people who care about us. We learn what moves us. We play, run around, climb, jump, dream, invent, explore, muse, imagine, wonder and test, challenge, make, build, modify, create, share, help, care and love. We have mentors and guides, friends of all ages and endless possibilities for learning.

Our parents model for us strong values and guide us in principle. Our home life looks like a democracy and there is room to discuss and exchange needs, wishes and restitution.

We eat healthy and naturally. All of our physical, emotional, social and spiritual needs are provided for.

Our friendships are many, strong, deep and fun. We get together whenever we wish, focus on mutual interests, form groups, clubs and bands and feel connected by our laughter, intense physical activities, our mutual projects and the fun we have together.

We feel safe, secure, protected and loved in our families. Our parents are physically, emotionally and spiritually attuned to us and affection is abundant and constant as we grow older and bigger. We stay close to our parents in our adolescence and in doing so, we become strong, mature and interdependent. We show good judgment and respect all people and our planet because we have been allowed to develop spiritually and morally through guidance and principle.

We grow up and we create a life for ourselves that is based on fulfillment, contribution, happiness, creativity and sharing our gifts with others. We travel, play, explore, grow, evolve, improve and change the world for the better. We raise our own families in love and joy. We choose activities that are fun, refresh and enrich our lives and bring us joy. We eat foods that sustain us, we are physically active in the outdoors. We are empathic, peaceful, mindful, insightful, stable and compassionate.  Our lifestyle supports us being as mentally and physically strong and healthy as possible. We live a full and passionate life.

We drink the abundance of life until we use ourselves up fully. We sit one day, smiling, content, tired and fulfilled… And as we pass from this realm into whatever we have come to believe will be the next, we know we drank every drop of the physical world that our vessels could grasp. We have lived a life of true freedom and joy.

For those of us who have children, there is always time to re-introduce them back into their freedom, passion and joy, back into what nature intended for them. For those of us who have grown, there is always time for us to journey ourselves back to that path of freedom, passion and joy, as well!

How is it that people learned on their own for millennia, and our history’s most brilliant minds were infrequently schooled or unschooled, but yet today, with all of the “education” children receive, we have no more Shakespeares, DaVincis, Motzarts, Beethovens, Einsteins or Benjamin Franklins? Also, Margaret Mead, Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln, Claude Monet, Serena and Venus Williams, Beatrix Potter, Agatha Christie, Robert Frost, Virginia Woolf and the Wright brothers and so many more famous great minds were homeschooled. As someone who works with children, what I see from the public schools are broken, miserable children who have lost their passion for life and learning. How could anyone who cares about children believe that children being held hostage in prison-like environments could lead them to joy, innovation, passion and happiness? In order for children to thrive, they need to be released from their cages- Each child needs to be freed to live and learn in harmony with their unique consciousness. Unschooling is the true way for children to learn- in joy and in freedom, which they have an innate, inherent right to do.

The University of Utah Genetic Science Learning Center website has a cute and fun interactive tutorial that allows people to experience and watch how important physical affection is to the genetic expression of baby rats. The tutorial allows the user to play the part of a mother rat who must provide physical nurturing to a baby rat in the form of licking. The faster the user clicks their mouse, causing the animated mother rat to lick the baby, a graphic on the left side of a “GR gene” slowly unwinds and becomes activated. A voice-over  explains that methyl molecules will keep the gene dormant unless the mother rat provides enough nurturing licking to her baby. When the mother is highly affectionate, the GR gene, which regulates stress, is activated and the baby rat is better able to calm itself during stressful events. Sadly, if the mother rat fails to provide adequate nurturing, the gene will not be activated, and the baby rat will be more reactive to stress and less able to cope with stress for the remainder of its life. Users can experiment with various levels of nurturing to see what the outcome will be. It really hits home when we learn that the baby rat’s GR gene will look the same for the rest of its life based on the amount of physical affection it received in its first week of life.

Researchers such as Ashley Montagu, James Prescott, Arthur Janov, Sue Gerhardt, John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth and many others have discovered what people in peaceful tribal cultures knew instinctively for millennia, that physical and emotional love and affection literally shape our children’s brains, hearts, minds and lives.

In our culture, it is the norm that most children have not received the intense amount of skin-to-skin physical affection and nurturing that they need. Most of us as parents, along with our own parents, grandparents and ancestors, grew up to some degree starved of the full quota of physical and bodily nurturing that we required for optimal development. Unless parents find ways to overcome this starvation in themselves, they will be unable to meet their own children’s intense needs for skin-to-skin physical affection and nurturance.

Fortunately, there is hope! A return to the natural parent-child attachment cycle by providing your child with some of what was missed is the key to repairing damage to the parent-child bond and attachment relationship. My book, Instead of Medicating and Punishing: Healing the Causes of Our Children’s Acting-Out Behavior by Parenting and Educating the Way Nature Intended, supports parents in the steps to repairing the parent-child relationship. This can be done even with children with moderate or severe behavioral and emotional issues, from infants and toddlers to older teens. I am also available for supportive Parenting Coaching, to help parents through every step of the process with their child. Please contact me if you would like support in repairing the parent-child bond with your son or daughter!

Is it just ignorance or is there something more complicated going on that causes our society to view children as sub-human in status, not entitled to basic human rights protections enjoyed by fully grown people?

The Science of Trauma

Psychological Trauma is mental and emotional damage. Trauma occurs when a person or animal is overwhelmed by the fear, pain, helplessness, horror and/or threatening nature of an act. Trauma is subjective, which means that what is traumatizing for me may or may not be traumatizing to you, and what is traumatizing for you may or may not be traumatizing to someone else. Trauma occurs from enduring or witnessing extremely terrifying and horrifying atrocities such as genocide, war, torture, murder and violent rape. Trauma can also occur from seemingly mild experiences such as hearing a detailed story about another person’s abuse or experiencing a single shocking act of verbal harassment. Because it occurs on a continuum, everything from extreme atrocities to vicarious disturbance can be traumatizing, as well as all acts in between, including all acts of corporal punishment.

Take a guess which group of human beings are most vulnerable to trauma. Yes, children, the very citizens that the law fails to include in assault protection laws! In children, trauma often results in neurological damage as well as emotional and mental damage– In other words, trauma actually alters the brains and neurochemistry of children and re-wires their brains in a way that nature did not intend. Trauma affects children at every age and later affects every developmental stage of their life. In fact, the younger a child endures trauma, the more likely it will be that subsequent stages of development will be altered in a pervasive manner. Children are more vulnerable to trauma because at all ages, even in late adolescence, they are completely dependent upon and under the power of the adults doing harm to them- They have no legal right to get up and walk out, move out or run away. It is this helplessness and confusion about how a “loving protector” or a “just authority” can cause fear and harm that adds the final blow to the child.

Corporal Punishment is Holistically Harmful to Children

Other detrimental affects to children of corporal punishment, supported by over 60 years of research, include:

• Increased risk of aggression and violence towards others
• Increased risk of disruption of the secure parent-child attachment
• Increased risk of depression, suicidal ideation and self abuse
• Increased risk of homicidal ideation
• Increased risk of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
• Increased risk of anxiety, nightmares, fears and compulsions
• Increased risk of defiance, oppositionality and destructiveness
• Increased risk of developing unhealthy character traits such as defensiveness, passive-aggression or unstable relationships
• Increased risk of substance use and other addictive behaviors
• Increased risk of sexual damage, including the development of fetishes
• Increased risk of lowered IQ,
• Increased risk of being physically harmed, injured, maimed, damaged or murdered
• Increased risk of somatic (physical) and psychosomatic problems
• Increased risk of spiritual conflict
• Increased risk of domestic violence in adulthood, including using corporal punishment towards one’s own children in the future
• Increased risk of politically and socially supporting policies that oppress children

As you can see, corporal punishment negatively affects children globally, developmentally and holistically– Emotionally, mentally, cognitively, socially, physically, sexually, morally and spiritually. It is clear that children have the most to lose from being assaulted; they have to pay a high cost to their bodies, minds, emotions, lives and futures.

Neuropsychological researchers have confirmed that any level of trauma can affect a child’s development. Trauma stores in the temporal lobe, which is the emotional, more impulsive part of the brain. The temporal lobe also shelters the amygdala, which produces our life-saving “Fight-Flight-or-Freeze” reactions. Because it stores in this part of the brain, trauma fails to metabolize or generalize to the part of the brain that can heal it- The prefrontal cortex, or, our thinking, rational brain. Therapy, counseling, reasoning and understanding all occur in the prefrontal cortex and therefore can’t reach the stored trauma no matter how many years of talk therapy and rationalization a person attempts. (EMDR treatment can heal trauma by accessing the memory in the temporal lobe and metabolizing it to the prefrontal cortex).

Why It is So Difficult to Abolish Corporal Punishment

So, what does this all have to do with why society seems so oblivious and ignorant to the fact that hitting children is wrong and harmful?

Childhood brains are complicated. Youth are naturally self-focused, which is normal and natural for their development. This protects them from being too overwhelmed at younger developmental stages at the enormity of the world. Children also believe, even in late adolescence, that the adults are all-powerful and know best. Because of this egocentric brain orientation, the belief that adults know best and the dependence children have upon adults for survival, children naturally believe that they are at fault when things happen to them at the hands of adults. Traumatized children develop unhealthy defenses to help them cope with the internal torment and confusion of the trauma. They reason with themselves that it must be them, not the beloved adult who they depend upon for love, education, justice or protection, that is responsible for any abuse they endure.

When these children grow up, their defenses continue to solidify and harden,  in some cases cutting them off from the pain they felt as children and leading them to align with the adult view of the “bad child” who “deserved” to be punished. When these grown children become parents, they may lack empathy for their children. Their trauma may be triggered by their children. Some adults may suddenly feel rage at their parents that they must suppress and rationalize as rage against their child- they may target their child as a way to punish the “bad” child that they believe that they once were. This may explain why some parents may harshly target a child that reminds them of themselves.

As a society, traumatized people are afraid that by abolishing parental and school corporal punishment they are condemning or disrespecting their own parents, grandparents and other elders from their past. They fear that by admitting that children today should be protected from legalized assaults, this indicts their parents and the elders of their past. People also fear this will indict them as well, if they have spanked, smacked, belted or whupped their own children. Because of this internal angst and conflict, society seems to feel more relieved when they keep laws that put the status of children and children’s rights below that of adults and allow the provision of lower level assaults on children. This is one of the devastating affects of trauma- a cycle of avoidance, excuses, fear and apathy.

Improving, Not Blaming

There are many things in society that we’ve improved upon, especially legal human rights protections for most adult groups. We’ve ended legal toleration for many forms of discrimination and in areas that still need work adult groups are passionately working for change. Ending corporal punishment against children is not about blaming and indicting ourselves, our parents and elders of the past- It is about raising awareness to the harm done by corporal punishment, opening our minds and hearts and feeling compassion for children, healing ourselves and others effected by it and moving towards protective laws, social justice solutions and loving alternatives.

Twenty nine countries have already surpassed the United States and Canada in abolishing all corporal punishment of children in homes and in schools, starting in 1979 with Sweden. In the United States, 30 states, mainly in New England and in the Northern parts of the country, have abolished corporal punishment in schools. At the time of this writing, a bill submitted by NY Representative Carolyn McCarthy, HR5628 “Ending Corporal Punishment in Schools Act”, has been referred to the House sub-committee in Congress. It has a great deal of support by passionate child advocacy groups such as PTAVE, The Hitting Stops Here!, Teacher Complaints, and many affiliates and friends of these organizations (Note: In a future blog post, I will list as many of these as possible to recognize them). If this historical bill becomes law, corporal punishment will be abolished in US schools. There have been other attempts by legislators in individual states, such as Massachusetts and California, to abolish corporal punishment in the home, but these attempts were overridden.

Change Requires a Radical Shift in How We View Children

Abolishing corporal punishment is more than just refraining from hitting children. It requires a radical shift in the way we view children, in the way we understand their natural development and in the way we view their behavior. If we view their disturbing behavior as “badness” meant to anger us, the traumatized parts of us may seek to avenge the “badness” triggered from our own pasts by inflicting pain on our children. However, if we view our children’s distressing behavior as developmentally appropriate or as alarms signaling an immediate need or an unmet need, we will be able to respond with empathy, compassion and caring. Child discipline is guiding our children by example. The best way to teach nonviolence, peace, cooperation, love and respect is to model that for our children.

Parents, you must protect your children and stop letting the school bully you into believing that you and your child NEED the school, that there is no other option! Thousands of children who homeschool or who are in Montessori, Waldorf, democratic and other child-focused schools are thriving, feeling joy and happiness in their lives and have time for play, family, friends and life. Before public school was forced in 1850, most of our society’s greatest minds were unschooled. Human beings for millennia taught their own young, as every mammal does– What has made parents today believe they are so incompetent to guide their children that for the first time in the history of humanity we have to lock children up for the best years of their lives, the best hours of the day, away from family and time for friends, in order for them to learn? The reality is, they don’t learn anything except how to suffer; how to put off their own needs, development, wishes, dreams, urges, passions and innate drives for their own paths to knowledge.

Traditional school intrudes into every area of a child and family’s life, draining away any time for family, play, socialization, invention, exploration, travel, imagination and solitude. Traditional school mangles children’s love for learning, their passion for exploration, their genius and creativity and their innate sense of competence, drive and initiative. It robs children of doing what they were individually, uniquely born to do. This happens because parents allow it. They allow the public school to wield more and more power over their children, over their families and over their lives. If parents stopped making their children do homework, if they stopped bringing their children to public school, if they became activists and demanded that public education be democratic and open source, if they demanded that children have a right to hire and fire teachers, design their own curriculum with their parents and  insisted that play, physical activity and fun must be restored as the natural developmental means by which all children learn, schools would lose their power and parents and children would have it back. In a democracy, that is where empowerment belongs, with the people. And schools have apparently never learned the fact that children are people, too.

As someone who has worked with children of all ages for over 18 years in the roles of counselor, social worker, educator, child care provider and mentor, I am intimately aware of the negative effects on children and adolescents who are confined to chairs and forced to labor over paperwork for 6-9 hours per day. Epidemic numbers of American school children are presenting with profound distress signals in reaction to the developmentally inappropriate environments of public schools. These distress signals, including hyperactivity, distraction, aggression, poor school performance and school refusal are mislabeled as “ADHD”, learning “disabilities” or mental “illness” in such children and the knee-jerk reaction has been to chemically control these children with powerful, dangerous psychiatric drugs.

In direct contrast, children in indigenous tribal cultures traditionally spent the majority of their day moving, engaging at all ages in intense play and physical activity. These children were not displaying symptoms of learning disabilities, brain disorders and mental illness because they were living in congruence with their nature, which is to move and play.

Although the research is clear that the very means by which children learn is through play and that physical activity is necessary for children, schools continue to treat play as a waste of time and treat children as if they are androids. Between school and homework, schools expect children to spend upwards of nine hours overriding their basic biophysiological nature in order to fulfill unrealistic adult expectations that are irrelevant to a child’s life. The detriments of this to children’s physical, emotional, intellectual, social and creative development are lifelong and should be of grave concern to our society.

American children are playing less and are ceasing dramatic play at younger and younger ages. Newsweek magazine recently reported that American children’s creativity has been steadily declining since the trend of standardized education became the norm in the early 90′s.

A 2001 study at the Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning found that lack of creative, unstructured play is resulting in executive function delays in children.

Despite the declining performance of boys in public schools, author William Pollock’s recommendation that boys biologically need up to five recesses per day has been largely ignored. Since the 1990′s, there has been a 700% increase in prescription of stimulant drugs to children, mostly boys- exactly at the same time that homework became the norm for elementary school children, recess and play were being cut and standardized testing was becoming federally mandated.

The obesity and “ADHD” epidemics alone should be enough evidence that keeping children virtually sedentary for five days per week has deleterious effects on the body and brain. I am convinced that children’s exhaustion from school and homework leads them to fall easily into the trap of “zoning out” in front of TV and video games. Its as if too many children have no energy or motivation for play and innate learning once they have been sedentary and forced to do busywork all day.

On the contrary, anyone who spends time with homeschooled youth soon discovers that the freedom they have to play hard and passionately and learn by doing gives them a creative and intellectual edge. Not only do homeschooled youth play dramatically well into their late teens (as opposed to standing in herds “hanging out”), these children love learning because play and learning are rightly viewed as synonymous. When children can follow their own innate interests, passions and curiosities, their intellectual and creative development can be exceptional.

It is common for me to hear public school teachers refer to physical activity as “movement breaks”. It seems customary in public schools to regiment any and all aspects of childhood and to refer to children’s basic needs in such mechanical terms. For the sake of our children, rather than view energetic, unstructured play as an expendable waste of time, it needs to be restored to the oft quoted honor it once held, as the work of children.

In the 1990′s and 2000′s, high stakes standardized testing, teaching-to-the-test,  increased homework and policies of homework for all grade levels (including for children as young as preschool) became the law of the land. Schools began to slash hands-on learning, recess, movement, outdoor free time, play, art, music, fun activities and field trips, further causing distress and trauma to the bodies and the psychological, creative and intellectual well being of public school children. With this frantic teach-to-the-test mentality of schools, these deprivations of childhood joy needed to become standardized practice in order to corral and indoctrinate millions of children into one cookie-cutter system, with results that guaranteed the failure and mediocrity of the many. These deprivations would quickly come to include the abuse of children’s bio and neurochemisty as well.

The public school system was soon faced with an increase in natural alarm signals in children that resulted from the school’s developmentally inappropriate curriculum: Hyperactivity, lack of focus, inability to learn, lack of attention to the tasks at hand, defiance, aggression, depression, violence, inability to keep oneself still and immobile for six hours per day and then for another three hours of homework. Schools partnered up with Big Pharma to come up with a solution: Mass labeling of American public school children as “learning disabled”, “mentally ill”  or brain deficient. This of course lead to subsequent chemical alteration of their brains to induce docility and conformity.  Since the early 1990′s there has been a 700% increase in the use of just stimulant drugs alone on children!

Interestingly, according to Newsweek’s “Creativity in America” issue (July 19, 2010), China, who once employed the strictest of measures of their public schooled children, has instituted mass reforms to “extinguish the drill-and-kill teaching style”. According to the article, China is currently “adopting a problem-based learning approach”. The article quips, “When a faculty of a major Chinese University asked [American professor Jonathan] Plucker to identify trends in American education, he described our focus on standardized curriculum, rote memorization, and nationalized testing. “After my  answer was translated, they just started laughing out loud,” Plucker says. “They said, ‘You’re racing toward our old model. But we’re racing toward your [old] model, as fast as we can.’”"

Apparently, President Obama is not aware of that. Apparently, he is unaware that in many of the countries that have surpassed American public school children’s performance, they are doing the opposite  of what Obama proposes. Some of these countries have shorter school years, shorter classes, more play and outdoor time. President Obama must equally be unaware of the decades of learning theory by Howard Gardner and many others who have found that humans have seven different, equally important forms of intelligence. Public schools only validate and consider two of these intelligences to be worthwhile, namely, Logical-Mathematical and Verbal-Linguistic. The other intelligences, mainly dealing with the arts, the body, socialization and the mind, are considered to be “hobbies” or “skills” rather than equally credible,  “academic” intelligences.

Researchers of learning theory are also aware that people learn through one or a combination  of three channels: Kinesthetic, Visual and Auditory. Schools mainly teach using the auditory style, lecturing to a group of passive hostages, with little to no interactive dialogue, hands-on imitation or exploration. People who are wired to learn with their hands and bodies or with a combination of watching, reading and doing are labeled as mentally ill, learning disabled or as having “attention deficits”! No wonder we are plummeting in comparison to other countries- Our schools are rendering us all mentally ill!

Albert Einstein stated that test-based “education” destroys the natural learning process rather than helps it:  “One had to cram all this stuff into one’s mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.” He also stated, “Imagination is more important than knowledge”, yet imagination and creativity are all but strangled out of children by the time they end their public school prison sentences.

In 1983, the Reagan administration’s A Nation at Risk report set in motion this nightmare of standardizing an already hostage-based education system into what the youngest generation is suffering now. In 2001, George W. Bush dealt the final blow to children’s play and freedom with his “No Child Left Behind” act. Now Obama’s “been-there-done-that” education “reform” will recycle more of the same. This waste of millions of childhoods reminds me of another of Einstein’s famous quotes: “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

“Spanking” is a candy-coated word for violence- It is not discipline, it is not any of the rationalizing lies we tell ourselves as a culture that it is. Corporal punishment is a physical, emotional and spiritual assault on a child and it has negative consequences to a child’s neurological, psychological and social development. If we hope to teach our children to be peaceful, compassionate, nonviolent, responsible and cooperative people, then we must parent by deepening the parent-child attachment relationship, not hurt it through traumatizing violence. Hitting children teaches them to accept aggression towards the self or others or to become aggressive towards the self or others in some form- often in a form that they later do not perceive as aggressive.

People who justify and defend corporal punishment seem to unanimously use the same justifications for their actions, to the point of being uncanny :

1. “I was spanked and it didn’t do me any harm.”

This justification is so tragic as to be pathetic– It’s as if the person is so desperate to block off the pain they felt as a child from their parents’ assault on their childhood mistakes that they are trying to convince themselves that they “turned out fine”. In reality, under that veneer of “fine” is a person who is cut off from empathy and compassion for what it was like to be a child, a person who now internalized the message that it is acceptable for a human being over 18 to assault one under 18. In actuality, this is the worst harm that can be done, when we are cut off from our childhood suffering and then pass on the attitudes and behaviors of the person who caused our suffering. This is the reason for the majority of the violence, hatred and suffering on the planet.

2. “The problem with kids today is they aren’t disciplined…”

Not only has every generation lamented this superfluous “The-Problem-With-Kid’s-Today” rant, this rant mirrors justification #1, that the adult has cut him or herself off from the spirit, heart and mind of the child who was trying to signal unmet needs in the only way he or she knew how- To act out.

Ironically, consistent studies have shown that despite the public awareness and general social unacceptability of corporal punishment in many parts of the USA, the reality is that 90% of parents admit that they still hit their children. If 90% of parents have used corporal punishment, then defenders of corporal punishment might ask themselves why aren’t children angels if this is the magic solution? 90% of children are getting hit, so what is the problem? Deep down, defenders know corporal punishment harms. Deep down they know that they themselves as adults would never willingly cooperate with another adult who assaulted them to get them to do what was requested of them. Defenders must justify their own parents’ or alma mater’s abuse of power in order to not feel the complication of betrayal.

The truth is that discipline is about guiding a child through a deep, loving relationship, strong family and community modeling and example and through compassion, empathy and understanding that children signal unmet needs through misbehavior. Punishments, such as physical or verbal aggression, “time-outs” or arbitrary removal of a child’s belongings, only harm the relationship, and do not teach a child discipline. Punishments do to children what they do to adults- Punishments breed resentment.

3. Religious arguments, such as “The Bible says…”

To pervert spirituality by using it as a justification of violence seems to run counter to every universal spiritual principle about how to treat people. Religions that justify harming children show an ignorance about the science behind children’s brain development, social and emotional development. To suggest that a Higher Power would recommend a practice that trauma science has shown us rewires a child’s brain in a detrimental manner, puts children at risk for becoming aggressive towards the self or others, leads to depression, anxiety, lower IQ’s and the risk of passing on family violence seems counterintuitive. For those “spanking” proponents who say they do so in the name of Jesus Christ, they show very little historical understanding that Jesus was actually a very radical human rights activist who cherished children and had harsh words for anyone who would harm a child. In fact, he recommended people “become like” children, in other words, empathize with the experience of children.

Twenty-eight nations have legally abolished all forms of corporal punishment of children, starting with Sweden in 1979 and continuing with the most recent additions, Tunisia and Poland, this year, 2010. It is a crime that the USA, which boasts that it is the “Land of the Free” has not followed suit. In fact, in most of the states in the Southern part of the country, school teachers and administrators still can legally beat children with wooden boards– “paddles”– another candy-coated word carefully crafted to obscure the violence and the moral corruption of assaulting children.

In June,  NY Representative Carolyn McCarthy introduced legislation to Congress to propose a federal ban on all school corporal punishment. Now in August, Obama is considering ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child which challenges all world leader to abolish all forms of corporal punishment in schools and in the family. The USA has an opportunity right now to follow the lead of 28 other governments who have figured out that violence towards youth begets more violence and constitutes a grave human rights violation. These nations have progressively taken action to stand for more peaceful, compassionate ways of relating to their youngest citizens. It’s time Americans stop defending the very practices that caused them so much fear, pain and betrayal as children. It’s time to abolish corporal punishment in the USA.