Taking Children Seriously: children are entitled to the same freedom, rights, respect & control over their lives as we are. Non-coercion; fallibilism; freedom.
Oxford, UK
Joined July 2021
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Taking Children Seriously retweeted
息子がいじめで不登校になった時、動画やゲームばかりで心配になったけど、児童精神科で、嫌な事を忘れる為だから無理にやめさせなくても良いと言われ、朝は起こしてサイクリングや川遊び等を一緒に楽しみながら、敢えて禁止せずに好きなだけさせていたら、動画から興味のある事を見付け夢中になり、→
ネット依存で子ども豹変 スマホ没収すると包丁を持って暴れる、学校をサボり出す 4700校調査で見えた実態
tokyo-np.co.jp/article/48224…
東京新聞デジタル
Taking Children Seriously retweeted
Watch your own speech for
- “he needs to…”
- “I want her to…”
- “it would be great if he…”
This will raise your awareness of your agenda for your child.
Then let it go.
Taking Children Seriously retweeted
The eternal binary - yell at your kids or do nothing, there is no creative problem solving like what you'd do with an adult conflict.
Taking Children Seriously retweeted
“If you acquire an idea in a way that does not solve a problem but exacerbates it, then you lose for the future all information about whether it is true or false, and thus have no means of improving it.”
@FitzClaridge in 1994 takingchildrenseriously.com/…
Taking Children Seriously retweeted
When adults seek to control kids’ screen use they ignore the impact of doing so.
It’s not “click my fingers and we’re back to the sweet, innocent times of my own childhood”.
It’s “I’m gonna force you to do what I want cos I know better than you”.
What message does that send?
“At the heart of adult resistance to screens seems to be the idea that adults have a right, even a duty, to control what children pay attention to. Attention is the simplest manifestation of what a person cares about, and intruding on their attention always signals that their values are less important than the intruder’s values. Adults communicate this awareness to other adults with phrases like ‘Pardon the interruption,’ but with kids, it’s often assumed that the interruption is rather a necessary redirection or correction.”
- Aaron Stupple and Logan Chipkin, 2025, The Sovereign Child, Chapter 3: Watching what they want (screens), p. 41
Taking Children Seriously retweeted
Listen, by Patty Wipfler: the missing connection takingchildrenseriously.com/…
Taking Children Seriously retweeted
It’s dead simple, screens are just as dangerous as books. Just as anti-authoritarian books reveal the contradictory nature of school, screens do it even better.
The problem is, you don’t just “give kids” anything. That’s abandonment, neglect. You offer stuff and then you play with them. You help them with their problems. I don’t tell my kids what their problems are for the same reason I don’t do that with my wife.
Here’s my antidote: for starters don’t lie about school (public or private), it’s daycare At Best (bad parenting aside, most kids would rather have the freedom of being at home learning and growing with their caregivers), and play Roblox (or whatever) with your kids and then go outside and play when you get bored!
You don’t need a NYT oped, if you look inside yourself as a parent you know this is true. But even as I write this I suspect the fear based, and the Bucket Theory of the Mind, justifications are boiling up inside someone out there.
Taking Children Seriously retweeted
Pessimistic parents consider it immoral to behave in ways that have not been tried many times before, because they are blind to the possibility that the benefits of doing so might offset the risks. So they are intolerant and conformist.
And yet some (a few) children grow up vibrantly optimistic anyway. People are so creative!
Taking Children Seriously retweeted
A child “would rather dress himself than be dressed, even magnificently. He prefers washing himself to the pleasant feeling of being clean. He would rather build a house than own one. He is thus disposed because he must first form his own life before he can enjoy it.”
Montessori
Taking Children Seriously retweeted
Read Conjecture Institute Cofounder @astupple's article, 'From oppression to freedom' in @TCSparents
takingchildrenseriously.com/…
Taking Children Seriously retweeted
You’re this kid’s parent.
When they come home from school unhappy, you tell them “Boredom is part of life. You have to deal with unpleasant things.”
What does the kid hear?
“Reading isn’t really that great, boredom is more important. And suppressing it and putting on a good face for the teacher is best.”
You’re a five year old. You love to read. You can read chapter books. You’re excited to start school in the fall.
Then you actually start school. You’re stuck doing basic literacy. The rest of your class can’t read. You’re not allowed to read your books.
You’re frustrated and bored. Your classmates mock you. They call you a weirdo. You feel like an outcast.
You decide school is actually terrible. You hate it.
Now you’re fifteen. You still hate school. You have no idea it could’ve all been different if you’d been allowed to learn at your level.
Taking Children Seriously retweeted
When a child is upset about something like this, there is a problem to solve, and there will be a reason for her strange upset, and if you remain curious about and explore what that underlying reason is, you may well discover that the problem is actually easy to solve, and she may be all smiles in a moment. Often, parents’ dark theories about what is happening bear no relationship to reality.
What is this precious child upset about, exactly? How is she interpreting the other child no longer being forced to go to school? What does that mean for her own life? Why is she not happy for him? What is it about that that feels as if it adversely affects her? WHY does it feel that way? Why exactly is she upset about this change? What is the reason? Is there another reason under that reason?
If you assume that there is something that will be understandable and resolvable and (to the extent she is open to it) explore with curiosity and optimism that even this problem is soluble, it will often turn out to be so much easier to solve than one imagined.
Taking Children Seriously retweeted
The moment we become the authority, we are no longer the trusted guide.
Taking Children Seriously retweeted
Sarah Fitz-Claridge: Taking Children Seriously and freedom youtu.be/Qf6O-tJ8Cfc?feature…
ALT Sarah Fitz-Claridge, 20th September 2025
Taking Children Seriously retweeted
Nice counter to some of the points I made! Especially about attunement.
I think I underestimate how alien the noncoercive view is.
It’s not just the idea children are full people, although that’s part of it — “everyone can get everything they want” is the truly alien part. 🤯
Being attuned to your baby and curious about what your baby wants or doesn’t want, is interested in or not interested in, what makes your baby’s heart sing, and what doesn’t, and how it is all evolving and changing all the time, is absolutely vital. There is sooooo much that is possible right from birth, in terms of communication and emotional and intellectual engagement with your baby. Babies are fascinating! Amazing! It is such a mistake to imagine that a baby is unable to communicate and have complex, meaningful, creative and connecting interactions right from birth. Babies are people. And they need us so much.
On the subject of attunement, I still like the old books, Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman, and (the misnamed) A General Theory of Love, by Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, Richard Lannon. The book I particularly recommend to prospective parents and parents of babies is Kiss Me, by Carlos González. He conveys attunement and how to create secure attachment so beautifully, and with humour and humanity.
Incidentally, González’s book aimed at parents of older children (3+), which is not yet available in English, appears less good, because some coercion has crept in. I do not find it plausible that you can be attuned to someone if you are coercing them. Being on the receiving end of coercion, even with ‘empathy’ and a soft voice, does violence to people’s being, particularly when it is your beloved parent who loves you and whom you are totally dependent on. (Of course everyone accidentally coerces sometimes, but that is very different from taking the old paternalistic view of children, that children need to be coercively controlled for their own good. As in: The homework must be done. The baby must sleep alone. The iPad must be surrendered after the ‘agreed’ time limit.)
Most of the books in the photo advocate covert (and often overt) coercion, so I do not recommend them. Babies and children are people, and people do not like being coercively controlled, no matter how well-regulated your nervous system is, no matter how much ‘empathy’ you express as you ‘hold to the limit’ or whatever, and no matter how well-intentioned you are.
Life does not have to be the endless battle portrayed in most books for parents. It can be so much more fun and delightful than most people imagine.
ALT parenting books
ALT Kiss Me, by Carlos Gonzalez
Taking Children Seriously retweeted
The deeper insight isn't so much that coercive learning causes unpleasant associations with learning in a learner, but that information foisted on a person may cause systematic negative effects on a mind as @l1berty explains here:
Taking Children Seriously retweeted
I'm joined by Liberty Fitz-Claridge (@l1berty) for Episode 243 of ToKCast: Reading and reflecting on "In praise of ignorance" by @DavidDeutschOxf. You can find the original article here: takingchildrenseriously.com/…
Taking Children Seriously retweeted
Children overwhelmingly want to be around their parents, and don’t get me started on how children feel about daycare.
Parents overwhelmingly say they wish they were with their kids more when they were young (my mom did, anyway).
If you can, I’m guessing stepping back and making less money, maybe even both parents trading off time at home, or if you can, having extended family (non-coercive grandparents) help offset the time commitment, switching to slowly doing a side hustle at home as a solo entrepreneur, or giving up saving for retirement or kids college may actually solve more problems in the long term. There’s no one size fits all solution.
Bottom line, coercing children to go to daycare, by manipulating them or outright force, isn’t actually solving the underlying problem. Same with blaming it all on money.
Two parents. Two jobs.
Parent 1 earns £45,000
Parent 2 earns £28,000
Together, that’s £73,000
Sounds great, right?
But after taxes you're taking home around £56,000
Now subtract:
- £14,400 for daycare
- £15,000+ for rent or mortgage
- £3,000 on fuel
- £6,000 on food
- £5,000 on bills
- £3,000+ in debt repayments and interest
Suddenly, that £56k becomes £9k, maybe less and that’s before birthdays, clothes, school trips, or anything going wrong.
You’re both working 40+ hours a week
And for what?
- Handing your baby to strangers 5 days a week?
- Living off frozen meals and exhaustion?
- Falling asleep thinking about your overdraft?
It’s not “making it.” It’s surviving with nicer clothes. You’re not chasing dreams you’re covering bills.
It’s not financial freedom.
The system isn’t broken. It’s just working exactly as designed.
You need a way out.
Taking Children Seriously retweeted
I think David said once and it struck me- "we don't have special rights over our children, we only have special responsibilities."
When I talk to parents, they seem to confuse the two.
Also, they think children are not people until some arbitrary threshold is reached.