Ofcourse! What a silly question? Obedience is a good thing. Children 'should' be obedient. That's the one thing we parents expect from the kids, because we feel all the other traits will automatically fall in place.
Obedient children, a rare kind of species, I would say. We definitely do find obedient to a certain extent children in one off households. You would've seen their mothers proudly giving sermons to the other mothers about how to get their children 'under control'. There was a time when I used to look upon those mothers as "guruji's" and listen to their lectures about parenting without batting my eyelids, with deep devotion and intent to grasp the most from it. And then, one day, I had a revelation and I learnt something new.
A not so normal day, something really went wrong, and I ( for once) was the person with the big feelings that day. My son and I were playing and I was stifling my tears over something that was bothering me. He heard the sobs and figured out something was wrong, looked up and said, "Hey.. you are crying ma". And what came next, caught me by surprise. He said "Amma, stop crying now. Stop crying right now!!" (in an authoritative voice) and goes on to say "First wipe your tears. Then we'll talk"
At that moment, that very moment, I felt two things. One, my son, who I thought would wipe my tears, hug me and maybe even cry with me ( because I'm crying ) , didn't show me even a minuscule of compassion. The second thing I realized was, "Oh no!, so that's how it feels when someone doesn't show you empathy. Is this how my son feels everytime I've asked him to wipe his tears first and then talk later?"
The second thing scared me, gave me a sense of immense guilt and also made me feel stupid, as in, why didn't I see that before? Why didn't I think he, a 4 year old, had feelings too. His feelings however small mattered to him, like how mine mattered to me. Why, why, why did I take him for granted? Why did he have to be obedient and eat up his feelings and wipe his tears and dance to my tunes? Have I been a horrible parent? My mind started shooting questions at me, one after the other.
And when our children rebel and refuse to take orders from us, we strive, we try, and by try, I mean by many and all means, try to get them to 'behave'. And we hang our heads in shame if our children 'disobey' us especially in front of others. I thought, "why do we want them to take orders?" maybe because, that was how we were brought up, or because, we feel we know what is right what is not and the children do not, and that it is for their own good, and above all, they are children for heavens sake, they need to learn to listen. I'm sure many of you would be able to relate to that.
What is this obedience, by the way? It is to comply to the orders/wishes/whims and fancies of an authoritative person. So, two people involved, the authoritative person and the complier. Why would the complier chose to take commands from the authoritative person ? Out of fear, out of trust or out of love. That is, "I'm scared he would hurt me if I don't listen" or "I'm sure it would be for the greater good", or "He would feel sad if I don't do what he said". If you managed to read between the lines, in all the three cases, the complier choses to disregard his feelings about the task. He either does it out of fear, out of trust or out of love for the other person, immaterial of what he thinks about the command he has 'chosen' to execute.
I can bleakly hear the alarm bells ringing in your heads! So, when we teach our kids obedience, we 'without our knowledge' teach them to disregard their feelings, teach them to suppress their own thoughts. Now, that's dangerous isn't it?
I read a few articles on real examples of obedience and one of it really really caught my attention. There was a man called 'Adolf Eichmann'. Yeah, from the Nazi period. Heard of the holocaust? That time when the Nazis hunted jews and killed them. About 6 million of them and in the event killed 5 million of non jews too. This Eichmann was the person who was involved in organizing , planning the collection, transportation and execution of the people involved. When he was sent to trial, he expressed his surprise saying "I just obeyed my orders. Obeying orders is a good thing". And in his diary he had written," The orders, for me, the highest thing in my life and I had to obey them without a question" ( quoted in the Guardian, 12th August, 1999 )
That's scary isn't it? According to him, all he did was to follow orders. Simply because he had to follow them. But, what did those orders end up doing? Resulted in the death of 11 million people. Not that he didn't know that killing innocents, or killing of any kind for that matter was wrong. He was tuned to prioritise orders over his thoughts.
One could say, "Man.. that is an exaggerated example. Not all children would end up organizing a genocide". True. But that was just to illustrate the extent of devastation 'obedience' could cause.
Alfie Kohn, the author of a book called "Unconditional Parenting" says its tricky when the obedient child reaches adolescence. That is, "If they take orders from other people, that may include people we may not approve of. To put it the other way around: Kids who are subject to peer pressure at its worst are kids whose parents taught them to do what they're told".
Alison Roy, a lead child and adolescent psychotherapist says: "A child will push the boundaries if they have a more secure attachement. children who have been responded to , led to believe - in a healthy way - that their voice is valued, that all they do to is object and action will be taken - they will push boundaries. And this is really the healthy behaviour. Compliance? They've learnt there's no point arguing because their voice isn't valued." So they kind of limit themselves and go with the flow sorts.
And one more thing I learn, children don't just be disobedient. They just react in the only way they know. For toddlers, it's predominantly tears combined with a loud wail bundled with an unruly stamping of the legs or jumping up and down. That's their way of communicating their displeasure. Some are too small to talk. Some have very limited vocabulary. And at that time, we concentrate on "Why is he not listening to me. I'm the parent here and I say so.", instead of, "Maybe he is sick, maybe he is tired, maybe he is hungry, maybe he is scared ..." and the million other overlooked underlying issues that might be bothering him or his needs that might be going unanswered. For one, someone might be bullying him at school.
Now, I hope you did not get me wrong. We as parents sure know good from bad, and know what is best for our children better than them, because of our experience and from the wisdom passed on from our parents and so on. I'm not asking you to throw that all away and let your child put his fingers into the plug point or touch fire to see how it feels. All I'm saying is, we guide them about good and bad, and try to reason out with them, rather than using these words : "Because I said so." "First stop crying, and do what I just told you". By showing them some empathy, they know we understand, they know we care, they feel safe and they feel valued. They start thinking on their own and don't hesitate to share it with us too.
The day I had big feelings, I expected my 4 year old to understand what the 31 year old me was going through. But, I, the 31 year old 'wise'-with-experience-mother didn't try to understand the little 4 year old when he had his meltdowns. How very unreasonable have I been? And when I was sad, I didn't expect him to solve my problems, but I sure did expect him to wipe my tears. Maybe that's what he wanted too, a hand to wipe his tears and understand what he was going through. The more thought I gave it, the more guilty I felt. I decided to leave the past behind and turn over.
I attended a parenting program run by the "Parenting matters" group. They discuss this and a lot more in good detail. I've come across 'hand in hand' parenting through social media, I think, says the same too. (Haven't gone through it in detail yet ) I love learning. Learning of any kind. I believe there's a whole lot of things out there to learn at any age. And I jump at any opportunity to learn. Many believe, parenting can't be learnt and that it has to 'come' to you. I wanted to learn it. And I sure was surprised at the many many things I've learnt over the past few weeks through the parenting program. This was one of the many things I grabbed from there "Obedience is not so good a trait. Don't push it in your children. Don't teach them to suppress their feelings. Teach them to handle them instead."
I ask you today, my fellow parents, would you give it some thought?
References
-------------
http://www.simplypsychology.org/obedience.html
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/19/are-obedient-children-a-good-thing
Obedient children, a rare kind of species, I would say. We definitely do find obedient to a certain extent children in one off households. You would've seen their mothers proudly giving sermons to the other mothers about how to get their children 'under control'. There was a time when I used to look upon those mothers as "guruji's" and listen to their lectures about parenting without batting my eyelids, with deep devotion and intent to grasp the most from it. And then, one day, I had a revelation and I learnt something new.
A not so normal day, something really went wrong, and I ( for once) was the person with the big feelings that day. My son and I were playing and I was stifling my tears over something that was bothering me. He heard the sobs and figured out something was wrong, looked up and said, "Hey.. you are crying ma". And what came next, caught me by surprise. He said "Amma, stop crying now. Stop crying right now!!" (in an authoritative voice) and goes on to say "First wipe your tears. Then we'll talk"
At that moment, that very moment, I felt two things. One, my son, who I thought would wipe my tears, hug me and maybe even cry with me ( because I'm crying ) , didn't show me even a minuscule of compassion. The second thing I realized was, "Oh no!, so that's how it feels when someone doesn't show you empathy. Is this how my son feels everytime I've asked him to wipe his tears first and then talk later?"
The second thing scared me, gave me a sense of immense guilt and also made me feel stupid, as in, why didn't I see that before? Why didn't I think he, a 4 year old, had feelings too. His feelings however small mattered to him, like how mine mattered to me. Why, why, why did I take him for granted? Why did he have to be obedient and eat up his feelings and wipe his tears and dance to my tunes? Have I been a horrible parent? My mind started shooting questions at me, one after the other.
And when our children rebel and refuse to take orders from us, we strive, we try, and by try, I mean by many and all means, try to get them to 'behave'. And we hang our heads in shame if our children 'disobey' us especially in front of others. I thought, "why do we want them to take orders?" maybe because, that was how we were brought up, or because, we feel we know what is right what is not and the children do not, and that it is for their own good, and above all, they are children for heavens sake, they need to learn to listen. I'm sure many of you would be able to relate to that.
What is this obedience, by the way? It is to comply to the orders/wishes/whims and fancies of an authoritative person. So, two people involved, the authoritative person and the complier. Why would the complier chose to take commands from the authoritative person ? Out of fear, out of trust or out of love. That is, "I'm scared he would hurt me if I don't listen" or "I'm sure it would be for the greater good", or "He would feel sad if I don't do what he said". If you managed to read between the lines, in all the three cases, the complier choses to disregard his feelings about the task. He either does it out of fear, out of trust or out of love for the other person, immaterial of what he thinks about the command he has 'chosen' to execute.
I can bleakly hear the alarm bells ringing in your heads! So, when we teach our kids obedience, we 'without our knowledge' teach them to disregard their feelings, teach them to suppress their own thoughts. Now, that's dangerous isn't it?
I read a few articles on real examples of obedience and one of it really really caught my attention. There was a man called 'Adolf Eichmann'. Yeah, from the Nazi period. Heard of the holocaust? That time when the Nazis hunted jews and killed them. About 6 million of them and in the event killed 5 million of non jews too. This Eichmann was the person who was involved in organizing , planning the collection, transportation and execution of the people involved. When he was sent to trial, he expressed his surprise saying "I just obeyed my orders. Obeying orders is a good thing". And in his diary he had written," The orders, for me, the highest thing in my life and I had to obey them without a question" ( quoted in the Guardian, 12th August, 1999 )
That's scary isn't it? According to him, all he did was to follow orders. Simply because he had to follow them. But, what did those orders end up doing? Resulted in the death of 11 million people. Not that he didn't know that killing innocents, or killing of any kind for that matter was wrong. He was tuned to prioritise orders over his thoughts.
One could say, "Man.. that is an exaggerated example. Not all children would end up organizing a genocide". True. But that was just to illustrate the extent of devastation 'obedience' could cause.
Alfie Kohn, the author of a book called "Unconditional Parenting" says its tricky when the obedient child reaches adolescence. That is, "If they take orders from other people, that may include people we may not approve of. To put it the other way around: Kids who are subject to peer pressure at its worst are kids whose parents taught them to do what they're told".
Alison Roy, a lead child and adolescent psychotherapist says: "A child will push the boundaries if they have a more secure attachement. children who have been responded to , led to believe - in a healthy way - that their voice is valued, that all they do to is object and action will be taken - they will push boundaries. And this is really the healthy behaviour. Compliance? They've learnt there's no point arguing because their voice isn't valued." So they kind of limit themselves and go with the flow sorts.
And one more thing I learn, children don't just be disobedient. They just react in the only way they know. For toddlers, it's predominantly tears combined with a loud wail bundled with an unruly stamping of the legs or jumping up and down. That's their way of communicating their displeasure. Some are too small to talk. Some have very limited vocabulary. And at that time, we concentrate on "Why is he not listening to me. I'm the parent here and I say so.", instead of, "Maybe he is sick, maybe he is tired, maybe he is hungry, maybe he is scared ..." and the million other overlooked underlying issues that might be bothering him or his needs that might be going unanswered. For one, someone might be bullying him at school.
Now, I hope you did not get me wrong. We as parents sure know good from bad, and know what is best for our children better than them, because of our experience and from the wisdom passed on from our parents and so on. I'm not asking you to throw that all away and let your child put his fingers into the plug point or touch fire to see how it feels. All I'm saying is, we guide them about good and bad, and try to reason out with them, rather than using these words : "Because I said so." "First stop crying, and do what I just told you". By showing them some empathy, they know we understand, they know we care, they feel safe and they feel valued. They start thinking on their own and don't hesitate to share it with us too.
The day I had big feelings, I expected my 4 year old to understand what the 31 year old me was going through. But, I, the 31 year old 'wise'-with-experience-mother didn't try to understand the little 4 year old when he had his meltdowns. How very unreasonable have I been? And when I was sad, I didn't expect him to solve my problems, but I sure did expect him to wipe my tears. Maybe that's what he wanted too, a hand to wipe his tears and understand what he was going through. The more thought I gave it, the more guilty I felt. I decided to leave the past behind and turn over.
I attended a parenting program run by the "Parenting matters" group. They discuss this and a lot more in good detail. I've come across 'hand in hand' parenting through social media, I think, says the same too. (Haven't gone through it in detail yet ) I love learning. Learning of any kind. I believe there's a whole lot of things out there to learn at any age. And I jump at any opportunity to learn. Many believe, parenting can't be learnt and that it has to 'come' to you. I wanted to learn it. And I sure was surprised at the many many things I've learnt over the past few weeks through the parenting program. This was one of the many things I grabbed from there "Obedience is not so good a trait. Don't push it in your children. Don't teach them to suppress their feelings. Teach them to handle them instead."
I ask you today, my fellow parents, would you give it some thought?
References
-------------
http://www.simplypsychology.org/obedience.html
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/19/are-obedient-children-a-good-thing
