Lefty Parent » respect for youth

Looking Back on My Youth

Cooper Zale — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 20:37:01 +0000

I’ve been focused lately on education issues in my blogging, but I feel like giving it a rest and getting back to the main thrust of my passion and advocacy. That thrust is encouraging human development, and particularly the “rules of engagement” in that regard between adults and youth.

I say “youth” rather than “children”, because I think the “C-word” has become a derogatory term in our culture, implying either complete dependence or inability as in “you’re behaving like children!” In my opinion it is that inquisitiveness of a young person and willingness to ignore conventional wisdom that has empowered adults like Steve Jobs and earlier Bill Gates to revolutionize our use of information technology.

Given that prevailing connotation of the C-word, I can barely recall a time in my own remembrance of my youngest years when I felt either dependent or unable, except perhaps at times when I got caught up in the machinations of the schools I attended and the adults in those institutions that I ceded my native self-direction to. It seems like most of the memories from my thousands of hours sitting behind a school desk have faded due to the irrelevance to who I really was then and am today.

Instead I recall the times from age five on as I mostly directed my own life, including…

* Along with my younger brother Peter, creating my own versions of the real and imagined narratives of history and science fiction (I had experienced in a book, in a movie or on TV) playing with toy figures and building materials in the unfinished basement or the back yard of my family’s small house

* Continuing that sort of play with my best friend who lived across the street and happened to be of the other gender, which I found interesting in terms of differences in our naked bodies, but otherwise pretty insignificant

* Playing baseball or “soldiers” with my neighborhood friends in the park across the street from our house, learning how to compete and collaborate and playing out some of the compelling narratives of sports and war (that tended to create mythology among male people in our culture) that abounded in the adult culture around us

* Taking off on my bicycle across town to the toy store, library, or a friend’s house to do additional “R&D”

* Enjoying being invited to sit in the “way back” seat of our old family station wagon with my brother as our dad just seemed to head out in some random direction on weekend day trips, yet another venue for imaginative journeying in this or even an alien world

* Joining or even starting secret clubs and societies with other kids my age, or spying on or even infiltrating the “other” club or society

* Reading the rules for and playing complicated board games simulating historical conflicts, either with others or solitaire, trying to grasp the strategies, tactics and logistics while coming to grips and some times indulging the fantasized megalomania of the conqueror or the more virtuous courage of the underdog

* Participating in every aspect of mounting theatrical productions with a large group of other youth (with minimal oversight and direction by adults), including adapting the famous and provocative novel, Lord of the Flies, to the stage

In all this I did not feel so much like I was preparing for being a full-blown adult person, for a life to come, but rather just leading my life, already a person with my own interests and objectives. And increasingly, as I grew older as a youth, I had to wrestle with the responsibilities of that personhood in terms of supporting particularly my younger brother and my mom as my mom and dad went through divorce, my dad moving out of the house and eventually out of town, and my mom spiraled into depression and even thoughts of ending her life, but finally recovering and reinventing herself and discovering her full agency as an artist and activist.

Certainly in my youth I had a fair amount of naiveté, particularly in not really appreciating how remarkable my parents’ “libertarian” approach to parenting really was. I recall my mom’s parenting mantra, “Bright kids will tell you what they need!” but I did not appreciate how radical that thinking was, given the prevailing paradigm of kids “behaving like children”.

It is through that lens of my own mostly self-directed youth that I witnessed my own kids charting their development, in school and out, and wrestled with my own role as their parent, either facilitating or retarding that development. It was the bias of my own experience, after our son increasingly seemed diminished and even harmed by being required to go to school, that contributed so much to his mom and I becoming comfortable with pulling him out of school and letting him just live his life instead. (And then later giving that same option to our younger daughter.)

Now over fifty myself, and looking back at the decades of my youth and witnessing the decades of my kids’ youth, I realize how much our culture still discounts the capabilities of our young people to direct their own lives. That said, I acknowledge the privilege of being white and male, and (though growing up in a family of modest means) not having to live in poverty or within a dangerous and kid-unfriendly neighborhood. And that said, I will continue to advocate for an approach to parenting and broader “rules of engagement” between youth and adults that includes more mutual respect while we play our legitimate roles of being of assistance to each other.

Moving Beyond “Adultism” & Disrespect of Youth

Cooper Zale — Mon, 24 May 2010 04:43:36 +0000

It is stunning to me the “adultism” demonstrated by the disrespectful ways many adults still treat children and youth, particularly their own kids. I think it is one of the last vestiges in our society of pure patriarchal “power-over” protocol that is still considered acceptable by many adults in dealing with their children and youth. That protocol involves the assumption that the “superior” adult/parent has the absolute command and control over the “inferior” young person/child, such that any inappropriate behavior by the “inferior” reflects on and is highly disrespectful to the reputation of their “superior” and must be forcibly modified to save face.

My daughter Emma shared an incident with us yesterday that occurred at a family gathering of one of her friends that Emma had attended. One of her friend’s young cousins was bored and began literally climbing the wall by where Emma was seated. Emma told the young boy politely that he really shouldn’t be doing that, concerned mostly that he might fall and hurt himself.

The kid’s mom saw this happening, came into the room and grabbed her son, and in front of everyone dressed him down, saying that he should have listened to what the nice young lady had told him and that he should now go back over to her, smile, and apologize. When he resisted, she marched him over to Emma and again told him to smile and apologize.

Emma was mortified by the mom’s behavior, but being a guest at a friend’s family gathering, was not sure what to do other than do nothing. The mom continued to scold her son until he finally apologized to Emma.

I’m sure that same woman would never have done this to an adult, even one she was responsible for or somehow supervising. But she felt it was appropriate and even demanded by the situation because this was “her” child and his behavior was profoundly disrespectful and cast aspersions on her and the entire family in front of an honored guest. As I said, it was very patriarchal and “adultist”, even though it was a woman enforcing the “code”.

In case you are not familiar with term “adultism”, it is defined as the disrespect and discrimination against young people (simply because they are not adults) that exists beyond the legitimate responsibility of adults – parents, teachers and others – to provide guidance and a developmentally appropriate environment for young people to mature to adulthood. (See my posts on “Defining Adultism” and “The Dimensions of Adultism”.)

It is also a perfect example of the sort of power-over command and control of patriarchal practice, which remains strong in many families, particularly in the political dynamics of the relationships between adults and children. (See my posts on this topic starting with “Defining Patriarchy”.) Our civilization has come along way to move away from treating other adults as slaves or chattel, but the way we treat our youth may be the last bastion of this 5000-year-old social order of hierarchy, domination and control.

Even though the kid’s behavior was inappropriate, the mom should have showed this younger human being some basic human respect. If he had been an adult, she most likely would have talked to him in private and not humiliated him in front of Emma and everyone else within earshot. But in this incident the parent felt it was appropriate and even necessary to subject him to this ordeal.

What we are talking about here is a different definition of “respect” than the patriarchal one, which is automatic respect for your “superiors”, while having to gain their respect through your appropriate behavior. What does a non-hierarchical “mutual respect” between adult and child really mean or look like?

If I were this child’s parent in this situation, I would probably physically get down on the child’s level so I could look straight into his eyes rather than looking down on him. I would explain that we had guests in the house and that what he was doing was dangerous and also making our guests uncomfortable. I would ask him if he was doing this because he was bored, and if so would acknowledge that boredom, and I would ask what could possibly be done to address it. I would ask him if he would like to apologize, and if not, I would apologize to my guest and explain that my son was the only young child at the party and was bored.

It is interesting how these patriarchal customs perpetuate through hundreds of generations from their roots in militaristic pastoralist tribes that invaded “Old Europe” from the Eastern periphery, several thousand years before the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) emerged. (This is at least as it is theorized by archeologist Marija Gimbutas and documented in Riane Eisler’s book, The Chalice and the Blade.)

200 years ago these protocols were still considered appropriate by white Europeans for dealing with their adult chattel, including their wives and black slaves. Two centuries of struggling for racial and gender equality have challenged and invalidated the concept of adult chattel, at least from Western civilization, though remnants of this form of patriarchal control certainly still remain in continuing racial and gender bias.

But it is still considered okay for parents to treat their children as chattel, within certain legal limits enacted during the 20th Century for child protection. It is still built into our laws that parents (or their surrogates, like school teachers) are considered completely responsible for children under their charge. And though corporal punishment is no longer legal in schools, last I heard it is still legal at home, as long as it doesn’t cross the legal line of “child abuse”.

So how much longer before this archaic power-over protocol is finally and completely driven from our egalitarian culture? How long before it is generally accepted that the relationships between adults and children can be mutually respectful, and based on the partnership protocols of power-with facilitation rather than patriarchal power-over command and control?

I have to acknowledge that redefining the political dynamics of the relationship between adults and youth is difficult. Within the concepts of liberty, justice and equality that our contemporary Western society was founded on, complete adult equality is the obvious progression. But adults have a legitimate role of stewardship vis-à-vis young people, and youth aren’t considered capable of full citizenship, so isn’t “youth equality” (with adults) an oxymoron?

This seems to me to be one of the major challenges of this new century. To create new generally accepted protocols for relationships between adults and youth that are based on liberty and mutual respect, but acknowledge the legitimate stewardship role adults play assisting youth with coming of age.

I think it can start with dialog between parents and children, teachers and students, counselors and campers, etc about the dynamics of the relationship and each party’s stake in that relationship.

As to existing models of this approach, I believe the greatest aspect of the Unitarian-Universalism that I embrace and my own kids have grown up within is the way that UU camps, conferences and other events for older youth are almost completely youth led, with adults playing as minimal a role as is legally possible (See my piece “Camps, Cons & Compasses”). In my opinion, this governance model could be applied to many more of the institutions in our society where adults as stewards work with youth, including our schools.

If these ideas seem like the path forward to you as well, you might check out the website of the Institute for Democratic Education in America (IDEA), an organization recently established by people I know that is trying to bring the principles of democracy and youth empowerment to our education system.

Power (Over) Corrupts

Cooper Zale — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 16:26:24 +0000

The pedophile priest scandal in the Catholic Church over the past 25 years is just one more example of the societal axiom that “power corrupts”. The phrase is actually a bit too simplistic, not all forms of power necessarily corrupt. I would say more specifically that power exercised from the top down (what some delineate as “power-over”) inevitably leads to some form of corruption if the people subjected to this form of leadership are not involved in the governance process and/or do not have comparable power of their own to check the actions of their leaders. This was a key factor motivating the American Revolution (e.g. “taxation without representation”), the French Revolution and many other similar insurrections… part of a larger trend in the world to move from authoritarian toward more egalitarian models of governance. This other idea of power flowing from empowered consent of the group is what is delineated as “power-with”.

Many of us and our forebears through the centuries have fantasized about all the great things an “enlightened despot” could get done, rather than have to go through the messy “sausage making” of the democratic process. A recent case and point is the difficult path to passage of American health care reform legislation. If I had despotic power I would enact a single-payer system for the U.S. like Canada’s. Others might be convinced that this approach would be a disaster, and if enacted by dictatorial fiat (rather than by majority agreement) it probably eventually would be.

I have read extensively about Napoleon Bonaparte, perhaps the world’s most famous enlightened despot, and the milieu in which he rose to power, initially through popular consent but then transitioning to virtual dictatorship. The French republic of the early 1800’s (recently formed by violent revolution) that he rose to power in, was besieged on all sides by the remaining monarchies of Europe that feared the contagion of republicanism (plus the British who had their own set of issues with the French). As Napoleon quickly demonstrated his ability to lead armies to victory and expertly build progressive national infrastructure (in his country and conquered territories throughout Europe), the majority of the French people (in their desperation) willingly granted him his despotism, an act of at least initial consent of sorts.

Ultimately he did not succeed in making peace (through strength of arms) with France’s powerful neighbors and adversaries, but instead was “corrupted” leading to his misguided attempt to militarily subdue all the major continental monarchies of Europe, including a disastrous invasion of Russia. Whether it was ego, hubris, desperation or too narrow of a perspective, Napoleon did not have the empowered consent of his very able generals to perhaps advise him otherwise.

Fast-forwarding several centuries, look around the world today and see the corruption of power-over hierarchies, whether authoritarian national governments (like Iran or China) or hierarchical organizations (religious, educational, etc) within politically democratic countries. I continue to be troubled by our own education system’s hierarchical “command and control” bureaucracy that seems to me more like the old Soviet Union than an effective institution for preparing our youth to be active citizens in a democratic country.

And returning to religious denominations, see how the ones that are the most top-down in their governance structures tend to be the ones most subject to corruption. As I mentioned at the top of this piece, look at the troubles the very hierarchical Catholic governance structures are facing. If the goal is maintaining organizational continuity, and there are no checks and balances (including feedback from an empowered laity), then incidents of corruption (in this case child abuse) tend to be “managed” without transparency toward that goal of continuity and maintenance of the power structure.

In Iran, another hierarchical power-over theocratic structure continues to corrode what attempts this proud and long-lived country makes to reinstate more progressive governance institutions. Iran is no Yugoslavia or Iraq, countries cobbled together with disparate ethnic enclaves by imperialist Western countries. The United States was involved in setting up what was essentially an attempt at an “enlightened despotism” in the rule of the Shahs in Iran after World War II. The corruption of that regime led to revolution and the replacement of secular despots by a theocratic order that maybe had the approval of the majority of the people initially, but with its power-over model led inexorably to a new corrupt despotism.

I find it of note how Judaism has generally avoided high levels of corruption. With the destruction of the Temple thousands of years ago, its governance model transitioned from the original hierarchical priesthood to a much flatter, more egalitarian model of rabbis and minions exercising a more facilitative power-with model, without a strong central authority akin to the Catholic archdioceses and Papacy. The Protestant Reformation introduced flatter, more egalitarian religious structures within Christianity, which can be argued were precursors of the more egalitarian secular governments in the West that followed.

I am less familiar with the branches of Islam, Hinduism, and other religions centered more in Asia, but note the apparent egalitarian governance of Buddhism, and its continuing role as an ethical conscience (and challenge to corrupt authoritarian regimes) in many parts of Asia.

Even our country’s recent financial meltdown has the hallmarks of power-over corruption. Big financial firms were essentially operating without checks and balances, creating new finance products that were not sufficiently understood by most investors, and lost their sense of balance, being corrupted by the possibility of huge financial returns.

Frequently this sort of power-over situation exists between adults and youth (think kids with their parents and kids in school for two key areas). As a society, and in our laws, we tend to put the adult in the (often difficult) position of being completely responsible for one or more non-adult human beings. The adult is expected (by law and/or custom) to make all the important decisions, and by those same conventions, allowed to do so without the consent or even the consultation of the youth under their charge. For some adults, who are not well versed in developing good relationships with young people under their purview, it can become an exercise in simple enforcement of adult-mandated rules “by any means necessary”, which can involve an inordinate amount of power-over control and coercion.

Just like any other institution where power-over control is exercised, the adults (parents, school staff, etc) in positions of authority over youth put themselves in the position of being vulnerable to the inevitable corruption.

But what forms does the “corruption” take in the adult-youth interaction? I see it when I am out and about, particularly in a store, restaurant or a mall where a certain amount of decorum and restraint is expected, and kids (unlike perhaps in parks) can’t just “run wild”. I see the parents saying “stop that!” to their kids and/or threatening some punishment, the words spoken with an undercurrent of anger which feels like a projection from something repressed. Perhaps the angry parent is venting rage from some previous interaction with another adult (spouse, boss, etc) where the situation or social convention (or personal shyness) prevented them from confronting the real source of their directly.

The convention is that parents can “discipline” their own kids however they see fit, as long it doesn’t cross some abstract line into overt “child abuse”. This amounts to a nearly unmitigated power-over relationship between parent and child, and for the parent who perhaps does not know better, a situation where they can vent or dump stresses from other situations on a young person who really has not good means of redress. I have been guilty of this at times with my own kids along the way. Some of us adults learn to consistently speak respectfully to young people (even when we are very angry) like we would with another adult. Some of us don’t.

But the temptation is always there to dump on your kid… no one is likely to rise to their defense. Where conventions of hierarchical control still hold play, like they mostly do in parenting (and in the surrogate parenting in schools), even we parents who consider ourselves more “enlightened” will have the occasion to vent or dump on our kids inappropriately. Kids generally assume that they are somehow at fault, that their bad behavior justifies all this rage directed upon them. Or else they “suck it up” and instead dump on a younger sibling or years later on their own kids.

What I believe is at play here are remnants of ancient patriarchal wisdom, perpetuated for thousands of year from generation to generation (see my previous posts on “Defining Patriarchy” and “Defining Adultism”). The wisdom of hierarchical power-over control is to do as you will with your “charges” just as long as you ensure they behave appropriately for their “station”. We have done so much as a world to move away from this unequal relationship between people, but obviously we still have a long way to go.

Good for the Goose, Gander & Gosling

Cooper Zale — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:15:18 +0000

An old rule of thumb of folk wisdom that I have adopted wholeheartedly is that, “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander”. I wouldn’t call this conventional wisdom, since applied to folks rather than fowl it challenges the path of least resistance of the patriarchal thread still strongly woven through our cultural trajectory. But I would recommend it as a simple metric for implementing the Golden Rule and promoting a society based on partnership rather than patriarchy.

A simple application of this rule, but metaphorically powerful I think in challenging male supremacy, is the logic of opening doors for other people. When I come to a doorway in a store or at my work just before another man I open the door for him, since I would do so for a woman. Conversely, if a woman gets to the door just before me I am comfortable letting them open it for me, since if the situation were reversed, I would be comfortable opening the door for her.

Now of course, with either gender, there is an acknowledgment of diminished capacity, even if temporary, that factors in to this social etiquette. I might make the effort to move ahead of that person closer to the door to open it if they had their hands full or appeared elderly and with limited mobility, or a small child who might not have the strength to open the door themselves.

In traditional (patriarchal) practice, men go out of their way to open doors for a woman but not for a man. Opening a door for a woman is an acknowledgment of and deference to her “privileged” status of being under the care and protection of men. Opening a door for a man, if he doesn’t have his hands full or is maybe elderly and infirm, could be taken in this traditional perspective as a sign of disrespect, treating another male not as a peer but like a woman.

I think it is very interesting to watch how people behave in public settings at doorways regarding who opens for whom and when the person holding the door open passes that task on to someone else. The observed behavior says a lot about the assumptions of status.

Sometimes I see a family with mom, dad, daughter and son approaching the door. The son opens the door and the daughter and mom go through. The dad hangs back to signal that his son, who behaved appropriately by holding the door for the women-folk, should now pass the task to the dad to hold the door while his son now passes through the doorway. Finally the dad (in my take having demonstrated his status as head of family and protector of the others) passes through the doorway himself, the order of things and the status of people within their roles having been acknowledged and preserved.

So am I reading too much into this? Try this observational exercise yourself and then give me your answer.

Beside the dynamic of gender between adults, which can vary from person to person and family to family, it is also interesting to observe the dynamic of age, particularly between adult and youth. At what age is the youth likely to have a parent or other adult open the door for them versus an expectation that the youth the door for themselves or (particularly if male) for someone else.

This leads to an interesting corollary to the goose/gander rule of thumb and application of the Golden Rule which I have more recently adopted, which is, “What’s good for the goose and gander is good for the gosling”. If I would treat an adult a certain way (to show due respect) in a given situation, I try to treat a youth the same way in a similar situation. Conversely, if I am tempted to assist a youth with something, I make sure I would also be comfortable assisting an adult with the same thing.

Prior to adopting this rule, if I saw a child of say five stretching to reach an item on a grocery store shelf, I might as an adult, without asking, help them complete the task. But in the same situation with a fully functional adult I would never be so presumptuous to offer that help without asking if they needed assistance first. Having now adopted the rule, I would ask the child as well before giving assistance. No big deal perhaps.

But what about applying this “gosling corollary” to education? Say I see our same five-year-old is holding an empty cup and appears tall enough to employ but still confounded by the machine that will dispense ice and soft drink into that cup. Before I might have walked up to the child and immediately instructed them on how to fill their cup with ice then soda, something I would never presume to do with an adult, gauging it as the height of disrespect. Now I would ask the child first, “Do you need help?” and offer the instruction only after an affirmative answer.

I think youth and adults need to respect each other and understand that we are not fundamentally different from each other. Keeping that in mind, I think we adults need this sort of rule of thumb to help us decide what is appropriate in working with kids and specifically helping them learn.

Now maybe the strictest reading of this rule of thumb does not take into account the different developmental needs of humans at different ages, so I try to factor in some exceptions for what is developmentally appropriate. But I don’t think it is any more developmentally appropriate to instruct a person of five unsolicited than it is to do the same with a person of fifty. Both the five-year-old and the fifty-year-old are wrestling with autonomy and agency within the context of community.

Crying at the Curb

Cooper Zale — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 17:10:10 +0000

Eric's Middle School

My mom had always said that, “Kids will tell you what they need”. That was her way of saying she respected a young person’s ability to know what was best for them. But when our pre-teen son started telling us with his behavior that his middle school was not what he needed, we were not listening, and that failure led to what I recall as the darkest period of my parenting experience.

As I’ve said before, context is everything, and there were difficult issues at play during this time. Our son’s mom, my partner Sally, had gone through a diagnosis of breast cancer, a mastectomy, chemotherapy and all the side effects of that treatment (see “Breast Cancer”). Our son had had some bad experiences in his previous two years of school with teachers who seemed either “checked out” (lost their love of teaching and were just going through the motions) or very rigid in the way they ran their classrooms.

Sally and I had great hopes at the time for the middle school he was newly attending. It was a performing arts magnet school and our son really loved theater and film. We had naively hoped that the school built its entire curriculum around the performing arts and our son could just plunge into a creative milieu that he loved and learn what he needed to learn as a consequence. Though he did have one theater class that he really got into, and his physical education class was dance, the rest of his day was spent in the same traditional academic classrooms that he found boring and had had difficulties with the previous two years.

He did have some good experiences at that school school. He had several teachers who appreciated and enjoyed who he was as an individual, and ran a looser, noisier, more collaborative classroom which he was much more comfortable in. He participated each semester in both dance or theater performances, and developed close friendships with some of his fellow cast members. He also had the opportunity to successfully lead an effort – including a student petition drive – to lobby the schools principal to open up an additional area for the students to eat lunch outside.

But most of his day in school was spent with teachers in classroom environments that he found overly structured, needlessly formal and featured boring make-work in an otherwise interesting subject. Some examples…

Our son had a science class where the teacher started the year with a weekly schedule that involved lectures, experiments then a Friday quiz or test that was the bulk of the student’s grade. Our son found the material interesting, listened to the lectures, participated in discussion and experiments, and demonstrated his acquiring of the knowledge by getting A’s on the quizzes and tests. But because many of the students were doing poorly on those same quizzes and tests, the teacher changed his approach to try and help them bump up their failing grades. He instituted mandatory homework that was 50% of the class grade. Our son refused to do the homework while continuing to ace the quizzes and tests, lowering his grade from an A to a C, and putting him constantly at odds with his teacher pestering our son for never-done homework.

A video production class, which our son was so looking forward to, was led by a teacher who spent the first ten weeks of class having the students study the camera manuals and other texts on film-making and not letting them even touch the video equipment itself. The teacher was apparently concerned that his students would misuse the equipment and by keeping them away from it for so long, created a very negative class dynamic. By the end of the twenty-week class, according to our son, the students had done very little actual video work and were generally unhappy with the class and disgusted with the teacher.

The above mentioned experiences, the context of his mom’s breast cancer recovery, plus the academic routine of school in general, and homework in particular, took its toll on our son. He regularly expressed a feeling that he was trapped in an everyday routine at school that was “boring and pointless” with no hope for relief until holiday breaks or the end of the school year. But caught up in our own lives including my partner Sally’s recovery from breast cancer, and the prevailing parental norm that kids needed to suck it up, take their medicine, and show up and perform in school every day, we did not heed my mom’s advice and listen to our son’s assessment of what he needed. Through two years in this school his situation deteriorated until by 8th grade things came to a head.

During this period, our son was having more and more trouble getting to sleep at night. He later shared with me that he dreaded those weekday mornings when he had to go to school, so he resisted the coming of the new day as much as he could by delaying going to sleep. Making this situation worse, as part of trying to orient him to successfully navigate and perform in his school, we had had him evaluated by doctors who diagnosed him with Attention Deficit Disorder (see “Prescription for Academics”) and prescribed the stimulant Aderall to help him focus better in the classroom and on his homework. We gave him a full pill in the morning and then a half pill in the afternoon to ease his “crash” when the stimulant wore off, but I think it contributed to his difficulty sleeping at night.

Increasing difficulty getting to sleep led to increasing resistance to getting up in the morning, getting dressed and going to school. By the fall of his 8th grade year, every morning was a grueling ordeal of cajoling, pleading and/or coercing him to get out of bed, get dressed and get in the car. This led to him being late to his first period class almost every morning, and except for his English teacher who liked him and did not report him tardy, our son would have been constantly viewed by the school staff as a delinquent student.

As the situation worsened, our son would plead with me on the way to school to not make him go to school that day and let him stay home. Following the tough love parental strategy at that point (advised by his teachers and an educational therapist we had sent him to for a time) I would tell him that he had to go to school and work things out for himself.

Things deteriorated to the point where I would essentially drag him, crying to be allowed to go home, out of the car and leave him sobbing on the curb by his school while I drove off. I can almost not bear to write down these words and admit to doing this morning after morning. What was I thinking? I had let conventional wisdom trump my mom’s advice and my own best judgment.

After weeks of this and several incidents my partner and I finally gave up our effort to keep our son in school. The first incident was when our son walked off to the mall by his school rather than go to class, and was picked up by a truant officer. The second was his response to taking the California 8th grade math assessment test, where rather than answering the questions, he wrote a short essay on his test form including an expletive that captured the depth of his rage (see “Fuck Math”) and got everyone’s attention.