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Parenting

It occurs to me that in raising emotionally intelligent children–which is to say, within my world view, the capacity for authentic Goodness–it is very important to allow them to name and express negative emotions.  You need to allow them to say things like “I am feeling very angry right now, and I don’t know why.  Maybe I’m hungry, but I think I also need some space.”

I think for most of history parents believed that if they created children who did what they told them to do, and acted as they were taught, that they had succeeded.  But history is a succession of violent scenes, scenes of grief, rapine, greed, vanity, and internecine violence (I would argue ALL violence is ultimately internecine), is it not?

Logically, if shame is the outcome of trauma, then a shame based society is a trauma based society.  You beat obedience into your kids, do you not?