Don't You Sometimes Have to Force Children?

Ed Lisbe

PURPOSE OF ARTICLE

This article is intended to be read by counselors, teachers, and youth specialists with their imagining that a caring adult is addressing it to young adults and older children. This article presupposes minimal familiarity with my MyBody-YourBody (MBYB)ideas.

Adults: Imagine being a young person. How can you understand all the ways we adults force you to do things you don't want to do. It is constant, much more than you might think. Unless you are aware of all the ways we adults, especially your parents and teachers, use force against you to get you to do our will instead of your own, you will most likely pay these kinds of very serious personal prices: (1) you will not know your own will and as a result will not have freewill choice in your life, (2) you won't know what you want, (3) you will begin to lose your capacity to respond from your heart and inner guidance to the natural rhythms and demands of life, and (4) you will most likely end up feeling powerless or crazy, or both.
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"Don't you sometimes have to force children?" is the one question we adults tend to ask to justify our choice to use force against you in any one particular situation. The question is misleading because it implies that the choice to force you in that one situation is rare. The choice is not rare, it's just the opposite. Our force against you is everywhere, in almost everything we do with you. Much of the force is so quiet and subtle that often we adults don't even see it. We lie to ourselves--that we only use force on rare occasions. Our lack of awareness does not change the nature of our coercion or the cost to you (and, ultimately, to us as a society.) With your knowledge of MyBody-Your Body (MBYB) you will be able to make us face the truth of our ever-present force so that we will stop asking that question, stop lying to ourselves and to you. We haven't been able to do this ourselves. We need your help (and probably won't see it as helpful at first.)

Few people would find fault with an adult grabbing you if you are very young (or very old) as you wander into a busy road. Also, we would all want to stop you from picking up a burning coal or from putting your arm under an operating radial arm saw. We stop you, without many questions on either your part or ours, when there is a clear and present danger that you are likely to suffer permanent, irreparable physical injury. (How we stop you, often with unnecessary violence, is a different issue.)

We also restrict you. At the extreme, few people would argue with restricting the freedom of anyone, adult or child, who rapes or murders another person. Those of us who act with such extreme physical violence toward others are usually locked up in a jail to prevent us from doing more harm to more people.

The problem with stopping or restricting peoples' physically violent behaviors toward others is that there are many exceptions. We don't, for instance, tend to put people into jail for rape or murder during times of war. Those of us who run the government in one country approve the killing of people in another country. This includes the murder of innocent women, children, and babies. We call this "collateral damage," and we give our soldiers medals for their killing, often calling them heroes.

Rape, also, is an accepted behavior during wartime. It is a reward for the winning side in battle. Having "enemy" babies is one of the best ways to destroy the morale of an entire culture of a people, long beyond the actual event of the war.

What about abortion? Some people consider that murder, where the life of an unborn zygote or embryo or fetus is stopped at some stage in its development into a baby. Or, euthanasia, where a loved one might be in so much pain, or where the body is "alive" but the brain is dead? In those cases relatives consider stopping the person's "life." What about stopping our own life? Suicide is a crime. Even with the help of a physician (physician-assisted suicide) we aren't legally allowed to stop our own life if we want to do that. So, we can kill others and not kill ourselves? Clearly, our restrictions against others in cases of extreme violence are arbitrary.

THE VALUES UPON WHICH ADULT FORCE IS BASED

Nothing is as clear as we want you to think it is. If we can't figure out life and death, imagine how unclear we must be about issues like making you eat your spinach, brush your teeth, turn off the TV, and clean your room?

We teach you our "values" and we want you to learn and follow our "values," but what are our values? You often hear the phrase "family values" from adults in this country. " Who can argue with those nice-sounding words "family" and "values.? The problem is that those words don't mean very much in the context of the use of the use of force. The words just feel good, like the words "motherhood" and "apple pie."

With adults, little is clear to ourselves when we talk about our values, even around issues as important as life or death.

So we tend to speak to you as if we know, and we want you to have certain values about all this. Adults disagree with each other--in one state, for instance, physician-assisted suicide is legal while in all the other states it is not. Not only do we disagree with each other, we even disagree with ourselves--often those of us who are against the life taking in cases of abortion are for the life-taking in cases of capital punishment or war.

But we adults don't worry at all about our inconsistencies when we talk to you. We just want you to believe what we want you to believe when we want you to believe it. When we say one thing to you one day and something different the next day, we don't want you to be logical and to ask us, What about what you said that other time? And so when you ask us a reasoned question like that, we tend to defend ourselves:

• I don't care what I said yesterday. This is today.
• Stop being snotty with me.
• That was different. It has nothing to do with what we're talking about now.

That is the sound of adult reactivity. Most adults don't want to think about our "reasons" or our confusions. It is too hard. It's much easier for us to talk loosely about "values," and then be mad at each other and align ourselves with one side against the other: black/white; rich/poor; Christian/Jew; gay/straight; liberal/conservative.

As long as there is a real or imagined enemy, whether in wartime or in peacetime, none of us has to think about our values. We just make ourselves right and the others wrong. And we can join a group that agrees with us . . . about something. Anything. Adults do this and so do young people.

In the school where I was the psychologist the "enemy" thing was played out this way among the students: rural/urban; retards/honors; jock/nerd; freshman/senior; home team/away team; student/teacher; in-crowd/out-crowd; pretty/ugly; fat/thin; general studies/college level. In addition to these distinctions, students also adopted most of the same traditional polarization positions of adults such as black: white and gay: straight.

ADULT FORCE IS ALMOST TOTALLY ARBITRARY

Since our values are not well defined, since they are vague and inconsistent, doesn't it make sense that our force against you will also be inconsistent? Isn't each of us required to ask this question when we don't like what someone else is doing and we want to force that person to do what we want:

Are there other ways of being in the world as acceptable as my own?

For most parents, the answer to that question with our children is "No." The answer to the question is also "No" when there is any form of prejudice which advocates my way of being in the world as the one right way to be: one correct sexual orientation, one correct skin color, one correct religion. Is it an appropriate use of my force to correct these "deficiencies" in people, and impose my will on them? Who gets to choose the standard against which others will be punished or hurt for their differences?

For some adults the appropriate use of force is one thing, for others it is something else. Imagine the difficulty you will have sorting out the sense in your family life, for instance, if your parents have divorced:

• I am your mother and in my house I make you go to bed at a certain time, and I make you be home at night by a certain curfew. (Schedules and time limits seem to be my big issues.)
• I am your father and I don't care about bedtimes or curfews. In my house you have to clean your room. (That is my big issue. Maybe your mother doesn't care how you keep your room?)

Then you begin dealing with a partner of your mother or father? I am your stepparent. I have my own set of rules. Maybe my strongest focus as a stepparent is on school, which neither of your parents cares about as long as your grades stay within a 'B' range. So I say to you something about homework that your mother or father would never say, "You need to finish your homework before you do anything else in the afternoon after school. You can go to your friend's house later."

Add in your teacher, or teachers. One girl told me how she got into a lot of trouble her first day in a new school when, not thinking she was doing anything wrong, got out of her seat to go over to help her friend who was having trouble with a page of math problems. Seeing the girl talking and leaning over her friend's desk, the teacher who had been busy in the back of the room yelled out: Get back in your seat. You don't get out of your seat without permission, and you never talk during worktime. How dare you think it's ok to cheat like that! In this example, the girl who tried to help her friend said nothing to the teacher and went back to her seat. That's what most of you would do, right? You know we don't want to know about your reasons for doing things. You know it is the teacher's classroom and she wants what she wants and doesn't care about other classrooms.

But what if the teacher's coercion was done in a more loving manner? Or when the force is administered with a smiling face, a soothing voice, and a reassuring touch? What if the teacher had put her arm around the girl's shoulder and while directing her quietly back to her seat, said something reassuring to her like this: Now sweetie, I know you want to help, but we mustn't interfere with other peoples' learning, right? You just get back in your own seat and we'll let your friend to the best she can. We all have to take responsibility for our own work. You understand that, don't you? Is this force? Absolutely. Is the outcome the same? Of course it is. The only difference is the subtlety. In this case the teacher appears to be your friend.

Very little makes much sense. One adult forces you to do one thing, while another forces you to do something else. The girl who was moved to help her friend was shocked by the teacher's reaction because she was only doing what her parents always told her to do and what she was taught to do in her other school, in which being cooperative and helpful was rewarded.

Reasoned discussion with most adults is usually not an option for you. We simply want what we want. You sure can't learn anything from us about life in general, about how to make responsible choices for yourself and for others. Teamwork and helpfulness can be rewarded or punished. Curfews may or may not matter. Tidy rooms for one parent are more important than grades; for another it's homework.

We must make you absolutely crazy. In most situations like these we don't even see the force we're using. We just think we're telling you things that need to be done, sharing our values, making sure you are being "disciplined" and "responsible." I don't think most adults would see our behaviors as forcing you to do things against your will, especially when you accept our demands and don't challenge us.

It's the same with your parents. When you try to explain what happens in other places, you hear things from your mother or father like; I don't care what anyone else does. This is my house and in my house you do what I tell you to do. Don't you hear that all the time? Your mother doesn't care what your father does. Your father doesn't care what your mother does. Neither cares what your friends' parents do. It is the same for each of us adults in all the other examples. We don't care much, if at all, how our choices of force with you fit into a bigger picture that you have to live with, about which you are trying to make sense for your life. You know we don't care. We actually tell you that. So you say nothing.

There are usually three reasons why you, like the little girl who was reprimanded for helping her friend, don't challenge our unfair force against you:

(1) the fact that you know we don't care what you think

(2) challenging us never even arises as a choice for you

(3) you don't have the language with which to do it.

How can you make sense of something that was irrational and arbitrary to begin with? All you can do is stop thinking. Because trying to figure out something as illogical as the way we treat you will only make you crazy. (Though the MyBody-YourBody paradigm will help you think about and use your inner guidance in these kinds of situations.)

THE ONE LESSON ALL YOUNG PEOPLE LEARN FROM ADULTS

Young people learn one universal lesson from adults and our use of force against you. You learn that "being good" is doing what you are told. You learn that "being bad" is not doing what you are told. That's the one lesson almost all of you learn it very well. In almost every culture, all over the planet, adults use this language to describe you. We want you to believe that you are "good" or "bad" depending on how well you respond to our orders.

Your obedience or disobedience to our authority over you has nothing, in fact, to do with you being either "good" or "bad." The inner you has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not you do what we tell you to do.

And even if you confront adults respectfully and skillfully, most of us will think of you as "bad" simply because you are challenging us. We adults don't like to be challenged.

So you have two basic ways of responding to our use of force against you, neither of which makes you a "good kid" or a "bad kid" although that is how adults will view you: You can do what we tell you to do (or) You can not do what we tell you to do. You won't learn anything of lasting value from either choice.. The only thing you can and do learn from the force adults use against you is that bigger or stronger people on the planet can do whatever we want to smaller or weaker people on the planet.

If we play this situation out a little further, this issue of force gets even more interesting. Let's say you see yourself as one of the "good kids." What if someone has your basketball and won't give it back? Is it appropriate for you to use force to get it back? You haven't learned a principle from our adult treatment of you to apply to this or to any other situation. What do you do? You're on your own. And we will probably make you morally wrong for whatever choice you do make with the basketball.

ONE PRINCIPLE FOR THE FAIR AND JUST USE OF FORCE

Where does force fit into the concepts of human rights and social justice? Can unrestricted freedom work in a society where a great many people have to live and work together? I don't think so. If we want a society that protects its members' rights to safety, self-determination and creative self-expression, then we can't have license for everyone to use whatever force we want with other people anytime we want, right?

The My 'Body'-Your 'Body' model (MBYB) defines the fair or appropriate use of force based on the principle of whether or not one person's behavior is affecting another person's life in a negative way. That standard for the application of force, for the self-protection or the protection of others who are being harmed by someone else, applies to all situations. It is simple enough for you to understand if you are two years old, and fair enough for you to "buy" into and accept if you are eighteen and always find yourself in one kind of trouble or another with adults.

Applying this one standard to a situation where the girl's stepdad demanded that she complete her homework before going to her friend's house, the girl might say something like this to him:

I know you are not going to be happy about this, and I am going to go to my friend's house. Your order about me doing my homework right now isn't fair because whether or not I do my homework is about my life, not yours. You aren't affected by my choice. You just want something different for me here than I want for myself. Maybe you are right about what I should be doing? I don't think so, and I am willing to pay the consequences with my school and my teacher if I'm wrong. That's for me to decide, not you. I'm willing to talk with you about this later, maybe with a couple of other people, ok? I respect you, very much.

This is an assertive response, respectfully worded and delivered. You can't do much better than this in times of disagreement with someone else. You are acknowledging the other person's positive intention, stating your own thoughts and feelings logically and without blame, and offering to communicate further. Adults don't tend to talk this non-violently and respectfully to each other under similar circumstances. Unfortunately, because you are a young person and you are not being obedient to adult authority, most adults will not appreciate your skillful approach to conflict resolution.

DON'T EXPECT TO HAVE A REASONED CONVERSATION WITH MOST ADULTS

Much more likely than a reasoned adult response, you might be physically restrained as you attempt to walk out of the house. You might even be hit for "talking back" or for not being obedient. Most adults will feel threatened, not only by your disobedience but even more by the calm, reasoned, respectful way you are speaking about it. We won't know what to make of that. It is much easier and more comfortable for us to deal with you when you are aggressive or defensive with us--we know what to do with that. The stepdad would know what to do, if the girl yelled, kicked the couch, and stomped over to the door screaming furiously:

Oh, yeah? Well you're not my real dad and you can't tell me what to do! I'm outta here and just you try to stop me. I hate how you're always ordering me around. You're fat anyway and all you ever do is sit around watching stupid football games all the time. You probably never even did your own homework, right? Mr. Perfect always telling me what to do. Get lost idiot. Stupid jerkhead.

When you react this way to adults, you give us the excuse we need to reject the issue you are talking about. We simply focus on your anger and with self-righteous piety. And if we reply with/in a calm and very measured voice, we make you seem wrong for your inelegant presentation of a legitimate issue. So the stepdad might say,

See? And you expect me to listen to you? I will pay attention to you when you grow up and stop acting like a spoiled brat. You ask for respect and look how you talk to me.

The adult wins and you lose. It's that simple. You make it so easy for us when you get angry. We never have to address your issue. All we need to do is walk away while making you wrong solely on the basis of your behavior. Of course, you might not win anyway even if you make your case in a totally rational discussion (or according to commonly recognized and accepted dispute resolution procedures). We adults have all the power so we can do whatever we want.
The point is not to worry about our response to you.

Be concerned only about what you say and what you do. That's all you can do. It's all any of us can do. We can only control our half of any relationship. The adult's response to you doesn't matter. I'm not saying that being hit won't hurt, or that being "grounded" won't cause you any problems. All I am saying is that you have to be satisfied with doing the best you can do.
Your speaking is one thing and peoples' response is another. They are totally separate issues.

People respond how people respond. That is their issue. Your issue is to speak your truth with as much love and compassion in your heart as possible no matter what the circumstances and no matter what is being done to you. That is the message of people like Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mohandas Gandhi, Joan of Arc, Harriet Tubman, the present-day Dalai Lama who didn't change their speaking even with the threat of death over their heads. They simply said what needed to be said. Using them as an example, I am saying that you cannot wait for your parents or your teachers to be happy with what you say. They might never be happy. That is not your concern.

THE "DRAGON" - THE IMAGE OF THE COLLECTIVE

People in authority are rarely happy with resistance to their wishes. Although this is a very sad message, try to understand the reality that we adults--your parents and your teachers--might never be happy with your respectful disobedience:

• no matter how truthful you are being
• no matter how ethical your behavior
  
• no matter how aligned your issue is with human rights and social justice concerns
  
• no matter how lovingly and respectfully you address us
  
• no matter how consistent your issue is with our own expressed (not lived) values

That's what is. That is the truth of the "dragon" you are fighting. If you can accept that and stop wishing it were different, MyBody-Your Body/MBYB can help you slay this dragon of the unconscious and congealed collective memetic thought-form. You will feel less out of control in your life even if you are imprisoned or punished. You might even be able to help your parents and your teachers to battle the dragon they are facing. We are all in a similar fight.

Your dragon, as a young person, is adult. It is not your mother. Not your father. Not your teacher. As individuals, these important people in your life might be wonderful, beautiful, caring, compassionate human beings. They most likely want to have a self-determined life, the same as you. None of us, as individual adults is your problem. It is adult as a collective group that is your problem.

You could probably manage to get through to your mother on a particular issue of social justice, for example, if she were the one you were talking to. She isn't. She is not the one you are fighting. Understand this--you are not talking with your mother when it looks as if you are talking with her. You are talking with her, of course, just not only with her. Your mother is speaking a collective thought to you, an adult group thought. She is expressing the accepted and approved adult response to resisting child, not to you, not to the young person standing in front of her trying to reason with her. When words come out of her mouth in opposition to what you are trying to accomplish, you are hearing not just your mother's voice, but the voice of:

• your mother's mother
• your mother's mother's mother
  
• every one of your mother's friends
  
• all of their friends
  
• all of the teachers your mother has ever had in school
  
• all of the authors of books she's ever read about raising children
  
• all of the "official" leaders she looks to for wisdom such as psychologists, educators, clergy, judges, senators and movie and television heroes
  

That is who is talking to you. It's all of them. Your mother doesn't realize this, of course. She believes that she is talking to you, expressing her own values. So you can see it is a pretty big dragon you are fighting when you try to have a reasoned conversation with any of us adults.
The dragon you are fighting is the expression, spoken through the mouths of these individual adults in your life, of an entire adult group consciousness since the beginning of recorded time.

That is what you are trying to shift with your logic on any particular issue when you demand, as a young person, to be treated with the inalienable rights.

These are the rights that are guaranteed to all human persons as famously asserted by Thomas Jefferson when he wrote the United States Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men (sic) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men."

Remember that this is all you are really fighting for. You are not fighting for the right to push little old ladies in front of buses. You are not fighting for the right to burn down houses. When you are fighting adult, the dragon, you just want basic human rights. Seems reasonable, doesn't it, just to have the rights all people are supposed to have? You, as a young person, were never specifically excluded from the intention of this document. You have simply always been excluded from the practice of it.

A DEFINITION OF "FORCE"

Can adults be using force against you even if we are not touching your body or saying anything to you? I think so. Here is one way to define the word "force" used in the context of "power over" in relationships of unequal power:

• Force = anything that prevents a person's freewill choice due to a fear of negative consequences if he/she were to act on that choice.

This might not be the perfect definition, and it is good enough as a starting point for our purposes here. The whole issue of "force" tends to be confusing. A parent, for instance, trying to portray himself as a loving motivator rather than an as an aggressive tyrant in issues of conflict with his 11-year-old daughter once said with obvious pride in his voice:

"See that switch over there on the wall? I only used it once a few years ago. Now I never have to force her to do anything I ask."

Using that definition of the word "force," we can now have the conversation about the amount of adult force used against you. It is ever-present. We adults are being defensive when we ask the question, "Don't you sometimes have to force children to do things they don't want to do?" By implying that our force against you is rare, the question hides the truth. We are always forcing you to do things you don't want to do. Always. Force is not the exception, it is the rule.

• You are a third grade girl and you sit in an assigned classroom seat rather than next to your best friend where you would really like to sit. (FORCE)
• You are a four-year-old who eats your dinner first, even though the only thing you felt like eating was the ice cream cone you eventually got for dessert. (FORCE)
• You are a ten-year-old boy who spends a beautiful Saturday afternoon inside the house cleaning your room when more than anything else in the world you would rather be over at your best friend's house playing a great new tree climbing game he invented. (FORCE)
• You are a 14-year old boy who does homework you hate and for which you see no value, rather than watch your favorite television program. (FORCE)
• At a friend's birthday party a group of you are having a ball running, jumping, shouting, wrestling, pushing and climbing all over each other in your own space, not bothering any of the adults present. Suddenly you all stop what you are doing and become quiet in response to the firm voice of an adult saying Let's calm down and take it easy . . . (FORCE)
• You are a sixteen-year-old girl with an overall A+ average who would prefer to continue talking with your friends in the cafeteria about some trouble you are having with your parents, and you leave to go to a class where you've been bored every day for six weeks. (FORCE)

In situations like these, you do as you are told. Not for the reasons adults think. We adults believe you end up doing what we insist because deep down you understand what is good for you.

But I say you stop complaining, arguing, asking for what you want, or never ask in the first place because you are intimidated by the presence of force. You know that talking won't get you anywhere, and that resistance will lead to harsher consequences--no ice cream and being sent to your room--when we eventually make you do what you don't want to do.

HOW ADULTS TALK TO YOU HIDES THE FORCE WE ARE USING

Most times we don't see our behavior as forceful because of the natural language we automatically tend to use. Sometimes we do see our behavior as forceful, and we deliberately choose words that sound nicer or more invitational than they are in order to hide the force we are using against you. We manipulate you this way because:

(1) admitting that we are forcing you to do something sounds very harsh in the context of loving childcare, and

(2) getting you to agree to do what we want is easier when you don't know that you are being forced to do it.

For instance, when we make you do what you don't want to do, we never have to admit the force we are using if we call it:

guidance; education; reasoning; understanding; needing; direction; asking; teaching; responsibility; listening; encouragement; insisting; an expectation; discipline

Sample parent statements that are statements of force but not explicitly so:

• I never force her to do anything, she just understands that we have an expectation in this house about mealtime.
• I'm just teaching him to be a little more responsible around his little brother.
• He knows that he has to be disciplined enough to clean his room.
• I just need certain things, like him getting his chores done before dinner.
• I do insist he goes to bed by 9:00PM but that's not forcing him, it's just giving him direction.
• Sometimes I guide them a little more than they'd like, but it's my job to encourage politeness.

Our nice sounding and often educationally focused words hide the fact that we are making you do something you don't want to do. We can order you around like this, one hundred times in a day, and still innocently ask, Don't you sometimes have to force children to _____? as if the force we use against you is rare.

Parents and teachers who honestly believe we rarely force you to do things, or who focus only on the responsibility we are attempting to teach you, might be unaware of some of the main types of coercion and force that exist in our everyday language to get our way with you during times of disagreement:

1. "It's ______":

• I won't force my daughter to leave her friend's house. I'll just very firmly tell her 'It's time to go' until she leaves.
• I don't have to force my children to do their homework. It's understood that they don't watch television or play with their friends until homework is done.
• My children never question the seating arrangement in my classroom. They know it's expected that they will sit wherever I tell them.

By using the phrase "It's ____," adults want you to believe that we aren't making you do some-thing you don't want to do. We want you to believe there is an outside agreement that is exerting the pressure to get you to do what you don't want to do. This makes it harder for you to fight us because we aren't at fault. It is your problem. It's the same dynamic as with rules (see below).

More honest: I know you want to sit wherever you want in this class, but it is my class and I am
going to force you to sit where I want you to sit.

2. "The rule is ____":

To you, a fifteen-year-old who isn't tired and who wants to stay up later than the established "bedtime," we can say to you, What's the rule about bedtime?

By invoking a rule, we want you to think there is some sort of inviolate societal proclamation that we are implementing over which we have no control. Our goal is to avoid a potential argument. By getting you to think the rule is your problem and not to see that we are really your problem, you have nothing to fight. You can bang up against us, your parents or teachers, but how can you bang up against a rule established by a distant and unnamed rule-maker, like a King or President?

More honest: I am making you go to bed at 9:00PM because I believe that's good for you.

3. Non-choices:

Choices between cooperating with us and an alternative you will want to avoid, or between two unattractive alternatives, are not choices:

• Would you like to put your bicycle away and come inside now, or be grounded for two days?
• You can clean your room now, or not get your allowance this week.
• Eat either the spinach or the string beans if you want dessert.

More honest: I can 'ground' you for whatever I want, whenever I want.

In this case, I want you to put your bicycle away . . . now, and I also want you to come in for lunch . . . now. Unless you want to be 'grounded' for two days you better do what I say.

4. "Can't" & "Have to":

It is not easy for you to maintain an argument for what you want when the teacher says,
You can't go outside, you have to finish your math worksheet.

The words "can't" and "have to" are imperative requirements. It's like saying, You can't walk on water, or You have to eat if you want to live. It means something has to happen or not happen.

How can you argue with something like that? The two words convey an unanswerable finality. It's just the way it is. There are no alternatives, no options. Too bad.

That is exactly what we want you to believe, so we use those two words that aren't true. They are lies. In this example, the truth is that you can go outside as long as you are physically able to do so, and the truth is that you do not have to finish the homework, because you will not die if you don't.

More honest: I won't let you go outside. I'm forcing you to stay inside until your math is done. If you try to get outside I will physically stop you and you will be punished.

This language truthfully acknowledges the force that is actually being used. Adults prefer not to speak with this direct honesty in these types of situations because we sound so cruel and mean, and because we know that without the finality of can't and have to, you are more likely to fight for what you want. After explaining this language of force idea to one teacher, she looked me in the eye and said coldly, "Eddie, I don't want them to know what I am doing to them."

Our language can help us keep you in the dark. One parent, angry with his daughter's creative writing journal told the teacher, "I don't want my child learning how to think."

5. Non-questions:

Example #1: An adult angrily shouts at you, a 12-year-old walking into the house two hours after a set curfew: Where were you? Do you have any idea what time it is?

Neither of those are true questions. They are both "loaded," designed to trap you and set you up for our anger no matter what you answer. You know you are being set up. No answer will help you, and you know you have to say something or we will make your silence wrong:

I asked you a question!

So you are trapped. You are forced to answer the non-question, unable to escape the upcoming negative consequence.

More honest: Mary, tell me where you've been and what you've been doing that had you come home so late. It won't help because I'm going to ground you anyway, I just want to know.

Example #2: In school, simple sounding "questions" enable teachers, safely and with apparent innocence, to embarrass and humiliate you in front of your peers. For example, a teacher asks you this non-question knowing you can't answer it because you have been staring out the window:

John, what similar thing happened in those three Southern states -Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas- after they lost the Civil War?

More honest: John, I am going to ask you a question about the Civil War that I doubt you will be able to answer because you haven't been paying attention. My goal is to embarrass you in front of all your friends because I believe humiliating you will make you a better student.

YOU ARE ALWAYS AWARE OF THE PRICES YOU WILL PAY FOR NOT OBEYING US

In school, you are never unaware of the power that can be brought to bear on your non-conforming (and not necessarily disruptive) behavior:

• seat placement far from friends
• loss of play time
  
• removal from the class
  
• physical force from bigger and stronger teachers
  
• detention
  
• penalty-laden conferences with school officials and parents
  
• a lower grade
  
• referral to the school psychologist
  
• placement in a Division for Youth (in NYS) facility
  
• retention in grade for another year
  
• suspension from school
  

Because we don't have to use this "power over" you all the time, we adults tend to forget that this list of punishments is in your foreground constantly. It is like the guns and cuffs and clubs of those of us who are police officers. But the possible punishments are never far from your consciousness in our interactions with you.

In the face of all the force on that list, most of you submit to the demands of your teachers. As a student, you would have to be either crazy or inordinately intelligent (or stupid) to risk facing some or all of those penalties. So even when you might want to act contrary to our wishes, and even for a legitimate reason or cause, you'll very rarely do it. Usually bored, you will sit in your seat, do your homework, respond to questions, discuss what we want you to discuss, take tests, write in your notebooks, and generally do as you are told regardless of your personal feelings.

The few of you who do resist, and who keep resisting, are moved to increasingly restrictive environments. This is true in every institution--schools, prisons, mental hospitals.

I say that if we want you to act in certain ways when we are not around, we need to know why you do what you do when we are around. Are you, for instance, self-disciplined when you only do your homework because otherwise, your mother would not let you ride your bicycle for two weeks? No.

Neither are you being respectful when you ask permission to leave your seat for a moment when you believe your moving will not be a problem for anyone. If you don't run in the halls only because you're afraid of getting caught, you aren't being responsible. Not cursing only because you don't want to be spanked or forced to eat a bar of soap doesn't make you moral. You are not motivated if you do all of your lessons just to satisfy your teacher and parents when you have little interest in the material and see no relevance for your life. In all of these cases, I would claim you are only being obedient.

WHEN YOU FIGHT OUR FORCE?

There are four ways we describe your disobedience to our force:

• (1) You are being disobedient
  
• (2) You are being a discipline problem
  
• (3) You are being disrespectful
  
• (4) You have an attitude
  

Adults misdefine, misuse, and misapply most of these terms. We use the words very loosely to describe almost any behavior of yours that we don't like.

(1) You are being disobedient

This only means that you are not being obedient, that you are not obeying us. The refusal to do what one does not believe in doing may be done with great respect and without violence or disturbance to others--except for the disobedience itself. For example, what if you are a very smart student who refuses to do seatwork you already know? Instead, you take out a book to read or look out the window. You are being disobedient. Or, what if you are a 'D' student who refuses to answer a teacher's embarrassing question designed to humiliate you? You are being disobedient. Are either of those behaviors wrong?

Except for the disobedience itself, neither of your behaviors is necessarily causing a legitimate problem for anyone else. You are not someone who is hitting other children, destroying books, or throwing spitballs around the room during a lesson. There is nothing inherently "wrong" with your being disobedient except that the people in authority don't tend to like it. Martin Luther King was disobedient. He knew what he believed in and he had no problem at all with either his disobedience or his being put into jail for it.

(Here I want to exclude those of you who at home or in school might physically hurt others or destroy a classroom or property. In most schools, for instance, you don't make up a large part of the basic student population. As a school psychologist I was responsible for the overall mental wellness of the young people in a rural school district of 400 adults--teachers, resource professionals, and administrative staff--and 2500 students spread over eight elementary schools, two junior high schools, and one high school. In an average year it seemed to me that perhaps 50 or 60 of you did not belong in a regular school environment mostly because of the very real danger you posed to others. That is about 2% of the student body. If you are one of these kids, I am not talking right now about you. Interestingly, my opinion of the percentage of adults who caused as much or more trouble in my school district than the students was a bit higher. Probably 5% or about 20 of the 400 professionals. It's not that teachers and administrators like this are physically violent (some were). It's more that we abuse students psychologically, emotionally and spiritually. You experience terrible hurt and pain from us.)

(2) You are being a discipline problem

Actually, you "bad kids" who speak and act out in response to your true feelings may have more respect for yourselves and for your teachers than the "good kids" who might feel the same as you do and who say nothing. You may be more responsible and have higher moral standards. Adults whose control is being threatened don't tend to see you this way. We consider you to be discipline problems. What you actually are is disobedient, that's all. Adults wrongly equate the two. You might consider being proud of your disobedience the next time an adult tries to make you feel wrong for not doing something you are told to do that you believe is unfair. Just feel your pride or satisfaction. You don't have to express it to the adult. We are unlikely to understand. Then you won't have to spend more of your energy dealing with our reaction to you having an attitude. (See (4) "You have an attitude") below.)

Let's look at the phrase discipline problem. What we tend to mean, as with the word disobedient, is that you aren't doing what you have been told to do. Something you do may be disobedient, and it may or may not be a discipline problem depending on whether or not your disobedience is actively disruptive to and interferes with the lives of teachers and other students in the school.

Your behavior could be disruptive. But what if it affects no one else? What if it is peaceful non-compliance, respectfully following your own conscience?

The truth is that your behavior is often disruptive. You don't know, and we haven't taught you, how to work effectively through a system such as a school to create the change you want. Very few parents and teachers teach you how to disobey assertively or respectfully rather than aggressively. The disobedience of a Rosa Parks is lauded perhaps in a history lesson, and her type of disobedience is rarely if ever connected by your teachers to your real life disobedient experiences with adults.

If you are being disruptive to others with your disobedience, maybe that is what your behavior should be called: a disruption problem. That would be more accurate. Disruption is about physically interrupting or interfering with the flow of someone else's life. Your disruption could be unintentional: talking in a loud voice to your friend in a movie theater; kicking sand on peoples' blankets as you run on a beach trying to catch a football; jumping into a swimming pool unaware that you are splashing people on the deck who want to stay dry. Your disruption could be intentional: throwing something across a classroom to distract a teacher trying to teach a lesson; leaving the kitchen or bathroom a mess for others as you walk out without picking up after yourself; sitting in a tree to prevent loggers from clear-cutting a forest.

What is discipline? When the word 'discipline' is used interchangeably with the words disobedience or disruption it causes a great deal of unnecessary confusion. Discipline, as defined by My Body-Your Body (MBYB), refers to the condition of a person's self-imposed internal restraint needed to achieve his or her desired goal:

• "Discipline" has nothing to do with someone else's desired goal for you.
• "Discipline" has nothing to do with an externally imposed authority.
  
• "Discipline" has nothing to do with punishment.
  

I learned the MBYB definition of the word discipline from a teacher in a weekend adult education class I was attending. There were eighteen other adult students in the class with me. I happened to wake up a few times in the early morning and both times I saw him talking with students. He was with two people at 1:45 AM and he was with another person at 3:30 AM. This was after a full day of his teaching a very difficult, emotionally intense, and physically draining class with us.

Then, at 6:30 AM I saw him doing yoga. I couldn't believe it. I asked him, "How can you do this after working so hard not only all day, but also all night? How can you get up so early to do yoga? I don't understand." He answered matter of factly with the best definition of "discipline" I ever heard:

"Discipline is doing what you want to do when you don't want to do it."

As he returned to his yoga routine, I thought about what he said. It made perfect sense to me. Discipline is about a person paying a short-term price to achieve a desired long-term goal. The first part, ". . . doing what you want to do" is about the long-term goal. The second part, ". . . when you don't want to do it" is about the short-term price needing to be paid. To achieve the big goals we want for our future, we have to do things in the present, right now, that we don't necessarily feel like doing. In my teacher's case, he wanted yoga as a practice in his life. That was his long-term goal. He didn't feel like doing it that morning. He did it anyway because achieving his long-term goal of practicing yoga was more important to him than taking care of his short-term exhaustion that particular morning.

(3) You are being disrespectful

Disrespectful might be the most misused of all words adults use to describe behaviors of yours we don't like. We say respect all the time when, again, what we are really talking about is obedience. You need to learn to respect what your mother says to you, your father shouts angrily when you don't get off the phone soon enough after your mother's order to do so. What he means is that you need to obey your mother's orders, and to obey them immediately. The command from your grandmother, Always respect your teachers invariably means that your grandmother believes you should not ever question anything your teacher does or says. Being told, Not eating everything on your plate at Aunt Martha's house is very disrespectful is an inaccurate statement (in almost all cultures). These uses of the word respect have nothing to do with what it is to be respectful or disrespectful. They have everything to do with it is to be obedient.

Respect used accurately seems mostly to be about two things: consideration and honor. As consideration, it might be accurate for you to remind your father, noticing his muddy boots, I think it would be disrespectful to walk into Mrs. Jackson's house with your boots on, Dad. Or, to say to your friend who is making fun of another friend's weight (or skin color, or religion), That is not a very respectful way to talk about someone. Those are issues of consideration. Probably all of the examples previously listed as unintentional disruptions could be issues of lack of consideration or respect for others' bodies.

Respect is also about honor. It is a word of reverence. As such it can be applied correctly and easily to the world of sport and to the treatment of elders. Regarding a sports competition, you can feel honor or respect toward an opponent, for instance. Worthy adversaries make victory sweeter and losses more tolerable.

A more common use of the word respect has to do with the honoring of older people by younger people. I don't mean honor as obey. I mean honor as revere. You can disobey your parents with honor. Honor has nothing to do with obedience. In certain cultures, young people honor the tribal elders. As sages, they are looked to for wise counsel. In homes or at council fires, when an elder speaks it is often a very sacred and special moment. The elders are revered.

(4) You have an attitude

Basically, if you disagree in any way with our use of force against you, we will make that mean that you are having an attitude. Unbelievably, and unrealistically, I believe adults want you to be happy with the force we use against you. We want you to understand that whatever we are doing, including hitting you, we are doing "for your own good." Don't you hate that phrase? We are never wrong, we don't want you to question us, we don't believe anything we do with you could ever be a mistake, so why shouldn't you be happy when we make you do things against your will?

We don't like it when you frown.

That's an attitude.

We don't want you to raise your eyebrows.

That's also attitude.

If you have a smirk on your mouth we tell you to wipe it off. If you say, Whatever! we tell you not to talk to us like that. Whatever you do to express your displeasure we call an attitude. If you look away or lower your eyes so you don't have to keep looking at us when we're treating you unfairly we say, You look at me when I'm talking to you. Even if you are willing to obey us because you don't want the consequences of resisting our force, and you start to walk away so you don't have to hear any more of our verbal assault, we usually order you to stay in our presence.

You can't express anything negative to us, even these non-verbal reactions, without having us anger or upset ourselves with you having an attitude. If you add words, it just makes things worse for you. Even if you add words respectfully, we will still say you have an attitude because you are questioning our authority. If you disagree disrespectfully, of course, such as cursing at us or making a sarcastic comment, it won't help your case. When you combine any of these reactions, non-verbal with verbal, we simply use stronger adjectives to label your attitude as obnoxious or totally disrespectful.

Almost by definition, understand that if you disagree with adults we will see you as having an attitude problem. We don't want your disagreement, respectful or otherwise. You know that. If you know what we don't want, do you have any idea we do want? I mean, do you know what we really want from you as a response to any demand we make of you or to any punishment we inflict on you? When we punish you or give you orders or make unfair demands, do you have any idea how we want you to respond so that we will not think of you as having an attitude, or call you disobedient, or see you as a discipline problem or disrespectful?

This is how I believe adults want you to respond sincerely to us, no matter what we do to you:
I am very sorry for questioning you. I should have done exactly what you wanted me to do as soon as you told me to do it. I know you are always acting in my best interests and sometimes I forget that. I don't mean to cause you any trouble. Thank you for being willing to teach and guide me. Since you are older than I am, I know everything you say will help me to become a more loving and responsible human being. I know you don't like to punish me so that must have been hard for you, but I understand your reasons and I deserved it. I hope in the future to do everything you tell me to do and to show you the respect you deserve. Is there anything else you need to tell me now? I would be grateful, and I would be very happy to stay and listen.

Don't laugh. I am very serious. This is exactly what adults want from you. Every word and every sentence in that response is exactly what adults really want from you. Otherwise why would we upset ourselves so much anytime you question us, challenge us, disagree with us? We want you to know that we are always right, and we want your unquestioned obedience and total compliance to our authority. Sure we can make a mistake and perhaps apologize later. I am just saying that in the moment of disagreement with you, this is the kind of response we unrealistically expect and want from you. Nothing less will quell the restless unease we feel in the presence of your aliveness.

Understand that even if you obey us, that will not be enough. We want you not only (1) to obey us, but also (2) to agree with our choices and demands, and (3) to really like and appreciate whatever we are doing to you. Does this make sense to you? Isn't this what it seems your parents want? No wonder many of you feel so crazy. Parents are only truly happy when all three goals are met. We might be somewhat satisfied with two, and we could be temporarily comfortable with one. But we want all three!

The last goal is especially interesting: (3) to really like and appreciate whatever we are doing to you. That is not only what I see in our adult behavior toward you, it is also what I hear directly from parents in some workshops I've led.

So, for you not have an attitude, you have to do what we want you to do, agree with our reasons, and enjoy yourself in the process. That's it. Just do that and you will never have another problem with another adult for the rest of your life. That is all we want, so give it to us and we will be fine with you. Not only will we not see you as having an attitude, we will also like that you are not being disobedient or disruptive, we will not refer to you as a discipline problem, and we will not feel you are being disrespectful. We will think of you as "being good." And you will be rewarded appropriately. Is this the kind of life you want?

WHAT KIND OF LIFE DO YOU WANT?

Is simply "being good" the life you want? I don't think so. You will, of course, be safe from the punishments of adults. Maybe there is more to life than that kind of safety? MyBody-YourBody will challenge you to push yourself to challenge adult authority when your instincts tell you there is something wrong here. If you make that challenge respectfully--Martin Luther King was never heard to curse at any of the people who were treating him more harshly than he deserved--then maybe it might not matter to you as much if an adult thinks of you as disobedient, disrespectful, a discipline problem, or having an attitude? Maybe you won't mind being punished, as were most of the people in history who spoke up against injustice and violations of human rights?
The key to responsible and respectful disobedience is to be able to distinguish the kinds of authority that deserve your compliance and the kinds that warrant your disobedience.

MyBody-YourBody proposes the standard of (1) self-defense and (2) the protection of others whose rights are being violated. This is the distinction used to determine whether or not to obey an imposed authority. If disobedience is warranted, then MyBody-YourBody will show you how to disobey successfully.

The law for stopping at red lights and stop signs, for instance, is an authority according to MBYB that deserves our compliance. Drinking and driving? Those laws also deserve our obedience. Not so the laws requiring seatbelt use in cars, or helmets for motorcycle riders. Those would be better left as education and motivation issues.

Of course, related issues can be enforcement issues, they can be about protection of others whose rights are being violated. Regarding cigarette smoking, second-hand smoke can kill others. That's a pretty big cost to others. There is a huge cost to others, the time and energy of emergency room personnel, when a head split open from hitting a pavement needs to be stitched together. These kinds of issues raise serious questions for a society in which people are predisposed to help each other.

However, the MyBody-YourBody (MBYB) principles are all the same regardless of peoples' ages. Why, then, would I want MBYB to focus primarily on helping young people? Because you are the most oppressed and disempowered group in society.

HOW YOU YOUNG PEOPLE CAN HELP US ADULTS

I think you might agree with my assessment that there are times to disobey adult authority. I think you might disagree with my assessment that almost all of us adults never want you to disobey us and not only that, we often want and expect you to react with happiness to our coercive demands at home and in school. My guess is you think that is an exaggeration. I am not exaggerating. I am not being extreme.

Imagine responding to an adult:

I am very sorry for questioning you. I should have done exactly what you wanted me to do as soon as you told me to do it. I know you are always acting in my best interests and sometimes I forget that. I don't mean to cause you any trouble. Thank you for being willing to teach and guide me. Since you are older than I am, I know everything you say will help me to become a more loving and responsible human being. I know you don't like to punish me so that must have been hard for you, but I understand your reasons and I deserved it. I hope in the future to do everything you tell me to do and to show you the respect you deserve. Is there anything else you need to tell me now? I would be grateful, and I would be very happy to stay and listen to you and try to learn.

I told you this is exactly what adults would like to hear from you when we force you to do things against your will. This kind of attitude or response has everything in it that we adults, and, in general, people in authority, want from those we oppress:

• Apology
  
• Deference
  
• Agreement
  
• Appreciation
  
• Understanding that it was for your own good
  
• Promise of future obedience
  
• Desire to learn more
  

What more could any adult want from you? This is what we want from you. So I suggest giving this perfect response to an adult in your life at some time of disagreement between the two of you and see what happens. Here is how to do it:

1. Pick a demand being made of you that you really believe is unjust and unfair, something you really don't want to do and are being forced to do.

2. Stop arguing.

3. Say, "OK, I'll do what you want."

4. As you begin to do whatever it is that is demanded of you, respond with apology, deference, agreement, appreciation, etc.. You must be sincere! Your entire attitude, every word and your tone of voice must be sincere! This will not work if you express any kind of sarcasm, smirk, flippancy or disrespectful roll-your-eyes kind of facial expression.

And how do you do this if you genuinely don't agree?

Act as if the adult really might be right and that he or she really has your best interests at heart. No matter what the issue under dispute, for this one time let go of your own agenda. You shouldn't try to prove anything. Just accept the possibility that by doing what you are told in this instance, it will make a significant, positive difference in your life.

5. Stay serious until, and after you are done speaking. The adult will be watching you warily because this is a very different conversation.

6. Watch for your adult's reaction.

This will be a difficult conversation for most adults. We won't be used to it. So you will probably see us surprised. You will also see us uncomfortable. Other than surprise and discomfort, you are likely to get one of two reactions.

The adult might appreciate your wisdom and say something to you like, I'm glad you're finally showing some maturity. It's about time. Isn't it a lot easier to do things without arguing? This is a hopeful sign and I hope you understand that sometimes you'll just have to do things you don't want to do. It won't kill you and we don't have to argue about everything all the time. I love you.

And as long as you can remember that I'm only doing what's best for you we shouldn't have problems anymore.

You might also be challenged. The adult might be suspicious and ask if you are being sarcastic, or a wiseacre. Stay serious, and give this kind of response:

No. I'm only trying to look at things differently and I believe this is what you really want. You don't want me to question anything, and you want me to do whatever you say, and to assume that you are right about everything. That is how you feel, isn't it? So I am trying to do that. Is there anything I said that isn't true for you? Don't you want me to do everything you say without questioning you? It seems that's what you want from me at least most of the time, isn't it?

My guess is that this kind of conversation will make the adult very uncomfortable. Most of us just seem to want to get away with being sloppy and irresponsible and unthinking in our words and actions. We don't want to be in a reasoned conversation with you. Most of us don't even want our best friends to hold us accountable for things we say and do, much less a young person. What can the adult possibly say to you?

• No, I do want you to question me.
• I don't want you to just do what I say.
  
• I don't think I'm always right."
  

Most likely we adults will want to terminate the conversation. But if, without lying, we can and do say something like, I do want you to question me, I don't want you to just do what I say," "I don't think I'm always right." then you can begin to have a fabulous, eye-opening conversation:
Ask for examples or proof:

Most likely we adults will want to terminate the conversation. But if, without lying, we can and do say something like, I do want you to question me, I don't want you to just do what I say," "I don't think I'm always right." then you can begin to have a fabulous, eye-opening conversation:

• Ask for examples or proof: How am I supposed to know you want me to question your decisions? H