Rebel Children
The AGE, The Australian Thursday, July 18, 2002
Most children will respond to verbal interaction. But there are some children who, after hearing all the reasons and negotiations, and perfectly understanding all the talk, still need to find out how far you can actually go in ignoring society’s prohibitions. They are not usually suffering from a mental condition, nor are they clinically anti-social – although with sufficient mishandling they can be made so.
It is completely natural that this special minority of children seek out the ultimate limits of society’s tolerance. They are risk-takers, and they need to know exactly how wide-ranging their freedom of movement is. It is very disturbing for them if they are never shown these limits.
How unreal we have become in our child-raising practices. We withhold the ultimate reaction of physical force from them during their formative years, on the grounds that we are civilised and don’t believe in using force. Then fifteen years later we use very unpleasant physical force to lock them up in their thousands!
How much kinder it would be to reveal to them from the beginning that our society, like all others, has limits of tolerance and like all others, resorts to physical force if the individual goes too far.
We should not be guided in this by traumatised social workers who have to deal with the perverse cases, the child-bashers and the dysfunctional parents. We have only to remember the sensible, respectful, caring parent who does not lose control but knows when talking is done and when it is time to let junior experience that he has reached an outer limit, where he needs to be reminded that there are in fact forces bigger than him which will ultimately be used.
Philip O'Carroll