Creating obedient not thinking and non-critical people…

[Updated August 21, see the end of the posting]. In the morning sofa on Swedish TV this morning: is the government’s investment on uncertain parents* in risk of brushing off old-time’s bringing up of children?

Parents’ uncertainty in dealing with their kids… Yes, how do we deal with our confusion? And where are the roots for this confusion?

I think this fear is reasonable (for neoauthoritarianism and neoconservatism).

The school and child physician Lars H. Gustafsson thinks people want methods (quick-fixes) and wonders:

”Do you want a method for how to be with your husband or your friends?”

He warned for that there is a lot of business in the programs on the market in this area. And he also put emphasis on that there exists a lot of knowledge in the existing profession(s). If he had gotten the money the government is spending now he would want to take care of THAT knowledge.

And yes, that’s true. Came to think on that here they have made cuts in child care, the school and school health care etc. Which means that there are less people (adults) there for the kids. People who have continuous contact with both kids and parents. Being there not just for a parents’ course. But as it is today the people on those places have limited time for each child...

I can’t help thinking quite ironically that what’s done by the government in this case is pure populism? Yes, I get creeps. You want to create obedient and not thinking people (via the parents)???

And who are those programs reaching? The ones that you should need to reach?

And for who are those programs? For the children?

If you really had the children’s best for your eyes I think you would do something entirely else and present this idea in an entirely different way!!! But now those things are done for the parents' sake and "best" and not really for the kids'!? Quite honestly!

Also see postings about conscious and unconscious manipulation.

Addition: On his blog Lars H. Gustafsson wonders when we shall start seeing kids as actors in their own lives and not just as objects for care and health promoting achievements.

And I think he is right that there will probably be reasons to remind about the children’s rights perspective many, many times.

Addition August 21: As my sweetie said

"This is more about PARENTAL RIGHTS than children's!"

Also see the article ”Swedish parenting: Back to a traditional future?”

There you for instance can read:

“It was not until after the end of the Second World War that physical punishment and shaming began to be questioned as methods of parenting in Sweden, Gustafsson writes in 'The return of the naughty step.'

Children's author Astrid Lindgren created the characters of Pippi Longstocking, Emil, Madicken and Ronja and was influential in embedding new attitudes towards children and parenting in the Swedish popular self-identity that led to a re-think in the 1970s and early 1980s./…/

One might ask whether these parenting courses aren't more for the benefit of parents struggling to find a balance to ‘life's puzzle’ in the high-stress, ‘I want it all’ 2000s, than for their children. Children are one more piece of the puzzle needing to be effectively managed; squeezed in alongside a career, a rewarding social life and free-time activities. Hence the focus on controlling behaviour, or perhaps more accurately, output. Gustafsson agrees:

‘The definition of normality has narrowed in today's society. That which was once considered normal is now considered to be deviant. Take sleep for example. Small children sleep badly, that's normal, but parents today live with such tight schedules they cannot run the risk of their child having a bad night's sleep.’

’I miss the children's perspective,’ he concludes.”

Read about limit setting, something that became very popular here during the last last economical crisis almost twenty years ago, here and here.

For what are the limits set and for whom?

It feels as this is more a backlash than a progress in our society!

* Why are parents uncertain? Are nobody wondering? Should we wonder, both as society and as indviduals?

The role of an enlightened witness...

[A little edited March 19]. In the leader ”The little we can do” about the Austrian man who held one of his daughters as prisoner for 24 years, raped her and made her pregnant six times the leader writer wrote:

“{The crime was committed in] The country of the Wiener waltzes and the all embracing courtesy’s land – but where a great part of the population welcomed the Nazis and where musty forms of Catholicism and patriarchal tradition in a holy alliance have maintained all sorts of old power structures. Maybe it’s something special with Austria, but still: of course you can’t impose guilt on a whole nation.

Is it Fritzl’s upbringing we shall blame? In the talks he has had with his psychologist it has come up that he had an extraordinary horrible upbringing, fatherless and at the same time he became tormented by his mother. Disturbed for life, full of contempt for women and an unhealthy need for control./…/

But there are many people with a horrible upbringing whom for that reason wouldn't commit any bestial deeds.”

I think Alice Miller is right when she writes that the reason to why all abused children don’t commit horrible crimes is because they have had an enlightened or at least knowing witness during their childhood and/or youth, and that’s why they have been capable of, to certain parts and degrees, condemn what they were exposed to.

Addition March 19: Even if they don't become criminals or commit crimes of different sorts (destructiveness) they can suffer from sickness and addictions or other self-destructive behaviors of different kinds. See the ACE-study and what Miller has written in for instance "The Body Never Lies".

And a horrible upbringing is no excuse for what you commit (if you abuse a child, commit crimes or even murders, initiate homicides etc.), only an explanation.

Morning wonders…

What are the politicians, for instance the school politicians, playing out? They are convinced that what they are doing is “for our own good”?

I don’t know if I am mirroring a father (my own?) and his attitude: the ones in power thinks that what’s done in school shall be (so) “useful.”

But what do we actually have use of later in life?

What are we learning in school? About ourselves and the world and other people? What are we taught in school about not only school-things but also about those things (ourselves, the society, world, the life, living, being alive and similar things), or - not least about those things?

How are our school politicians brought up? What’s coloring their views? Yes, once again, the most psychologically defended tend to lead?

How do they use their power? A power they “need”? Why do they need it? What sort of need for power is sound, healthy? Are all needs for power unhealthy, unsound?

Are they abusing it, by forwarding suppressed things on the rising generation (when it comes to for instance school, an issue I have been blogging about recently, triggered by the last Pedagogical Magazine I got and things I have read and feel and react at)?

Are they begrudging young people to stay alive (or to recover from being emotionally killed), to develop all their human potentials? I suspect they don’t, because they were robbed from this early in life, and they deny this fact. Which is sad (even tragic) for them, but is, mildly said/expressed, problematic in the power positions they have gotten now.

And another question is why do people elect such politicians? I think it’s because so many people in the world have the same experiences!? And then they applaud all sorts of harder grips, think discipline is needed etc.

Or is it a question of money? (Being without anything else to blame!!?) There are limited amounts of money in the society/world for for instance the school? But is that the truth actually? Quite ironically.

And there are limited amounts of money for a lot of other things?? Are there?

Neoliberalism is another religion, teaching, with its gurus!!?? Is it better than other teachings, religions? What has it caused? Has it made the world better?

Yippee! I loose my job – or For my Own Good…

from Christmas fair (market).

In a leader the Swedish writer Johan Ehrenberg writes that sometimes you read things making you understand that those saying there only exists one world are wrong. It has to be many parallel worlds, at least ONE globe more seen to how some are resonating.

Björn Lindgren on The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise says:

“The one loosing her/his job is forced doing something about her/his situation, which becomes a boost or a big step forward!“

Or:

“Half of those losing their jobs are winning on the wave of notices [losing their jobs].”

Is he living on another planet than we other people? Ehrenberg wonders. See earlier posting on working life (in Swedish).

On this planet a security-sickness is ruling, with people not understanding their own best and people don’t daring or caring to move further. How good that there are companies wanting to fire people so something good can happen to them!

Because, you know, all problems are individual problems! You are the problem yourself and you are the solution yourself.

My comment: Yes, of course we have responsibility for ourselves each of us!!! But how is it actually with taking responsibility? And how about golden parachutes (fallskärmsavtal)?

If you try to tell such an ideologist that half of those notices (varsel) are leading to tremendous personal troubles and those who are said to ”become happy” by being fired in fact should have been capable of changing both jobs and direction of work and life anyway, this is like shouting right into nowhere.

They just can’t understand this. Because their ideology makes them blind. Do they understand what the word “freedom” means?

Freedom is being able to choose things yourself, being able to change your life because you want to. Being able to choose between different jobs and not – because of the fear of loosing your incomes - becoming tied up with what is there.

Because the reason why people don’t change jobs is due to insecurity. Not because of security.

The freedom The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise is describing is something entirely different.

It is being forced under threat, a change somebody is forcing upon you. Not freedom. As individual you have to “do the best of the situation” (of course), i.e., try thinking positively and move on. But to draw the conclusion that being fired is GOOD is to live on another planet.

Our government is saying that the finance market in the bottom is sound… Our prime minister is the last fundamentalist among the ruling? He recently said something about corrections in the market, something in the style that if people don’t ask for Swedish cars, there has to be corrections in the market. I don’t know… There are many statements that are really confusing! Because people (in for instance the ones with power) don’t know hat they are actually talking about, they are drive by forces they have denied and suppressed early? And we are used to confusions from early in life many of us more or less, so we are more or less lacking capacities to see confusions and contradictions through really??

July 2003, thus 5 years before the crisis, according to the archives, a Bernie Saunders wondered in the American congress, what world Alan Greenspan is living in! If he had any clue or idea what was going on or happening outside the finance-institutes marble-walls (see John Cleese and Robin Skinner on having interests besides politics/work). About Bernie Saunders see here.

Saunders said something in the style that he was worried because he didn’t think Greenspan understood what sort of needs the middle and working class families have. Instead he thought Greenspan only saw as his duty to represent the wealthy people and the big corporations. He suspected that Greenspan simply doesn’t know what is happening out there in the real world. Greenspan was at this time talking about a growing economy…

Saunders tried with saying:

"But the last three years we have lost three million jobs in the private sector. The long-term unemployment has become three folded. 1, 4 million people have lost their health insurance. Millions of pensioners can’t afford medicine. The middle class can’t send their children to college."

Greenspan replied:

”We have the highest living standard in the world.”

“Not at all,”

Saunders replied.

“Look at Scandinavia, where the citizens have considerably higher living standard when it comes to education, health care and jobs where they are decently paid.”

Greenspan:

“But we have the highest living standard for a country of this size at least.”

But what country did he compare the USA with? Indonesia maybe? Or maybe Brazil? Pakistan? Bangladesh?

And economical experts are wondering how things could turn out as they have.

Also read "Dominic Lawson: In a hidden corner of the EU, defenceless children are suffering unimaginable cruelty."