The Parent's Tao Te Ching: A New Interpretation

[Encephalon]

[zerostao]

[Otis]

Great share, Scott, and congratulations!

 

I love this interpretation of the TTC, so far. I think it's brilliant, and dead on.

 

Language learning, by definition, is conceptual learning. Early language learning is all based on "no" (because that is how we define boundaries), which is the foundation for duality and suffering. Experiential learning, however, is what all species were raised with, pre-language. I also like the idea of not trying to hurry speech, but allowing it to emerge on its own, as just a byproduct of interaction.

[Encephalon]

Thanks for resurrecting this thread, fellas. I thought it was going to die on the vine!

Even though I'm ready to move back to the Bay Area, I'm actually kind of glad that all the grandparents are up there because the high-pitched baby talk extravaganza would be non-stop! I'm sure I'll find myself talking to her the same way I talk to my cat as long as she doesn't crap in the litter box, but in the wide open vistas of SoCal, I'd really like to keep the narration to a minimum.

 

Any hot baby spots in LA, Otis? I'm just grateful that I can still have this for a back yard and still live in LA. (Ignore that toxic layer in the background.)

 

[RiverSnake]

Good stuff! There is a need for wiser parenting.

[Otis]

Any hot baby spots in LA, Otis? I'm just grateful that I can still have this for a back yard and still live in LA. (Ignore that toxic layer in the background.)

Are you up by the 118? That's quite a view. I live in the heart of the city (Koreatown), where there is no green space, at all. I escape by going to the beach or up to the hills.

[doc benway]

I love this book! I read a few chapters and bought a copy to send to my brother who has two little ones.

Mine pretty grown up but there are still precious insights in this book for kids of all ages.

[Encephalon]

2. Take Care with Labels

 

When you teach your children that certain

things are good,

They are likely to call all different things bad.

If you teach them that certain things are

beautiful,

They may see all other things as ugly.

 

Call difficult things, “difficult,”

and easy things, “easy,”

without avoiding one and seeking the other

and your children will learn self-confidence.

Call results, “results,”

without labeling one as success

and another as failure

and your children will learn freedom from fear.

Call birth, “birth,”

and death, “death,”

without seeing one as good

and the other as evil

and your children will be at home with life.

 

Notice today how your children label things.

“That stinks.”

“That’s stupid.”

Don’t correct them.

Just notice and consider how they learned.

Start today to teach a different lesson.

 

**************************************************************************************

 

This chapter clued me into some insights that had escaped me in other translations . I've always been skeptical of human efforts to stamp reality with a template of preference and prejudice, although being human myself I regularly engage in the practice. Like the first chapter, there is a slight Buddhist flavor when it comes to the tenet of Right Speech.

 

A goal of mine as I raise my daughter is to avoid at all cost infusing within her the quality of squeamishness. Part of my home-schooling, starting from an early age will be plenty of digging in the dirt. The paradigmatic shift in science taking place, physics handing over the crown to ecology, is long overdue. Squeamishness is the disability that encourages a disconnect between children and the rest of the living world. It'our job to repair this disconnection. This is the real reason I study Taoism and practice Nei Kung.

 

Tai Po

Edited May 11, 2011 by Blasto

[Otis]

This is great!

 

How easy it is to accidentally influence our children. That's why it always amazes and appalls me, when parents talk about their kids to other grown-ups, when the kids are present, but as if the kids won't notice what's being said. "Oh, he's such a little trouble-maker". What a concept to lay on the kid: "This is who I am - a troublemaker".

 

Even precision in language is defeated, if we say one thing but do another. I saw a mother at the airport, whose kid was whining like mad to get a bag of chips. Mom finally relented, and then, while the kid was eating his chips, she told him how he shouldn't whine. Yeah, right. You've just taught him that whining works, and now you're going to pretend that these words change all that?

 

Kudos, Scott, on your attitude about "squeamishness" in your child. Especially with girls, I think it's sad how divorced we make kids from the natural world. Everything is "icky" and "dirty" to the parents, and so there is created a distrust of the natural.

 

Best yet, I think, if we can play with our kids, rather than teach them. If we can get down on the ground with them, and share their exploration of the icky and dirty. Let us model "learning" and "discovery" and "curiosity" instead of always telling them "No, No, No ..."

[unmike]

How easy it is to accidentally influence our children.

 

My anthropology professor did much of his field research studying paternal relations across a number of cultures, but much of it in Fiji, where tribal life is in many ways still very natural. After being back in the states some time and having children, he was out with colleagues who began to argue about how often they modify their children's behaviors. There was a great amount of back and forth, but eventually they agreed to keep an accurate count for a day, but all modifications from verbal to nonverbal, positive and negative conditioning, and any feedback cues they gave counted, as these all lead to the child in question learning and modifying future behaviors.

 

Even his friends who thought they were easygoing and lenient or hardly corrected their children were taken aback at the sheer number of times they influenced their kids, especially unintentionally. Any response, especially to a smaller child, is conditioning, soaked up readily by that sponge we refer to as a brain.

 

Between the lot of them, they averaged 1,200 modifiers a day. Wowza. Think about how much a toddler learns from that quantity of cues. What about an infant? What about an unborn? Those with siblings to observe from the outside?

 

- - -

 

Thinking today, I realized that children from five on are subjected, daily, to eight hours of desk time per day for most of the rest of their lives. Much of my research and personal experience suggests to me this posture is not only emotionally stifling but physically stresses the spine and various organs. After years of forced school attendance, fluoridated water consumption, and the school/labor system, the body, mind, and spirit have all been effectively handicapped in ways no one should have to deal with.

 

Here's vowing never to subject any progeny of mine to that bullsh nonsense. Great thread, Blasto, as per usual. Keep it coming!

[Otis]

This conversation reminds me of the following video, which a friend shared on Facebook recently.

 

[Encephalon]

This conversation reminds me of the following video, which a friend shared on Facebook recently.

 

 

Yes, by all means, we must remain forever vigilant in the face of expressions of affection between our children.

[Seth Ananda]

Very nice Blasto, thank you

Another book for my epic library! Moohahahah

 

But seriously anything that helps with parenting...

[thelerner]

Good stuff. I look forward to reading more and printing it out.

[Encephalon]

[Otis]

Another excellent share! I am definitely going to buy a copy of this for my niece, a teenager who just had her first. I don't know if it will impact on her (she is a thoroughly modern young lady), but even if she reads it once, it may plant some important seeds.

 

For a single non-parent, I spend a lot of time thinking about how I would like to raise my hypothetical children. After all, I've been learning for the last several years, how to raise myself again, this time without the stories. So I'll probably buy a copy for myself, to serve me and the children I would like to someday love and raise. I'm also very curious about the other books in the series.

 

This is gonna be all about music and somatics for Natalie.

And touch, I hope!

 

Lack of touch is another example of f'd-up parental ickiness modeling. If we experience no touch in our world, it's easy to think that touching our kids is somehow "inappropriate", because expressions of sexuality or violence are destructive. But caring touch is beautiful and important, especially for babies!

[RiverSnake]

Bump...Felt this was a worthy addition.

 

[Everything]

Good parent advice: "Be the change you wish to see."

 

Works all the time!

 

Its not about trying, just being. So simple!