ManyofHorror3
I can't for the life of me imagine why anyone would follow such an utterly selfish self centred philosophy.
I just saw something fairly new posted, and when I read it I thought it might possibly answer your question. IF your friend is involved off line or on line in communities designed to helping her way with TCS there can be a peer pressure thing that builds up. It can be quite unpleasantwhen you observe the tactics used. The more islolated a person's parenting causes them to be in RL, the more they tend to get involved with the TCS/RU specific communities, and so the peer pressure can move up a few hundred notches, making it harder to re-evaluate the actual real live child she has, who might not be a carbon copy of the unreal "TCS Child" promised by the theory. (Bearing in mind as well that unlike RU, TCS communities often do not permit a practisioner to discuss their actual child, they are required to talk about ideals and practices in theory, not with direct examples.)
Anyway, here is a part of the extract from the mum struggling with how her child is behaving after she gave up coersion and setting limits. It's RU, but despite all spluttering to the contrary, they have a lot more in common than they don't with TCS.
When I try and google search to try and find other people who are, or have been, in a similar situation to me, all i seem to come across is either people talking about how wonderful R U has been for them (and it does work wonderfully for some people), or people who dont really understand R U talking about how it is child neglect and unparenting etc. There is loads more i can say about my upset and frustrations with our R U experiment and the type of advice and responses i have got to my questions from people in the movement but this is long enough. Can anyone relate to what i am saying?
And if so how did you transition back to taking a bit more control over your life and the lives of your children? I dont want to be a control freak but at the same time i cant carry on the way things are.
I want to start cutting back the tv again and somehow encouraging more healthy eating habits. I feel a bit lost and daunted when i think about how to do this and feel guilt and sorrow as i feel if i had stuck to my limits on the tv he may well have been starting to read himself by now.
I also feel very alone as I realise this post and my feelings are very offensive to people immersed in R U ? there is a whole culture of ? if its not working for you its because you?re doing it wrong ? and that makes me very reluctant to post about this anywhere ? i?m hoping this can be a bit of a safer place to post than others.
That is hard to read. It reeks of very genuine isolation and fearfulness even within the communities allegedly there to support. Unfortunatly (IME) parents getting to that point is a lot more common than people realise thanks to mod deletions and scare tactics via dog piling.
But to some extent it does answer your question. Why? Sometimes cos they started it thinking it was a good idea, and when they found perhaps it wasn't quite what they'd hoped for they had isolated themselves from original freinds, and their new friends would spit in their eye and denounce them if they posted the truth rather than saying the kid a joy, was doing great and life was so much better now they were a free thinking non coersive parent.
Since she is is a freind and I may have just deeply depressed you with that excerpt, It might cheer you up to see what might be a fairly recent thrust, an organised leaping in to defend a parent's need to say so if thry find the philosophy less than desirable in practice, without being labelled "you are doing it wrong, you big fat failure". You can see the rest of the mums post and the defence of how she is feeling here.
Possibly the "no coersion, cos it's bad" styles are in a new phase, where they are big enough and established enough to no longer be able to claim the place of the underdog. So new under dogs emerge and the gurus have been dicatorial and economically sucessful from the philosophy enough that they are now being seen as fair game for an arse biting from the new "anti silencing parents at the sharp end" trailblazers within the movement.
If your friend does find herslef questioning her choice in the future, I think there is a better chance than there used to be that she won't feel forced to hide that and keep going regardless despite misgivings.