So Who’s Running This Chicken Outfit Anyway?

It's your call, kid (According to the growing consensual living movement, parents and children have equal say in family life - even at bedtime, Adriana Barton reports at Globe and Mail:)

In the consensual living model, father doesn't know best. Neither does mom. Instead, parents and children are equal partners in family life, according to the principles laid out at consensual-living.com.

Founded in 2006 by a group of families in North Carolina, consensual living is gaining ground in alternative parenting communities and online, including a Yahoo group with about 900 members.

Devotees study books such as Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn and Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication, and they consider parenting based on punishment and reward structures to be "coercive."

In contrast, "consensual" parenting is non-hierarchical.

"When parents put themselves in the role as authorities, they may believe they are doing it 'for the child's good,' " writes one of the movement's co-founders, Anna Brown, "but they could be missing an opportunity to have more connected relationships with their children."

“Alternative Parenting”. Unless it’s a road sign guiding you around a construction zone, the word alternative should be a warning of a strong NewAgey smell dead ahead.

Children don’t need this and don’t want it. No matter how much a child badgers, cajoles and manipulates a parent, it’s all for show and testing.

Want they do need and want is to feel secure that someone is protecting them and taking care of them, and that includes protecting them from themselves. Despite the outward appearance, they crave limits.

While teaching kids decision making skills and responsibility is certainly good, it’s best done in bits and pieces as opportunities arise, not by giving them the job or a permanent premature responsibility. It robs them of their childhood. And if the parents are reasonably responsible, kids will find their vote and input chronically overridden, which will only teach them to feel patronized and to distrust the process.

The worst of this will be the parents who will be relieved to abdicate their role as the authority. These people are indecisive and insecure to begin with, and don’t want to be seen as the ‘bad guy’ or as the source of disappointment to their children. To them, it’s more important to have their kids like them at every moment, to be their kid’s best friend and peer. They had children before they managed to grow up and mature themselves.

These are the same people who believe self esteem can be tacked onto the head of their kids as if it’s a game of pin the tail on the donkey, rather than a result of trial, error, correction and living a thoughtful life.

If these type parents really do toss it up for a vote, they should limit themselves to no more than two kids, otherwise they may find the majority has voted to sell the house and buy a fire truck.