Your competent child #2

In Your Competent Child, Jesper Juul writes about respecting your child’s integrity. The conflict between the child protecting his or her own integrity and cooperating with others (at the cost of his/her integrity) is inevitable, he writes. In fact, contrary to what was believed a few decades ago, the child prefers to put its own integrity at risk, simply because it wants to be loved. Therefore, writes Juul, we as parents must be sensitive to when these inevitable conflicts occur, and try to help the child to protect its integrity.

Another thing that’s important (that I touched on in my last post about this book), is the difference between wanting and needing. A child knows what he or she needs wants, but not what he or she wants needs. (Thanks, Urban!) This is also the responsibility of the parent. I’m on page 75 and yet he’s only mentioned this in passing; I hope there’s more about this ahead.

The word “competent” (in the title of the book) refers to the fact (according to Juul) that the child cooperates, even when the parents would say that it’s obstinate. There’s two ways, he writes, that a child can cooperate: either positively or negatively (I don’t know if that’s the words that are used in the English translation; I have a Swedish copy of the book). Positively means that the child “copies” the parent, while negatively means that it does the opposite.

One example is of a refugee mother with two children. The family has lost the father and have had very difficult experiences. The mother keeps these for herself. One of the children is very “obstinate” while the other is very “well-behaved”. But, Juul writes, both are severely affected by the fact that the mother keeps the lid on regarding the bad experiences of the family; it’s just that the children cooperates negatively and positively. In the case of the “obstinate” child, it’s easy to tell that’s something’s wrong, whereas for the “well-behaved” it’s nearly impossible.

That’s an extreme example, but it’s an effective illustration. And now, I’ll have to go down to the laundry room.