Kids Punishing Parents?

The principle comes from the age old question “Why don’t parents get punished when they do wrong like children do?”. This new parenting method called radical parenting has remedied this issue. From what I can tell, the parent has rules they have to follow as do the child. If the parent breaks a rule the child gets to punish them. Being my curious self, I decided to find out more from the parent that I knew was using this method.

My first question was “Why did you decide that this would work better than the traditional form of parenting?” He answered saying that he remembered his thoughts as a child. The first time he remembered he was eight years old. His mom had spanked him for cursing, and the word he had said was one she often used in front of him and therefore he thought it was okay. He said that there were several times in his childhood where he thought of his mother and father as complete hypocrites. In this way of parenting his son won’t feel this way.

This explained a lot to me, but I wanted to know more. I already knew a little from his son telling me “I spanked my dad last night.” At first I thought maybe it had been in play or that the kid was just goofing. I never dreamed that he meant it. I had heard about this technique a couple of times but never dreamed it was real. I thought it was just someone’s fantasy. I asked him how the punishment was done by his son. He told me that it was just the same as if his son was the one being punished. The only difference was that his son could use an the holed paddle on him instead of the solid one. He figured it was only right since his body could withstand more that his son’s could. He said that there was no real modesty issue because they are both male. Because he said that, I had to ask him would he have done the same if he’d had a girl. He said he would have, but would’ve had to take more caution because of the gender difference.

My final question was who made the rules. He said that he had put forth the basics that most parents use as rules, and let his son make some if they were thought to be reasonable. He said that in the beginning his son’s only rule was that his dad not to ever hit him anywhere except on his butt. His dad respected this rule, as in the past he had slapped him in the face at times and did feel that wasn’t right to do. He said that over the years there were more rules made, but that the child most always had reasonable ideas.

No doubt this form of parenting is very controversial, but is the principle correct? It has yet to be seen how this man’s son turns out, but so far I’d say he is a great child. He is doing excellent in school and according to his father is rarely in any trouble. It is always up to the parent to decide how to raise a child and no child is the same. Perhaps this new method could be very eye opening.