Insight

[kengr]

While talking about a number of things with alatefeline last night a couple of things came up.

One was unconscious assumptions. The other was the old canard "it takes two to make a fight".

While reading this article, the two ideas bashed together in my head.

The problem with "it takes two to fight" is the horribly inaccurate assumption it makes about "male" interactions in childhood. Namely that the choice is "fight"/"don't fight".

In reality, the choice is "get beat up"/"try to protect yourself". so it's actually unconscious gaslighting.

I mentioned "male" above because in my experience, it's always the female authority figures spouting this nonsensical piece of "wisdom". I suspect that is because of the differences in "male" and "female" socialization. Boys are expected to have fights. girls are "trained" to attack in less physical ways.

Though come to think of it, "it takes to to have a fight" *should* be equally applicable (and wrong) to the social sniping among girls, which can get *really* nasty by high school.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me" is another horrible example of gaslighting kids and is another bit of "wisdom" that should be stomped on *hard*.

Name calling can do *more* damage than physical assault, Bruises, even broken bones heal a lot faster than the emotional damage those "harmless" words can inflict.

I know I'm far from the only person to have PTSD from *emotional* abuse.

Comments

[alatefeline]

*waving inarticulate flail-hands a great interest and appreciation*

There are a LOT of kid cultures. Different regions and ethnic groups have some different customs, which overlap and tie in with the age-differences. Some age difference things between groups of kids are cultural, some are developmental, some are cohort effects. You've correctly identified some very important things that are going on.

Tribal customs and norms are well worth attention to creating and designing... as well as doing the linguist/descriptive anthropologist thing of 'oh, that's an interesting specific functional Thing I observed people regularly doing, looks like it works because of X and Y' and the spec-fic thing of tagging on '... wonder if something like that could fit with Z as well'. Previous generation's efforts at that gave us a lot of organizations 'for' kids and 'about' exposing kids to some concept of healthy kid-culture ... frex, Boy Scouts and Girl Scout, which have evolved into large, rigid, hide-bound institutions that are themselves adult-run and full of problems. Maybe that's partly a problem of scale, but it's also a potential failure mode for anything that's big enough to be impactful at scale.

On a smaller scale, there is a lot of excellent professional development for educators available on activities (that can be adult-initiated but kid-centered and also eventually kid-run) to facilitate community-building and the co-creation of little rituals of respect and social maintenance within a group or a class, but there isn't reliable or sound institutional support for doing the things that that professional development makes obvious are needed (like feeding everyone a real meal, with time to talk and chances to share and to help, with enough time to eat it, for fracks sake).

Like my experience with student-run activity clubs in college (gaming, LARP, fencing, etc) and with trying to find parent volunteers as a teacher, with the main target groups aging in and out so fast, it's hard to have a working structure that's fully populated and harder to have that structure not become a rigid tool with which people bludgeon each other rather than a functional living shared set of norms and customs ... so ... there have to be designated roles within each 'kid tribe' group for mentors, tradition-keepers, and group alums to keep continuity ... but with checks so that people who just like being powerful don't automatically perch themselves in that mentor-role and warp the group around them ... as well as a route for new ideas to change and break up things that no longer work ... and so on ...

[kengr]

I recall the classic example of spread of a kid culture. there was a popular among kids parody of the theme song for the Daniel Boone (or was it Davey Crockett?) show.

It turned up in Australia within months, and the show hadn't even started there yet.

They were able to trace it to the kid of an American executive/engineer/something, who'd been brought to Australia by his company to run something.

But yeah, I see the need for safeguards. My goal would be to have the tribes be as "hands off" as possible, but with customs (taboos!) to stop most problems in the bud.

I expect membership would be more on developmental stage than strict age. If you've got somebody who's going to be at a six-year-old level for the rest of their life, why kick them out of a group can fit in with.

But some sort of "tribal elders" are probably needed to help when the kids *need* it, but mostly let things alone. Definitely don't want power hungry types for that.

"Excessive" interest in kids (as currently "defined") would actually be an asset as long as it wasn't sexual or something that would lead to neglecting their duties.

Also need some nurse/medic types. Either as part of the tribe, or at neutral locations where the kids can come to them. Getting folks who'd make that as pleasant as possible so as to avoid the all-too-common idea of hiding injuries because getting them looked at *hurts* or leads to excessive scolding.

Hmm for the more "macho" tribes, making being brave about fact that it hurts, but doing it anyway would be a useful meme.

For others, sharing the pain and being able to cry it out may work better.

I'd hope we could get them to not be *totally* gender segregated, but go more on interests/behavior (though that sort of thing is, I suspect more adult concern/indoctrination than anything inherent)

As much as they are decried, initiations do serve a social purpose. Bonding and other things. Having to do something hard (but not too hard) and maybe a bit embarrassing can be a useful social glue.

It's keeping it from turning into hazing that's a problem.

ps. I'm enjoying brainstorming this with you.