Non-Violence Starts at Home

Over the last few weeks, I've seen a number of posts suggesting if parents of my generation had used more corporal punishment to raise our kids, protests for equity in the US would be less violent and destructive.

Let me get this straight. At this moment, many people -- both young and old -- are protesting to make the behavior of our policing systems less violent. Most of those people are doing it peacefully, but some are not. And you wish we had more forcefully told our kids how to peacefully change people's behavior...by inflicting violence on our kids. What?

You say police should be more violent in stopping protests. You say parents should be more violent in raising kids. But our young people should learn from that to be more peaceful? How could that possibly make sense?

Psychologists and child development specialists have studied this in detail. If you wish to raise children with the tools to resolve conflict without violence, one of the most powerful ways to do so is to eschew violence in favor of reliable interventions that focus on empathy and understanding. Consistently and predictably making children aware of how their actions hurt others...works. Commensurate intervention that emphasizes taking personal responsibility...works. Demonstrating that "if you are caught you will suffer my wrath" only perpetuates violence and diminishes our ability to self-critically evaluate our own behaviors.

Non-violence is hard. Responding with love is harder than responding with anger. But it is what we are called to do. Martin Luther King said it. Gandhi said it. Jesus said it. Buddha taught it. If we wish to create a less violent society, it will not start by encouraging violence in the home.