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Why We Need Punks

      On November 4, 2011, the Huffington Post ran a story by Andrea Blaugrund Nevins titled "What Punk Taught Me as a Parent." Nevins became interested in punk cultue when her third child, while still a toddler, showed the hallmarks of being a punk: angry and combative. None of her usual disciplinary methods worked on him; on the contrary, he was completely indifferent to some punishments, and responded to others with wild destructiveness. I read that part of the story, and my only thought was: "If only I could have been a child like that."
      Most parents would have no idea what to do with a child like that, except maybe abuse him. Fortunately, Nevins' youngest was in a class with a teacher of RIE, that is, Resources for Infant Educarers (that is not a misspelling -- "educarers" is an intentional combination of "educators" and "carers"). RIE was founded in 1978, so perhaps the biggest irony is that so many parents like Nevins still have never heard of it. In her class, the children were required to do what they wanted, and the parents to watch without intervening. If a child was upset or angry, instead of trying to distract them from those feelings, parents were instructed to wait and see whether the child could work it out. The class was exactly the opposite of what most people want us to believe -- usually, we are told that children need, and thrive on, structure. Nevins saw, on the contrary, that her difficult son thrived best on the lack of imposed structure. She learned that underneath the combative exterior, her son held deep feelings, and, rather than try to redirect him into her idea of more appropriate expressions, she learned to facilitate his process of finding his own more appropriate expressions.
      Nevins writes:
What I learned from my time in the punk world was that underneath the scary spikes is a poet, a perceptive and tender soul who sees and feels deeply, and reacts accordingly. I could see the struggling little boy beneath the off-putting exterior, the tantrum realized in a shock of blue hair and a fully tattooed torso.
The irony is, most punks could tell the world this, if they believed for one moment the world would actually listen. But having grown up like Nevins' youngest -- and without the benefit of RIE -- punks learned early on that they were not seen as real people. There is no point in trying to communicate with someone who does not see you as a real person.

      That is the real issue here. Children are still not seen as real people. While we may admire Nevins for the way she learned to deal with her difficult youngest son, there hangs this dark cloud over it: what about her two oldest? They were responsive to her disciplinary methods, she was able to manage their behavior and get them to do what they should, so it was not deemed necessary to put them in RIE-type situations to deal with their deep feelings. It took an unmanageable child to wake her up to the fact that children are real people. Is Nevins so different from any other parent? Most parents who talk about problems with their children are speaking only of difficulty managing the child's behavior; how often do you hear the parent of a well-behaved child talking about problems with the child's feelings?.

      The sad truth is that usually only a "problem child" gets the kind of intervention RIE represents. The sad truth is that, as a child, you have to act out in order for anyone to notice that you have feelings. As long as a child is compliant and well-behaved, the parent is satisfied, and sees no need to dig beneath the surface to see the feeling person inside. We need punks because punks remind those in power that the rest of us are real people.

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