Self-regulation

You have so often in your book, SUMMERHILL, mentioned self-regulation. What exactly does self-regulation mean?

Self-regulation depends so much on the mother’s own psychology, on her philosophy, on her values. No child can be self-regulated when a mother is more interested in things than in her child. Self-regulation is foreign to the sort of mother who flies into a temper if some silly vase is broken, or one who wants to impress her neighbors by having a nice, well-behaved boy or girl. No mother with a complex about sex and excrement can have a self-regulated child. The term postulates a balanced woman, a relaxed woman.

I seem to be painting a picture of an ideal mother who never was on land or sea. Yet -what I am trying to say is that a child cannot be more self-regulated than his mother is. Every mother must regulate herself first before she can rear a self-regulated child. She must drop all conventional ideas about cleanliness, untidiness, noise, swearing, sex play, de­struction of toys, etc. Many toys should be destroyed con­sciously by a healthy child. No moralist, no follower of religious rites, no disciplinarian can have a self-regulated child. Self-regulation means behavior that springs from the self-not from outside compulsion. The molded child has no self; he is only a replica of his parents.

To permit self-regulation, one does not need to be edu­cated nor cultured. I think of Mary, a plain woman in a Scottish fishing village. Mary had wonderful placidity; she never fussed, never stormed; she was instinctively on the side of her boys and girls; they knew that she approved of them whatever they did. Mary as a mother was a comfy warm hen with her chicks around her; she had a natural gift of giving out love without milking it possessive love. Here was a simple soul who never heard of psychology or self-regulation, yet who fully practiced self-regulation. She fol­lowed her emotions in dealing with the family, and did not act according to any set rules of child rearing. Mind you, she enjoyed better conditions than a mother living in a Philadelphia flat. Her children were out of doors much of the time. Indoors, there were no expensive gadgets to protect from infant hands, no radios, no TV sets, no electric irons. The family had no costly clothes to keep free from dirt. There was a simple give and take, and an absence of parental bossiness. The children grew like weeds, free from excessive cultivation, and nurtured in love. Mary knew what to expect from a child, much as she knew what to ex­pect from a calf. She didn’t expect a cucumber to sprout beautiful flowers, nor did she expect her three-year-old to be clean and considerate. What was tolerated in a five-year-old was not tolerated in a 10-year-old. Mary loved her chil­dren but she also loved herself—respected herself, and would never permit any of her brood to exploit her kindli­ness. She called a spade a spade. The kids knew she was on the level; they knew she couldn’t be pushed all over the lot, but over all, they knew that here was a mother who never exploited them, who loved them, and never pushed them to fulfill impossible goals. Here was true self-regulation—a home without pressure.

“All very well,” says the American city mother, “but I don’t live in the country.”

I suppose that the question hinges on how much you really love your child. Your two-year-old will behave badly if he feels he is in a strained environment, that you’re always saying “No, don’t!” He will sense that life for him is one long training period.

You should never try to make your child clean in a sanitary sense, shoving him on the pot to train him. If the pot is there, he will, in good time, come to use it himself. If he dislikes some particular food, you must on no account force him to eat it, or even persuade him to eat it. If and when he touches his genitals, you should smile approval.

What about his tantrums? His hitting his little sister?

His smashing things? It is useless to try to reason with a child of two, for he cannot grasp cause and effect. It is hope­less to say when he pulls the cat’s tail: “How would you like it if I pulled your nose?” There are times when you have to say no, times when you have to take the child away from a smaller weeping sister whom he has wantonly slugged, times when you must say “Leave that alone.” The placid mother will know what to do and what to say. But the mother whose voice and whose hand scares her child will only create an increase of naughtiness.

Self-regulation is intangible; no one can teach it. There are so few children who have been reared in self-regulation from infancy on. I see in them less aggression, more toler­ance, looser bodies, freer spirits. They are not likely to sub­mit to conditioning by anti-life moralists.

But self-regulation does not mean that a child should not be protected. When a mother writes to ask me if it would be against self-regulation if she puts up a fireguard, I sigh.

One of the most harassed mothers is she who is raising a four-year-old and lives on a busy thoroughfare. Often, she has to forget all about self-regulation and grab in fear at her wandering child. Cars, bicycles, inflammable goods, ditches—these all make self-regulation far from easy for many an anxious mother. But, if mother is only anxious about her child’s safety and doesn’t interfere with him in other ways, there is much hope for the child.

Lots of people are mouthing the words you wrote about Summerhill but do not appear to me to do anything about It. They seem to have got Summerhill in their heads but not in their guts. I know parents who quote the book with enthusiasm and then curb the freedom of their children. Any comment?

Yes, it is quite true that some parents appreciate the idea of freedom intellectually, but not emotionally. They are the ones who say: Freedom is fine, but . . . I Often wonder what the but means: How will free children fit into an unfree society? Often the but means: Will my daughter seek free love? When the but doesn’t connote fear, it indicates puritanism.

I recall Wilhelm Stekel’s story of his analysis of a boy of 17, the son of a psychiatrist. The boy felt a great guilt be­cause he had had sexual intercourse with his sister. At the end of the analysis, the father consulted Stekel in the boy’s presence. “Well Doctor, what was wrong with the lad?”

Stekel answered that he could never betray a patient’s confidence, not even to a father.

The boy said: “I’d like father to know,” so Stekel told all.

The father laughed. “Of course I understand-the old incest complex.”

Next day, when the boy came to Stekel, his face was black and blue. His psychiatrist father had taken him Home and given him a very cruel beating.

Later on, the father himself came to Stekel for analysis. Stekel discovered that the father was really in love with his own daughter, and had been actuated by jealousy when he had beaten his son.

Here is a good example of one accepting a situation intellectually but rejecting it emotionally. After hearing that story about 45 years ago, I have been chary of telling a parent any secrets unearthed by talking to a boy or girl.

As for those who mouth words about freedom, Reich called them the truth peddlers. I know them. They are not insincere; they are usually young idealists who seize on part of a message, and adapt that portion in line with their own complexes. Question: Don’t we all do just that?

The applicant for a job at my school whom I will not em­ploy is the man who comes raving to me about Summerhill. “All my life I have been seeking thin paradise.” Invariably, such a man or woman is not a successful teacher. For Sum­merhill is not an ideal place, and in two weeks the dream is shattered. I steer clear of starry-eyed teachers.

In the end, a man must be judged by his actions. It is futile to go around talking glibly about freedom for children if one does nothing about it. I feel that Krishnamurti should have spent his life with children instead of going around the world lecturing to middle-class women, some of whom I fear used his message to bolster up their useless existence. Beware of preachers whether they be Billy Grahams or political agitators. I comfort my conscience when I go lec­turing by knowing that I lecture on what I have done, and not on what I am doing. One should expect a writer and a preacher to practice what he preaches. Bishops who bless battleships, please note.

The only gospel a man should preach is one that is his own, although it is hard to know how much one has taken from others. Like me with my getting self-government from Homer Lane and self-regulation from Reich.

No man is an island. But I am glad that Orson Bean does not call his school on 15th Street, New York, a Summerhill school. He will go his own way.

Anti-Life Attitudes