A baby contributes by trying to make you smile. The baby will show off. A little older he will dance for you, bring you sticks, try to repeat your work motions to help you. If you don’t accept those smiles, those dances, those sticks, those work motions in the spirit they are given, you have begun to interrupt the child’s contribution. Now he will start to get anxious. He will do unthinking and strange things to your possessions in an effort to make them “better” for you. You scold him. That finishes him.

Something else enters in here. And that is data. How can a child possibly know what to contribute to you or his family or home if he hasn’t any idea of the working principles on which it runs?

A family is a group with the common goal of group survival and advancement. The child not allowed to contribute or failing to understand the goals and working principles of family life is cast adrift from the family. He is shown he is not part of the family because he can’t contribute. So he becomes antifamily – the first step on the road to being antisocial. He spills milk, annoys your guests and yells outside your window in “play.” He’ll even get sick just to make you work. He is shown to be nothing by being shown that he isn’t powerful enough to contribute.

You can do nothing more than accept the smiles, the dances, the sticks of the very young. But as soon as a child can understand, he should be given the whole story of the family operation.

What is the source of his allowance? How come there is food? Clothes? A clean house? A car?

How to Live with Children    A Child’s Right to Contribute   
Working with a Child’s Willingness    Consulting Willingness   
Allowing Children to Work    Suggestions for Further Study   

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