Pagan Parenting: the Sin of Guilt

By Amanda Cummings

At times it becomes apparent that there are some vast divergences between Pagan parents and those who do not understand our perspective on the world. Not only do we look at things more holistically, not only do we try to appreciate nature around us, not only do we try to be responsible, but also we look at our selves differently.

We do not see the immoral, sinful, dirty, degraded stuff so many of us were taught (both religiously and culturally) to see in ourselves and those around us. We were even expected to see our children this way and to actively teach them to see themselves this way, too. We as Pagans look at the people around us as basically good, decent, valuable people. We understand ourselves this way. We see ourselves as connected, part of a beautiful mosaic of history and life.

How does this difference in perspective affect the way we look at the world? And more to the point, how does it affect how we look at, and teach our children?

The biggest difference leaping to mind is the question of guilt. If we are not inherently evil, then when we screw up, what have we done? Have we just shown yet again the corruption lurking in our hearts? Have we reconfirmed our basic sinful nature? No! We just screwed up. Everybody does it. Pagan philosophy does not require us to be perfect—just responsible. What does this mean in relation to our children?

It means we are free from making moral judgments about everything our children do. Isn't that great? How many times have you seen a child make a mistake and the parent's reaction was to jerk the child up short and say sharply, bad girl? Or possibly even worse, when a child does something in line with what the parents want, they say, good boy! What does that teach children about themselves? If I make mommy happy, I'm good, a child's logic runs, and if I make her mad, I'm bad. So the parents are now the barometers for how the child assesses their own self worth.

My former husband did this to my first born—once. She was supposed to leave something alone (I don't even remember what) and being two or so, she had, of course, picked it up again. He grabbed her hand, slapped it hard enough to knock the object out of her grasp, and in a raised voice said, Bad girl! That's a very bad girl! As she went crying out of the room, I turned to him very quietly and said, I didn't make any bad children, and don't you ever tell them they are again. To his credit, he never did again (at least not in my hearing).

This freedom from moral judgment is by no means an endorsement of lack of discipline—quite the contrary, in my experience. It means we as Pagan parents have to be creative in finding ways to help our children be responsible for themselves and their mistakes, since guilt, in our frame of reference, cannot exist.

Did I read that right?, you may be asking yourself. Guilt cannot exist? Exactly. And if we cannot employ guilt to keep our children's behavior under control, we must get creative. Think about it—what is there to feel guilty about? Making a mistake? We all do that. When you teach children to assume responsibility for the consequences of their behavior, there is nothing to feel guilty about. When the consequences of your behavior are that you helped mom make a nice dinner, then you have the pleasure of knowing you did a good job and that it was appreciated. If the consequences of your behavior are that you spent your allowance on candy, and you're out of lunch money at the end of the week—pack your lunch. I'm not saying there isn't room for regret, rather we deal with it by making things as right as possible. An apology or some form of restitution will usually serve. But after that, there is no cause for further guilt. It's more like, I made a mistake, I felt badly about it, I made things as right as I could, and now I can move forward, having learned my lesson. This is what I mean when I say guilt cannot exist. If we teach our children to assume responsibility for their actions, there is no way to guilt them.

This means we must find ways of making the consequences pertinent to the behavior. One of my current pet peeves is the time-out punishment, when the child must sit quietly alone for a while (like a penalty in hockey). This expands on mom happy = I'm good; mom mad = I'm bad. Time-out is still an externally applied form of moral judgment on behavior. It is, thankfully, less violent than a spanking, but it still operates as a way of coercing acceptable behavior from children without requiring them to have internalized a thing (i.e., gained a personal value of the behavior). Time-out is still applied from an external source. It creates the attitude of it's only wrong if I get caught because what determines rightness or wrongness is separate from the child. It's like a child who won't steal because they know it is not right to take someone else's property as opposed to the child who won't steal (this time) because they might be spotted.

I think there are, of course, times when sending children away from you is appropriate. A child behaving antisocially must be removed from other people. Temper-tantrums always worked this way for me. I would have a child lying on the floor, crying and carrying on. I would scoop them up and deposit them in their room, explaining: I understand your need to cry, you must appreciate my need not to hear it. When you are through crying you may come out. I only had to hold the door once (the other two never thought of trying to get out), but it made the point. Hitting was another one. Hitting is unacceptable. If you can't be around others without hitting, I say, then you need to be away from them until you can keep from hitting them. Boom—in the room.

This time-out thing, though, uses the idea of isolation and lack of mobility as punishment (a moral judgment). You did something baaaaad. You must be `punished! This is different from accepting the consequences of your behavior, because if the punishment is always the same, it most likely will not relate to the unacceptable behavior most of the time. Come here when I call you, can just as easily and probably more effectively be dealt with, by stepping just out of their range of vision. When the child realizes they can't find you, and just starts to panic, that's the time to scoop them up and hug them and whisper in their ear, That's why it is important for you to come here when I call you. I don't want you to get lost. That's much more to the point, it seems to me, than threatening: Come here? Come here? Come here? COME HERE or`TIMEOUT!

The consequence should have some relation to the action in order to teach the lesson effectively so the child will internalize it. By imposing an external punishment, you motivate the child to behavior based on what it will get them or allow them to avoid. By allowing them to deal with the consequences of their behavior, it teaches them to consider the ramifications of their actions for those around them and to consider how to deal with it. It's like punishing a teenager for driving recklessly. Which is more effective: do you ground them for a month, or do you tell them to buy their own insurance? Which is more to the point? Which is more directly a consequence of their action?

Time-out misses the boat in this respect. Leave the TV alone—time-out. Pick up your room—time-out. Get in the car—time-out. Stop crying—time-out. Bring that here—time-out. Put that away—time-out. Once a child figures out that sitting in a chair is not too tough, you're back at square one.

Time-out is effective not because sitting down somehow registers in the brain as a stimulus to acceptable behavior, but because for most children, being banished from their parents and being disapproved of (even for a short time) is more than they can bear. This is emotional coercion—and it still has not taught the child anything except that displeasing a parent is bad. They learn that what matters most is to keep the parent happy, and to do nothing that might change that. This teaches children to submerge their own individual wants, needs, preferences in favor of what the parent wants. It teaches children not to stand up for themselves. It says, You are not entitled to be your own person unless I approve. You wind up creating teenagers and adults whose self-worth is entirely tied to what others think of them and who approves of them. This goes for any such system of punishment—time-out is only the current fashion.

Our goal as parents is to teach our children to think for themselves, develop their own sense of personal integrity. If a child learns to accept responsibility for the consequences of their actions, guilt is an ineffective means of manipulation. A child who has learned to accept responsibility can answer Guilt when he speaks. Guilt says, you are a bad person [somehow] because you failed. The responsible child can say in all honesty, I made a mistake. I am still a good person. Guilt says, you are morally inferior because you [whatever fills in the blank]. The responsible child can accept the consequences, but reject the judgment. Yes, I did (or didn't) do [whatever fills in the blanks], but I made amends, and learned. I can't do anything more than that. That is what a moral person does. I made a mistake, but I am still a decent human being. Shameful judgments come from outside the child. They come from guilt. They come from whoever taught the child to buy into the guilt, and whoever is now manipulating the child with it. When an adult imposes external moral judgments about a child's behavior, and coerces acceptable behavior from them, all the child has learned is to accept guilt and blame when it is assigned to them. By learning to accept the consequences of their behavior, and dealing with them effectively, children may become nearly impervious to guilt.

Can you imagine our children living their lives without someone being able to shame them into anything? Can you imagine children who make things right because of their own personal integrity, and not because someone might think less of them? What would the future be like if guilt became obsolete? How honest our young adults would be. How can we as parents continue to use systems of moral judgment, emotional coercion, and guilt to control our children and then expect them to be honest, straightforward, responsible adults? I think we have it within our grasp to change the way we as a culture instruct our children, and certainly we as Pagans do. We say we practice a religion of personal responsibility, but we have yet to learn effective ways of allowing our children to practice responsibility in their lives. We must give up old, ineffective, damaging patterns of dealing with our children in order to help them become the best people they can be. That way they can create their own future vision of a world and culture that we may one day be proud to share.

Blessed Be!