Plan B for humanity

I’ve actually come to a place now where I don’t believe in evil. I don’t believe in original sin, never have, actually. I don’t even see a point in getting angry at people much anymore. I’ve come to a place where I can look at people who commit crimes at large, or who merely do something that might offend me and immediately note that such people do not have the skills or the motivation, or both, to do better. I have no need to offend anyone. I have no need to personally criticize anyone, either (I reserve the balance of my criticism for politics, but I’m even beginning to question that). In lieu of constructive criticism, I’m willing to help. It is refreshing to know that I no longer have to play the game anymore.

How did I get into this place? I just finished reading a fantastic book, The Explosive Child, by Dr. Ross W. Greene, PhD. The subtitle? A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children. So what is this new approach? It’s called Collaborative and Proactive Solutions. Hey, wait a minute. Isn’t this a political blog? It still is. Fear not dear reader, for I will get to that part later. Please, read on.

The theme of Dr. Greene’s book is simple: kids do well if they can. I didn’t believe that at all for much of my life. I was convinced that at some point kids needed someone to show them who is boss. I believed in “tough love”. I believed in punishment and reward, you know, like Pavlov’s Dogs. I believed much of that until I noticed that such beliefs go against everything that I had ever read about psychology and self improvement. And now I’m a parent of two great kids.

A couple of years ago, I found this website, www.liesaboutparenting.com, a website dedicated to compassionate parenting and being positive and fun with kids. I also found that this site is not your typical parenting site. It’s not even a traditional, “kids should be seen and not heard” parenting site. No, Lies About Parenting is, in many ways, about “lazy parenting”. I was so inspired by that website, that I even wrote this article about parenting (with some help from the site owner, Ashley Trexler).

My journey to that place I talked about earlier really accelerated when I found this site, Lives In The Balance. Here, I found articles and videos to learn about how kids behave when they have unsolved problems and lack the skills to solve them. I got my first introduction to the concepts taught by Dr. Greene at that site, too. I took the tour. I started watching…