Pushing your children to meet their physical limits, fear of drowning, falling from height, challenging their delicate articulations by using them as a juggling instrument.

 

Is this optimal parenting or plain abuse in search of raising 'superheros'? 

 

Scenes of crying kids begging to stop, terrified of another challenge and developing a fearful broken relationship with the one who needs to be their main protector and 'backbone' in life - this raises many questions.

 

I am a big believer in using challenges and facing fears but I think the true power is to apply these on YOURSELF in the quantities that allow you to grow and develop and not break one's spirit while developing a traumatic capsule in your child's being. 

This kind of approach allows you later to face the challenges that life throws at you while minimizing adverse side effects.

Like anything - we are all different and some can take more or less but systematized approaches will rarely hit the mark of the individual. 

Education on how your children should challenge themselves is a long term, more profound approach than challenging your kids in the short term, even in the face of the 'closing window of opportunity' of enhanced neuro-plactisity and physical adaptation in childhood.

The 'educator' in the clip gives an example: 'if your son doesn't want to brush his/her teeth and cries - would you still insist on him doing so?!', well, I believe this is a misleading analogy to making your kid face his fear of drowning, suffocation and death by throwing him/her into the water without any tools (mental nor physical) and relying on their instinctual response, inflicting pain and panic on a young being without providing the ability to understand and disarm the situation - reverting them to defence mechanisms that do exist inside of us but definitely have a price once activated, especially pre full cognitive development. 

 

Nature does not care about the delicate individual but is focused on the gene pool - lets not get confused here about romantic notions of the self in the big picture. 

 

My opinion is that such methods will definitely 'produce results' in terms of developing physical capacities, toughness, fear management but the real question is...

 

WHAT IS THE PRICE?!

 

Many negative experiences can produce adaptation. Being raped, getting beat up by your parents, etc. 

I've met some fighters for example who were abused in a young age - its a common thing among people who later devote their lives to fighting and can only feel self worth through fighting and yet this should not be confused with optimal development of a human being in our day and age.

 

Please provide your thoughts in the comment section and for a more in depth discussion - join in on the FB Movement Culture group at:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/moveculture/

 

Ido.