What Do Peaceful Parenting Homes Look Like?

Writes Free Your Kids:

What does a peaceful-parenting home look like? I won’t presume to speak for all such homes, but, at first glance, ours doesn’t appear to be “peaceful”, at least in the ways many might suppose.

Our home is loud. It is raucous. The children often scream. They often shriek and squeal. Towers of blocks go crashing. Toy mowers are being pushed. Children run from room to room playing tag. Someone’s banging on metal pots with a metal spoon. Two of them are wrestling on the couch. The baby is standing at the window screeching at passing cars.

We love roughhousing. We enjoy blasting music. We often have “scream battles”. The children talk – loudly – all day long.

I often say we don’t yell in our house. This is untrue. We don’t yell *at* someone. We don’t use yelling as punishment. However, we must often yell to be heard over the cacophony of many small bodies making mayhem.

Sure, there are moments when things are quiet, but these moments are fleeting. We do have a nice, quiet time in the afternoon while the baby naps, but when she awakens, the rowdiness resumes.

Peaceful does not mean quiet. Peaceful, in our case, means non-violent. Peaceful means respecting each other’s rights. Peaceful means that when someone is feeling aggressed against, he/she yells “encroachment” and the offending behavior ceases.

So, if your “peaceful parenting” home is full of rambunctiousness, you’re not alone. We live out-loud here.

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Founder and editor of Everything-Voluntary.com and UnschoolingDads.com, Skyler is a husband and unschooling father of three beautiful children. His writings include the column series “One Voluntaryist’s Perspective” and “One Improved Unit,” and blog series “Two Cents“. Skyler also wrote the books No Hitting! and Toward a Free Society, and edited the books Everything Voluntary and Unschooling Dads. You can hear Skyler chatting away on his podcasts, Everything Voluntary and Thinking & Doing.