Global Initiative to End Corporal Punishment Web Site
Wednesday December 26, 2007

Dear Alice:

I have read two of your books and am going to be reading the rest very shortly. I read The Drama of the Gifted Child and Thou Shalt Not Be Aware, and found them quite useful. Also have read most of the posted emails and your and your team’s responses to them. I find everything you write extremely helpful to me. Even though reading your books can be painful at times, I’m clear that being willing to be honest with myself and experience the pain of acknowledging my abusive childhood is the only way to heal now.

The above-referenced website talks extensively about discipline and setting limits for children. As someone who is being trained as a teacher, I cringe when I hear the word discipline used in the context of education or child-rearing. The reason for that is that usually people use the word discipline to refer to punishment of some type, and as a formerly abused child, I see nothing valuable in discipline. Nothing. As far as limit setting goes, it is likewise misguided. I am looking to get the books you recommended such as Your Competent Child and The Natural Child by Jesper Juul and Jan Hunt respectively, as a guide in lieu of “setting limits”. Setting limits is a convenient way for a parent or teacher to ignore a