‘Adults too, have to respect children’

“You are going to do what I tell you to do now, you get me?” Ruth Beaglehole jumps out of her chair and towers over me, all of a sudden, in the middle of our interview. With a sly grin, she takes her place again. “That doesn't feel very good, does it?” The founder of Echo Parenting & Education, Los Angeles, was recently in Chennai to conduct a workshop for parents, spreading her philosophy of raising children with non-violence. Edited excerpts from our chat:

What are the kinds of violence that children face due to adults?

One very common form is hitting of children by parents as punishment. Even words can be violent… Shaming them, bullying them. We talk about schoolyard bullying all the time, but we forget that even teachers can be bullies. And then there's domestic violence that they witness at home. We keep hearing that children have to respect adults; we...