That first and formative, "No," comes from a child who must tell us, "I am not you." The child does so, and must do so, in order to begin to tell her/his own story of becoming self based on her/his own story out of experience and awareness. At this point, the child enters into the description and process of the becoming self.
The self exists as a conscious, independent entity which perceives the world, takes information from that perception, learns from that information, makes choices based on that learning, and acts freely on those choices. The self experiences the results of those choices, accepts the responsibility of those choices and results, and the process begins again.
The child entrusted to us looks to us to help make this definition come to life. The child expresses her/his need to attain an independent status. This eventual independence serves as the supposed goal that we, as caregivers, want the child to realize. This is what we say we mean to teach them, yet at the moment this teaching really can begin, we may deny the right of that child to make her/his entrance into individuation and the becoming self.
This tiny, highly dependent being speaks the "I am not you" to us in a simple "No." In this brief and significant utterance, we can hear what we choose to hear. That "No" can and often does offend us because as an adult we can and often do feel we deserve some quality of respect the child's "No" seems to violate. The word "insubordinate" comes to mind. We can also choose to hear it as a simple yet complex statement of independence: "I am not you." We can also hear and see the unspoken yet tangible need of the child: "And now that I am not you, I need you all the more to support and guide me and offer me even more unconditional positive regard." It is at this moment we are first challenged to offer unconditional positive regard completely because this is the first moment in which we feel the child has separated from us. Before such a separation, we felt it perfectly natural to offer all the positive regard we wanted because we experienced the child as very much of an extension of ourselves. When the child makes us acutely aware of its separateness as a being, we must now become aware of the actual meaning of unconditional positive regard.
If we wish to achieve such a consistent practice, we must accept the child, the becoming self, in the face of what can appear as resistance to us as parental figures and choices on the child's part that seem like unacceptable divergences from what we feel as the right and proper structure to the world and in our adult lives specifically. Simply and clearly stated, the child speaks: "No! No, No!" and, "Love me! Love me! Love me!" simultaneously. As parental figures offering unconditional positive regard, we accept both.
In the mainstream interpretations of Eden, God sees Eve's act and Adam's complicity in that act as insubordination, and the punishment follows. From a less dominator meaning perspective, we can see the Fall quite differently and compassionately. The wondrous gift and power of consciousness secured by Eve and then Adam comes with its consequences. When they become aware of themselves, they become aware of their not-being everything else in the Garden, and their not being at one with the Divine. They experience alienation. They become aware of the reality of life circumscribed by the inevitability of death. When they ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, they did indeed discover their own deaths. Eve and Adam leave Eden because they have demanded that they leave when they spoke the "No" of affirmation toward their becoming selves. The Divine does not abandon them as the rest of the Bible tells the mythic tale. In that way we must continue our support of the children who speak the "No" of affirmation to us. When out of the Eden of their infant time, they deeply need our support. Children don't mean insubordination any more than Eve and Adam. They mean to actively participate in making order and form of the world as did the child with the many faceted toy. They intuitively if not instinctively seek some measure of individuation. They do not mean to deny respect to their parental figures and caregivers even when what they choose to do can feel insubordinate.
When we question a word, "insubordinate" in this case, we may find in that questioning brings us to the meaning perspective that such a word may represent. The core of the word, "ordinate" specifies a linear idea of order. Everything comes in a line and each point in such a line has its designated place in that line. "Sub" assigns a point in such a line that is below, less, dominated by another point in that "ordinate" (easy to think of the word "order" here in many manifestations). "Subordinate" dictates what position someone or something takes in a linear, seemingly orderly line of progression of power in relationships. The word "subordinate" typifies the hierarchal and deadening structure of the dominator model. Our adult meaning perspective about familial relationships defines those relationships as linear, and in that line of power relationships, children are sub-ordinate to us as the adult or parental figure. If we hold to that perspective, and a child speaks the alienating "No," we will see or feel such a statement as "in (not) -sub-ordinate." The child takes her/himself out of the appropriate line of familial power relationships: not-below-our point-in the proper linear progression of family power. Once we identify what the child has said or done as insubordinate, we may choose to feel we have to punish that child to restore order which is certainly for our good as the parental figure, and the child must remain in the proper place in the line of family power for her/his own good. We will punish for the good of the child first and our sense of order as well. As the expression goes, we have to "keep that child in line."
That brings us back to the examination of what we teach when we punish to keep children and others in line. We teach fear.