VANCOUVER — One morning last September, Melanie Leavey's six-year-old daughter, Savannah, insisted on wearing a Halloween cat costume instead of normal clothes.... It wasn't until February, almost six months later, that Savannah finally decided to put the cat costume to rest..."I tried all the mainstream parenting guru advice, but nothing worked," she says. So, Ms. Leavey began to practise consensual living, a set of principles designed to help family members understand each other's feelings and meet one another's needs... In the consensual living model, father doesn't know best. Neither does mom. Instead, parents and children are equal partners in family life... Founded in 2006 by a group of families in North Carolina, consensual living is gaining ground in alternative parenting communities... and they consider parenting based on punishment and reward structures to be "coercive." In contrast, "consensual" parenting is non-hierarchical... Recently, the principles of consensual living have helped her cope with her son's hitting stage, she says. When Kiernen strikes another child, Ms. Keller asks him what he's feeling and whether he'd like to express his anger or frustration in another way, such as using words or hitting a pillow...she and her husband, Josh, do not force Kiernen to say he's sorry.

As a father of two, this "consensual living" model is an answer to my prayers. Raising kids is difficult, frustrating, thankless and altogether too much responsibility for my liking. But that was under my old coercive, punishment and reward structures. All that teaching kids limits, right from wrong and holding them accountable for their actions was to blame. And it was exhausting. Now I can kick back and let my kids decide how they should live. If they want to stay up all night, play Nintendo Wii 12 hours a day and watch Spongbob the other 12, hey, that's their call. If they want to eat Frosted Flakes for dinner and wash them down with maple syrup, who am I to stand in their way? If my little one wants to wear his Halloween costume for six months or walk around bollocky, who cares about 5,000 years of human civilization? That's just mainstream parenting guru advice. Plus, keeping your kids in line and telling them what they can and cannot do takes way too much effort. From now on I'm letting them ride on the roof of the car and have real guns and stay home from school whenever they want and all those things I always said "no" to while I sit my ass on the couch and drink scotch and live the stress-free life I've always wanted. And if one of my boys "feelings" should happen to make him want to bitch slap little Kiernan Keller, I won't stand in his way. After all, I'm not part of the hierarchy any more, I'm just an equal partner.