Seriously...as a parent I feel like I'm constantly stressed out on finding the right words and approaches to reinforce the right things but sometimes articles from "the experts":
https://archive.is/yP0yu
Just make me seethe with contempt for how out of touch and frankly awful some parenting gurus are.
Its not all bad to be fair. I agree with number 2 and teaching kids how to recognize their own emotions and think empathetically but then there's shit like number 3:
Furthermore, complaining about your job around your kids teaches them that work isn’t fun. As a result, they may grow up believing that adulthood is about spending half of your waking hours in complete misery.
Oh, well we can't have that can we? Oh no junior, I swear daddy definitely loves clocking in at 6am and answering emails and crunching numbers rather then going outside to play basketball with you or build that new lego set. What, you're grown up now and you hate your job and the way it makes you feel incredibly alienated in a way you never could have imagined? You just need to work on your attitude! Fuck that noise!
Even number 4, which I agree is good in practice, is arrived at for the wrong reasons. Its not about teaching kids some nonsense about being the sole arbiter and decision maker in charge of your life. Its about reinforcing the responsibilities and obligations you have to one another, whether that's doing work or going to help grandma get some things down from the attic, or getting groceries for the week at the store.
In a few years I genuinely hope we evolve to the point of realizing that teaching our children neoliberal mindset is its own form of abuse.
I feel like... We should just talk to kids like they're normal human beings? With age appropriate language and yada yada, but still, you don't need to use psychological Jedi mind tricks to help them become good people.
Try to explain to them how the world works the best you can, provide them as much attention and a stable healthy environment as you can, and the rest is out of our hands
In my experience that's definitely the approach I keep going back to. Like...I'm not one of those people who wants to be a wet blanket on all the magic and I still support santa clause and the tooth fairy but honestly you can be pretty real when you're connecting with your kids and explaining things to them. They're actually really logical...but they usually lack the language to put everything in context. I guess a big part of the problem though is how many fucking adults in the western world especially are in outright denial about their own feelings/emotions and sense of obligations.
Believing in Santa is dope as a kid. But yeah, if a parent is able to be self-honest , it's gonna be almost impossible to connect with with their children.
That said I'm not a parent. Maybe the best approach is putting on the wiggles all day idk
Big Wiggle shill out here smdh
Yes yes yes. Parents use their kids as a crutch to avoid dealing with their own trauma and that’s where so much intergenerational trauma comes from
You have to thread the needle though. I tried treating my kids like I would treat anyone else (obviously, anyone that I liked and with age appropriate language like you said). It wasn’t until I went to counseling that I realized that a lot of the shit that I thought was condescending to do to children, they actually really got a lot out of. My issue was that my parents we’re terrified of me growing up so they treated me like a little kid for way too long, but despite that they were really stingy on praise because they were just super busy and by the time they got home they were exhausted and wanted to veg out in front of the tv for a while.
So I was repeating that with my kids and now I have to manually relearn basic skills for making my kid feel like they’re getting enough attention and that the good things they do are actually good. I was explaining when they were bad because that’s what you do with an adult who fucked up. But kids thrive on attention and will start to play dumb and act out more to get you to waste more time explaining so that you forget about following through on consequences. The ADHD brain is real.
Also, I initially was very candid with my kid about problems in my life. And eventually I ran into them being constantly stressed out to the point of not being able to function. Kids just can’t handle the amount of stress hat we do.
To an extent, it is indeed the job of parents to shield their kids from their own trauma and to let them get used to the world in small steps. And it’s also part of that job to cater to them (what I would have called manipulation before this). I understand a lot of people here have struggled with narcissistic parents and have put a lot of effort into not replicating those behaviors, so I wanna say I’m not encouraging abuse. Just doing my best to point out that it’s possible for the pendulum to swing in the other direction and for it to become neglect
This is incredibly true. To highlight: my son played dumb in kindergarten for the longest time and the teacher was getting a bit concerned at his reading progress. I thought we were doing fine but he did one 1 on 1 session and the teacher called me to tell that he actually needed to get moved to the advanced reading group and, she suspected, was playing dumb to get more attention from her. I noticed the same thing where he will often 'forget' words/letters during bed time reading because he wants me to read in the voices. Eventually I started just reading the stories to him at bed time again and having him practice reading in other times.
This is the constant issue and stressor with parenting though. Its not only ok indulge and cater/shelter to your children.....its necessary
It’s a weird balancing act. I guess you could call it dialectical. I’m definitely of the opinion that raising children is one of the few inherent and justified hierarchies in life. So it’s a parents’ job to undermine their own authority as it becomes appropriate
Thanks yeah that makes a lot of sense.
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Parents that just view themselves as authorities for authority’s sake are insufferable
Like as a teacher I generally won't get negative in front of my students, but that's not because I'm trying to manipulate them into some bourgeoisie mindset of "Positive thinking will let me achieve anything!", it's because that's a weird thing for a teachers to do and doesn't fit the environment.
Also, indoctrinating students with Marxism always makes me feel positive.
But if I had a kid, I'd think it's fine for them to see that I'm not always a positive go-getter, and sometimes I get negative as well. I wouldn't put my burdons onto them, of course, but showing them how I deal with life seems like a good idea.