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.
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