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”:
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.
The reasoning behind 1 and 5 contradict each other, lol. Also 5 is insane, in no way is accepting that something “bad” happened and moving on a way of avoiding dealing with the bad thing, lol. I mean they’re mostly insane but that one is extra confusing.
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.
They don’t have to talk about it, I understood this at a young age because they were always tired, stressed, and upset which led to them being very neglectful. Didn’t help that everyone claimed school was better than work when school was already hours of drudgery. Before I was 10 I already had a vague understanding that work was awful without anyone outright saying it, now my understanding isn’t so vague.
Good rule of thumb: teach your child to recognize what is and isn’t in their control. They will learn and apply coping techniques accordingly. If you can’t control something, you temper your emotions to make it bearable. If you can control something, you temper your emotions to make it possible to exert that control.
And then you have them participate in collective action. Show the that most of the things that are out of our control as individuals are in our control as a group. Fuck all this shit about “working together” being good for morale or whatever. No, working together is the means by which we control our lives when we otherwise couldn’t.
the first advice is written by someone who has never experienced poverty, or even the slightest bit of financial struggle
Instead, show your kids that you have control over your finances. You could say, for example, “My dream is to buy a big house for us one day. But since we don’t have the financial means right now, I’m going to take some online classes so I can grow my skills at work and get a raise.”
good lord…
🎵 you gave me life, now show me how to lib 🎵
