Parenting is hard. Being an adult and still understanding the culture and mindset of children is hard.
Trying to cultivate a generation of children who grow into well-adjusted adults and make the world less screwed up is…well, let’s just hope it can be more than a fantasy.
I’m not saying we’re screwing kids up from the get go, but…in some ways, we kind of are.
Those common bits of wisdom you hear from well-intentioned parents/grandparents/aunts/uncles/family friends might be doing more harm than good.
1. “If he’s mean to you, that means he likes you!” Do not teach your boys that to show affection is to cause pain.
Teach your boys that to show affection is to be kind. Teach them gentleness. Teach them love.
Pulling hair and throwing rocks are not an acceptable way to love.
There are more than enough men in the world who think violence is an acceptable part of a relationship, don’t let your son join their ranks.
At the same time, teach your girls not to accept cruelty as a sign of affection. Let them know they deserve respect and that anyone who wants their affections damn well better show it to them.
Teach your daughters to reject any kind of love that comes coupled with a willingness to inflict pain.
Teach your children that friendships and love are born out of mutual kindness and that they should give and accept nothing less.
2. “That’s a girl’s/boy’s toy!” Let’s clear this up right now: There is no such thing as a “girl’s toy” or a “boy’s toy.”
There are just things that are arbitrarily marketed toward one gender or the other, leaving children feeling isolated and vulnerable to bullying if they don’t fall in line with what’s expected of them.
Girls are not the only ones who will grow up to be parents, so let boys play with dolls and learn to nurture.
Boys are not the only ones who might someday need to fight for a good cause, so give girls all the superheroes they want.
Regardless of your child’s gender, encourage them to be the person they want to be and pursue the interests that make them happy.
Enough of us grew up with some degree of shame that we should really know better by now.
3. “You don’t need privacy!” Parents are so concerned with their child getting caught up in something bad and not telling them that they stop to wonder whether their actions are the reason their child doesn’t talk to them.
Taking away doors, reading journals, monitoring texts, or creeping over your child’s shoulder while they’re online won’t help you foster trust.
I get it, “My house, my rules,” or “I own this house and everything in it,” or “You don’t need privacy if you have nothing to hide;” all of these make your actions sound logical.
But all that really does is (1) ensure your kid doesn’t trust you and (2) ensure your kid doesn’t have any safe spaces or coping mechanisms if they do get in over their head.
Why do we think of kids as our property?
Teach kids from a young age that they are entitled to their own selves.
Stalking them will not teach them anything except how to hide from you better and that they can’t trust you, even if they need you.
4. “You’re too young to be asking those questions!” Listen, kids – and when I say “kids,” I mean both young children and older kids/teenagers – are going to have questions about the world.
They’re going to want to know about love, sex, death, life, responsibility, and a lot more that we don’t always know how to explain.
If they’re asking the questions, they’ve already started making the observations on their own that bring up those questions.
Respect your kid’s intelligence enough to understand that and at least give them enough of an answer to help them understand what they need to.
Otherwise, they’ll go looking for information on their own and who knows what answers they’ll find?
5. “Don’t do that, you might get hurt!” I get it, we never want our kids to feel pain.
We want to protect them from every kind of damage we can, whether it’s falling off a structure they were haphazardly climbing or dating someone you warned them against.
But as my dad used to say when my brother and I got ourselves hurt doing something foolish, “that’s how they learn.”
It sounds cruel, but the same culture that’s quick to condemn this generation for being “too weak” is also quick to tell kids not to do anything that might hurt.
Despite all that, making mistakes is one of the best ways to learn.
Do what you can to avoid trips to the ER, but know that telling someone they’ll get hurt isn’t enough to dissuade them from doing something they feel will be a valuable experience.
Let your children have their mistakes and trust that they are capable of independent personal growth.