men are not “helping out” when they take care of their children… they’re taking care of their children.
Tag: parenting
Your mixed feelings about your parents are valid.
Shout out to people like me who have parents who are loving but are black holes of emotional labor… It took me a long time to realize that it’s okay to have mixed feelings about your parents, about your relationship with them.
Sometimes parents can love you but be somewhat toxic to you and your growth, and that’s a very hard realization to come to if you, like me, grew up extremely close to them.
Sometimes parents can love you genuinely but lack emotional maturity, forcing you to perform disproportionate amounts of emotional labor. Some parents manifest symptoms of their mental illness in ways that are toxic to your mental illness.
Some parents, like mine, try so hard to be good parents but fall back on habits of emotional manipulation because they haven’t processed their own traumas and are modeling behavior they grew up with. That doesn’t make their behavior acceptable, and it’s okay to feel exhausted and hurt when they betray you. You don’t have to forgive every mistake.
I want you to know that it’s okay to protect yourself, to need some space apart from them. The love you have for your parents is still valid, and you are making the right decision.
Placing a safe emotional distance between myself and my parents has been one of the most difficult, heartbreaking processes I’ve ever gone through… it hurts to try to curb the strength of your own natural empathy around people you love. It feels disingenuous to your heart’s natural state.
But I promise you, you are not hard-hearted or ungrateful, and you are not abandoning them. You are making a decision about your own emotional, mental, and spiritual health.
I know what it’s like in that confusing grey area of love mixed with guilt and anxiety, of exhaustion and quasi-manipulation and unreciprocated emotional labor, and I promise you, you are not alone.
Your mixed feelings about your parents are valid.
If this kid comes back in like 20 years dressed as a massive buff gyarados I’ll eat my shirt
I remember once I was talking to two guys and one of them was complaining about his parents when the second chimed in. “Try having four parents!”
We automatically assumed that he had divorced parents that got remarried. He corrected us; “No, there is a plot twist. My mom and dad never got married but had me. They were going to get married, but then my dad suddenly confessed he was gay. My mom was so relieved and said that she discovered she was a lesbian and was afraid to tell him. So they stayed together in the same house for me. Then eventually both got partners. So my dad has his husband and my mom has her wife.”
And the third kid just looks down at the ground for a really long time before whispering, “That’s gay. “
Omg do you know what this means?? Twice more presents for christmas!!
i want dogs to be allowed at more places and i want children under 6 to not be
yeah cool and make young parents, almost always mothers, never leave the house again and socially isolate and publically embarrass em cuz they can’t afford babysitters for years, cool idea.
at what point as a culture have we decided to hate on kids collectively. is it since the invention of refined sugars, I wouldn’t surprised if there was a connection.And then be surprised when the children have zero social skills because they’ve been told they’re not welcome on account of Not Being Real People But Dogs Are Totally Ok.
…wow the comments on this are fucking scary. How many of the people going ‘yes ban kids from public spaces’ are also feeling disrespected by baby boomers?
Do you fuckers not understand that Children. Are. People.
I’m conflicted about this, and I think it’s because the children that are most disruptive are the offspring of people who do not believe Children Are People, and that is the whole source of the problem.
I absolutely think that’s true. We need to allow for the fact that kids are adults in training and will often require our patience and leniency. BUT they respond much better to being treated with respect than, by default, as a nuisance.
Kids in adult spaces are in a very difficult position. They are in a place where they can’t play freely, because it might disrupt the peace- so it’s up to adults who require them to behave with more control to include them and offer them something in exchange. Like, shit, it’s not fun when you’re five and there’s a family dinner and all the adults are talking about adult stuff you don’t understand, no one wants to talk to you because they’re not interested in the things that fascinate you, but you’re also expected to sit quietly and politely for as long as the adults need you to. And follow certain rules you might not even know exist yet. And not interrupt the conversation because whatever you say is not as important as whatever adults have to say, for some reason.
People often don’t realise how much self-control they actually demand from children. There was this excellent post once about how yes, you CAN take walks with your toddler, if you just account for the fact that they take smaller strides and walk slower than you. Scale down the experience. Make it inclusive. Make it enjoyable for everyone. Kids are People, and Kids are Not As Experienced Or Capable As You.
And also chill with the reactions to kids existing- soooo many people get all annoyed if they just hear a child’s voice. But if an adult says something a little louder, or does something clumsy, it’s no big deal. Every time I take an airplane and there’s a little kid, their babbling and whimpering and, yes, even crying is way less annoying than the exasperated sighs and demands to ‘shut that kid up!’ from entitled adults around me. Like, ok, the baby’s a baby, what’s your excuse for being rude and disruptive?
Whenever I see a child at a restaurant being ignored by their parents I try to engage the child in peek-a-boo or waving or just smiling. I know how bad social anxiety is, and I want to do my best to make sure no one else is forced into it – by making sure that being in public is a desired thing for the child.
It has the side effect of reducing crying and yelling, because the child is too entranced to think of crying.Ultimately, I wish children were treated like dogs, in that people look forward to seeing them and interacting with them, even complimenting them. And that dogs were treated more like children, with owners watching out for them and there not being regulations treating them as pariahs to be hidden or shunned.
This whole hating on children trend is so ugly
FINALLY SOMEONE SAID IT holy crap
Even if you don’t like kids, be nice to them, treat them with dignity. They did nothing to you, especially not purposefully. A child won’t understand why an adult is being mean to them, but the psychological and emotional toll will be very real for them.
A little girl hears for the first time the Muslim call to prayer.
Subhanallah
does anyone else feel like they constantly have to justify everything they do? Iike I’m always mentally preparing a reason behind everything just in case anyone was to question it.
in my preschool class we’re holding “class president of the day” elections this week. we already elected our first female president on monday, even though one of the boy’s campaign promises was to “bring jewels” to the classroom.
tuesday: we talked about the real election happening today. one child says she hopes hillary clinton wins and all of her classmates chime in with sober agreements. one boy says voting for the drumpf “would not be a very good idea.”
they elected the other female candidate today in our mock election, so she won over the jewels boy and the other boy, who said he would make bracelets for the entire class. my students are surprisingly practical, seeing as they voted for the candidate who would clean the school and help them with their work.
once president, she did do those things, but also punched one of her constituents into the sandbox, so, i mean … she’s sort of a typical politician i guess
wednesday: the children announced tensely to me that trump won the real election. one boy said, “i still don’t like him, but we can’t say we hate him, because then we would be saying we hate the president.”
i said that was true, and that saying we hate him sounds a lot like something trump would say. they nodded and continued to help the toddler class students get their snack plates to the table without dropping their apple slices.
they elected one of the girls again, so she served her second term by helping her friends button their art smocks before we made our galaxy paintings. (because if you think i’m gonna create an art lesson plan to focus any more attention on this shitshow of an election, you are wrong.)
neither of the boy candidates have stood much of a chance in this race so far. one of them came to me and said he was rethinking his campaign promises, and could he make a new poster
he got a paper and wrote a huge list of ways that he would help keep all the children safe, including reminding them to use walking feet and not to touch broken glass. then he volunteered to work in the toddler room and cleaned up all of their messes, and moved all the shelves in my room so he could clean behind them.
i’m feeling so hopeless right now, but these children remind me that there is a future and they. are. it.
thursday: today i was very pleased. our president today is the little boy who made changes to his campaign promises. he also wore tyrannosaurus rex foot slippers. when the voters were shaking his hand to congratulate him on his victory, one said, “good job, and thank you for having monster feet”
he watched everyone like a hawk to make sure they were being safe, and then spent the morning writing in his journal about how much he loves all of us and his bicycle.
“it’s easy” can make scary tasks scarier
When people are struggling or afraid to try something, well-meaning people often try to help them by telling them that the thing is easy. This often backfires.
For instance:
- Kid: I don’t know how to write a paper! This paper has to be 5 pages long, and we have to do research! It’s so hard!
- Parent: Don’t worry. 5 pages isn’t that much. This isn’t such a hard assignment.
In this interaction, the parent is trying to help, but the message the kid is likely hearing is “This shouldn’t be hard. You’re failing at an easy thing.”
If something is hard or scary, it’s better to acknowledge that, and focus on reassuring them that it is possible. (And, if necessary and appropriate, help them to find ways of seeing it as possible.)
For instance:
- Kid: I don’t know how to write a paper! This paper has to be 5 pages long, and we have to do research! It’s so hard!
- Parent: It’s hard, and that’s ok. You can do hard things.
- Parent: What are you writing about?
- Kid: Self-driving cars. But I can’t find anything.
And so on.
This isn’t unique to interactions between parents and children. It can also happen between friends, and in other types of relationships.
tl;dr If something’s hard for someone, telling them that it’s easy probably won’t help. Reassuring them that they can do hard things often does help, especially if you can support them in figuring out how to do the thing.
They have actually done research on this. In cultures and households where kids are told that to struggle with something is a good thing, the kids are more likely to continue to try to do the thing before giving up. In their minds, they are thinking “This thing is hard but if I keep trying or try a different method, maybe I will succeed at it.”
Telling people that things should be easy or that it should come natural (aka talent), actually inhibits their willingness to try as they think that if they can’t do a task that is “easy”, something must be wrong with them.
Solutions Without Problems 