"We don't decide what our son does"
Yes, you don't bc you're shitty parents.
Children don't know better so it's our job as adult to help them adjust their behaviours.
If you aren't capable of doing that, you shouldn't become a parent in the first place.
Poorly behaved children are quite upsetting, and it’s even more upsetting when parents condone or ignore such behavior. But I see some posts mentioning that- the parents responsibility and how outrageous the idea is to allow a child to do as they like- it’s common sense that children need guidance and the parent is responsible. So.... why is it a good thing that someone hurt a child to get to the parent? How is that any different than a police officer arresting your closest family member of they can’t find you, or making you pay a bill that your family member didn’t? By the same token that a child can’t be expected to make adult decisions, a child with poor adult guidance is not solely at fault for how they behave and are still young enough that they have plenty of time for those behaviors to change and improve with guidance. So if we remove the parents what we have is an adult making a child cry because the child annoyed them. Admirable? What lesson did the parents or the child take..
.. away? That they were wrong or that strangers can be jerks? What lasting harm was done to a family versus the several hours of annoyance and were they proportional? Why wouldn’t we cheer just as loud if they had drugged the child or broken their leg so they couldn’t kick? Same principle isn’t it? Of all the ways to handle the situation this was a poor choice, and by their own admission didn’t get them the one thing they wanted, so what was accomplished? No one “won” anything and everyone lost. All they proved was that any criticisms they could make about how those parents were raising children that couldn’t behave as healthy members of society apply equally to however they grew up because as an adult with many more years to achieve maturity, they managed to behave just as poorly or worse considering that at least children have the excuse that they aren’t mentally developed like an adult and their choices don’t carry the same assumption of judgment. Those parents do suck though.
I don’t think it’s that simple. I for one am happy and grateful for the feelings of magic and joy those things brought me as a child, and I can’t discern them having caused me any harm. They laid the foundations of seductive reasoning, critical thought, and one of the single most important things to scientific thought- the idea that there is always something unknown, always something beyond what we can see around us, that the world and the universe are vast, and that there were mysteries to be solved. It did so in a way that engaged me emotionally as a child as opposed to just intellectually at a time where my academic fortitude wasn’t very strong. It was a hook that helped plant a positive emotional attachment to those elements of thought, as well as acting as a thought exercise in trying to apply any known science to how such things would function. Some say it is dishnonest- but few if anyone is totally honest with their kids let alone other adults, so I don’t see why that matters.
1Reply
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· 6 years ago
If you think your kid ia grown enough to make his own decisions like that then he's grown enough for me to deck in the throat with my heel.
Yes, you don't bc you're shitty parents.
Children don't know better so it's our job as adult to help them adjust their behaviours.
If you aren't capable of doing that, you shouldn't become a parent in the first place.