Aremo Shitai Koremo Shitai Onna no Ko ni Mietatte

After three chapters, one of my big takeaways is that Seek seems really conceptually interested in parents and parenting.

You've got A, raised by parents whose superficial commitment to A's self-determination and self-identification are completely undercut by the invasive dystopian cyberware they use to control them, coupled with the (what I believe to be the) implication that the double edged sword of the post-scarcity future is that A's only reason to exist is that their parents wanted a child- spending their entire childhood being shot down any time they express interest in a career path that could give their life meaning outside of that. All of which feels like the logical terminal point of parenting as a vanity thing. Then you've got Winnifred, whose parents are vastly more involved, attentive, and invested- but in a way that goes hand in hand with a sometimes-uncomfortable spiritual and ideological investment, which in turn manifests as a regiment of full-body invasive modifications so that their child can perpetuate and participate in their culture and lifestyle.

Then you've got Orion, whose "birth" is his much more metaphorical escape from the cryopod (complete with associated womb imagery); out of the three he's arguably the most "liberated" from the context of the people who chose to create him or put him in this situation- popping out of his "womb" with imprinted skills and knowledge and only vague memories- but given the overall survival-horror nature of his situation that's not actually any kind of improvement. (It would frankly dovetail incredibly well with the theory I've seen that it's actually an Onboard who's taken control of a braindead human- total hands off parenting, he was put in this situation by entities that don't even realize he's alive.)

All of which is circling and circling around the central reality of parenting, which is that it's not just something that happens, it's a choice, any way you choose to go about it's a choice. And in our current context there's only really a couple ways to make that choice and they're all a few degrees off from each other anyway, so it fades into the background. But in a society with advanced enough technology that you've really got options, the fact that you're making any choice at all- and the resultant horrible consequences every possible choice will have for your kid- becomes way way more visible. Truly, a web serial aligned with my heartfelt belief that We Are Never Getting Out Of Here

this really makes me second guess the setting in many ways. i know the blurb and other metatextual elements have called A's time period "the age of boredom" where "there is no point".

but honesly im starting to doubt how much of that is actually a property of the time period and how much is that due to A's parents being complacent douchebags who are not interested in cultivating or fostering any kind of personality or individuality in A

Ok, so here’s a thing. I talk a lot about autonomy and freedom for children, and a lot of times that comes up in really radical ways, dropping out of school, running away from home, *big life choices*.

But that’s not the only place where we curtail kids’ freedoms. Like, say a little girl’s getting a haircut and she wants to get half her head shaved so she looks like Natalie Dormer in The Hunger Games, like, first the barber’s going to look to the parent for permission (which is already fucked up) and then the parent’s almost certainly going to say no and tell the barber to trim a few inches off or whatever it is they think their hair should look like and…

What I’m getting at is that so many of the things we think we need to protect our kids from are *fucking harmless*. Shaving their heads, going to the supermarket in a spiderman costume, eating ketchup for dinner, these things are not going to seriously harm anyone. In so far as they are mistakes, they are mistakes that kids should be able to just make and gracefully recover from.

And I think the mindset here – that children need to present *normally* because otherwise what will people think of them, and what will people think of their parents – is *precisely* the same mindset that leads to abusive shit like “quiet hands” and ABA. That it doesn’t matter what they want, what’s good for their well-being, what matters is that they *look and act* “normally”.

Like it seems like there’s something akin to a curb-cut effect here? Where this mindset hurts developmentally disabled children more, a lot more, but maybe the most efficient thing to do is just to tear it out by the root, to criticize it wherever we see it? 

Like it’d be nice if we could just say, if they’re not hurting anyone, kids should be allowed to look and act the way they want to, they should be able to cut their own hair or flap or crossdress or refuse eye-contact or have cereal for dinner or not want to be touched and it should be the parent’s *responsibility* to fiercely defend their child’s right to do those things and set those boundaries against anyone who wants to give them shit for it, not to victim-blame and say no you can’t do those things because people will give me shit about it if you do.

I got tired of my bangs in fifth grade and straight cut them off and had to live with looking like an idiot for over a year n feeling even worse and ur gonna sit here and tell me that was an important step in the development of my agency and that it was good my momma didn’t snatch the scissors from my dang hands

unironicaly yes, you need to be able to make choices and that inculdes bad choices

i was sheltered from making many mistakes as a kid and it letf me an anxious wreck as a teen bcs i wasnt used to failure and took every possibility of it as world ending

#i agree with all of this except the ketchup for dinner thing#i DO think a kid should be able to refuse the food you give them. that is a freedom they should have#but that PARTICULAR behavior should hopefully be redirected#like ‘if you have only ketchup for dinner you will have a tummy ache. lets see if we can come up with anything else you want to eat’#like its not about being 'normal’ its about how we need energy to live and ketchup does not have that on its own

i’m actually gonna pull these out of the tags and elaborate because i think there’s a very important part here that op didn’t mention, which is what exactly a parent is even supposed to do for a child.

above all, a parent is there to teach children life and cognitive skills they can’t pick up on their own. like say, how to keep a room tidy. you COULD let a kid live in a really cluttered environment and stress themself out all the time, OR you could sit down with them and explain to them in step-by-step process how cleaning works, how to notice when it is time to clean, how to identify obstacles you are having in cleaning, and why keeping a clean room is a good idea. and then you model that behavior by doing it with them and helping them as many times as they need.

the food is the same issue. it’s not about not letting kids be weird, or trying to control them, it’s about recognizing that as an adult you can spot problems the child maybe can’t (“If i eat this, i will feel sick. if i eat poorly long-term my physical and mental health will suffer”) and then *giving them the tools they need to recognize and solve those problems on their own.* you can and should do that without encroaching on their freedom; a good parent will try to, say, identify WHY the child wants ketchup and nothing else, and find a solution that doesn’t end in tears, but it is still a problem that needs solving.

My baby daughter got her adorable puffin-print dress absolutely CAKED in mud crawling around the yard and my first thought was "oh no her beautiful dress"

And my second thought was "oh huh it really WOULD be easy to unconsciously steer her away from playing in the dirt. Unlike my son, whose outfits are usually some kind of solid dark easily washed pants plus a shirt that doesn't trail in the dirt like a dress does."

Anyway something something gender roles start getting shoved on kids from literal birth, but with a little time to think about things, YOU TOO can let your children of any gender absolutely destroy their clothes in the dirt pit they're digging in your garden

Years ago now, when my son was three or so, we were on a bus together, and there was a woman sitting near us with two kids around his age, a boy and a girl. We were in the front of the bus - the bit where some seats face the aisle instead of forwards - and as there weren't many passengers, both her kids were playing around on the seats; not disruptively so, but just in the way of wiggly kids trying to entertain themselves. The mother didn't say much to her son, but was constantly trying to get the daughter to settle - not because she was doing anything different to her brother, but because her dress kept riding up and flashing her underpants, which was a problem her pants-wearing brother didn't have.

And even though I'd already known about the ways in which girls are socialised differently to boys, seeing that scene play out really brought home to me how invisible a lot of those gendered lessons are. Because the mother wasn't trying to enforce a behavioural double standard, or expressing archaic views on ladylike behaviour, or anything like that: she was just teaching her child not to show her underpants in public, which is a necessary thing for kids to learn! But because she hadn't put her son in clothing where active play could lead to accidentally flashing, only her daughter was being coached to be conscious of how she played, how she moved, the relationship between her clothes and the gazes of the people around her, why it was important to sit still. And meanwhile her brother was carrying on uinterrupted, completely unaware of the lesson his sister was getting.

And the thing is, the problem is hardly inevitable. When I've told this story before, I've gotten responses from parents saying, "Oh, that's why we always gave our daughter bike shorts to wear under her skirts!" - and that might seem obvious, but that won't occur to everyone, especially if the option was never available in their own childhood. And so something as simple as a choice of child's clothing and historical ideas about Who Those Clothes Are For ends up dictating socialization in ways we might not consciously intend - and yet the consequences of it remain very, very real.

"Look at this video of a child disappointed at their expensive gift! Children are so spoiled these days!"

That's cool. So, why did their parents upload their small child being upset online? In a public video, shared to the entire video? Why did they even save the recording?

Like. The kid in that scenario could be saying the most entitled nonsense in the world, and if their parents post it online to be publicly shamed, I'd still support the kid 100%. Thinking your child's life is a toy to exploit freely for #content is "spoiled"; when faced with mommy vlogers, kids should be demanding three PS5s and a new Bugatti, and we should be applauding them for it

This also tends to attract a lot of responses from grown adults eager to fantasize about how they'd "punish" the kid, and. If your power fantasies involve you owning an eight year old (in the metaphorical sense not the Sixpenceee sense) I don't even know what to say

Also there are a lot of expensive gifts that are really thoughtless. If an 8 year old wants a Lego set and you buy them a model train set and they get pissed about it, you’re the problem.

I don’t care that the thing was expensive, if you didn’t ask or ignored what they wanted, that’s on the parents

A lot of people seem to not realize (or care) why kids want specific things, and also that kids don't get what money is. They haven't had it beaten into them yet that they're supposed to like expensive things more than less expensive things. What they find enjoyable may have nothing to do with how expensive it is, and that fries the brain of well-off parents who care about things primarily as status symbols. The notion that someone could be happier with something that cost $20 than something that cost $2,000 infuriates them on a deep subconscious level

It's also limited by parent's lack of knowledge about tech, so they can't understand why someone who wanted a Switch would be upset if they get a PS5. It's more expensive, so clearly it's just the same thing but better in their mind. They don't know or care that their kid really wanted to play Mario and that they can't do that on the PS5, so they process it as ungratefulness

Kids also don’t have a huge amount of experience in anything, and it’s a parent’s job to teach them. This sounds incredibly obvious, doesn’t it?

Before a family Christmas celebration, when all five of us happened to be lounging around together, I announced we were playing PRESENT PRACTICE. I wrapped a toy frying pan in a muslin cloth and handed it to a child, who unwrapped it and mimed amazement. The older children and their father were all awarded points for their simulated appreciation and the baby got points just for learning to unwrap something. On the second pass we all leveled up to making a grateful comment in reaction to the particular gift, such as “this will go in my collection of frying pans” and “now I can cook one very small egg.”

For the six year old, I very seriously presented the important and tricky case study of unwrapping a large exciting box to find a single pair of socks. The child suggested a reaction of “this is great, how surprising! But,” their face changing to seriousness and the tone of giving the giftee useful feedback for the future, “I’m not very interested in socks.” They explained the utility of passing on this feedback. So, this being present practice, I received this reaction with the grace and thoughtful attention of an award-winning director, and we discussed how we would leave that part out for our more sensitive audiences.

The children also traditionally give small cheap or handmade presents to their family members. Each parent takes each child secretly in hand to prepare a present for the other parent. The six-year-old also has access to the PTA school shop, where the PTA purchase small shitty items (scented candles, bars of soap, cheap socks) and sell them to the schoolkids for £1.50 each, and wrap them on the spot. The 6-year-old carefully squeezes the value from the £10 we give them for this purpose, and squirrels away their mysterious bag of wrapped gifts like it’s a state secret. The three year old is given “pocket money,” and taken shopping. There is now emotional investment in giving; we whisper together quietly about how much people will like the gift. The three year old frequently whispers hotly into my ear about the item they chose for their grandmother (a tissue cover, lmao). The children, therefore, watch adults carefully when their own offerings are unwrapped and admired. When they see us reacting with amazement and gratitude to their gifts, it maps that pathway and lights it up. It also teaches pretty early on that giving is actually supposed to be rewarding, and is a more reliable source of cheer - as you can always control the feeling giving, while getting is tiresomely at the whim of an external giver, isn’t it? And it reinforces that a certain degree of social performance is expected.

Present Practice is a fun game to play so the kids do it to each other. It’s a funny trick to play on a parent, too. You can hand a parent something hilarious, like a potato wrapped in toilet paper, and see them try to do a Level 3 reception on it (“this will be my favorite ever potato,” I say mistily, “how did you guess what was in my heart?”)

For high-pressure present-opening situations, you can just sit back and watch, really. Even when I had to let them open USA-grandparent Christmas presents over Zoom AT the house of the British Grandparents. The children spontaneously decided to receive presents in the guise of angels. I was giving the kids wild thumbsups from behind the camera as they warmly enthused over the sentiments in the cards before even looking at the gift.

Does it sound artificial? Well, they have fun, and they’re kind, and they love giving and receiving. They’re nice and well behaved - and people love to give them presents. It’s all social performance! and you’re expecting super high-level software to run on Kid Hardware, which is like trying to program Plant Pathology 101 onto a border collie! Kind of an unfair expectation on the framework, mate!

I’d suggest the first port of call is literally - teaching kids how to get presents.

I don’t have children so take this with a grain of salt but I hate when you can tell people like the concept of their children more than their well-being. Parents like the concept of an all-beige nursery that’s photogenic more than they care about the development of their kid’s brain. They like the concept of a cutely dressed kid in designer clothes more than they care about their comfort and personal desires. They like the concept of a child who never eats poorly more than they care about the happiness that can come from a child eating some candy now and then. People need to stop treating their kids like little dolls

I found this on Facebook. Conservatives, who are all about "stop sexualizing children", seemed awfully silent in the comments.

But God forbid a teacher put a rainbow flag in a classroom.

Jesus fucking wept.

I'm not going to lie, shit like this was one of the reasons I got too anxious to brush my fucking teeth as a preteen. I wasn't ready for this kind of sexualization but was being pushed into it because my body developed early and I knew people would be looking at me differently.

So any time anything had to do with my mouth I was excessively defensive of.

I cried when I forgot my bathing suit at home and my mom forced me to wear my sister's two-piece because I "wasn't ready" for people to see me like that and I knew that two-piece suits were "sexy" and I didn't WANT to be sexy, I wanted to be eight and play in the sprinkler.

I was scared, terrified, of being seen sexually just because I was existing. I had to stop so many things because I was terrified of "leading someone on" and it being my 'fault'.

Even in kindergarten I was being pushed into "like-likeing" my best friend just because he was a boy and I was perceived as a girl, even though I didn't feel that way for the guy! I just liked hanging out with him and playing with his cool skull mountain toy he always brought to school.

Not quite the same as the picture above, but it was a stepping stone. I complained but I was brushed off and made to feel like I really did have romantic feelings for the other kid because the adults around me kept saying I did.

I never felt I could even talk about why I stopped eating bananas and popcicles or got anxious brushing my teeth or anything to do with my mouth because I was always brushed off before. Told I was ready for things I wasn't.

Like, this kind of shit fucked me up from a very young age and I will always be furious about it.

I always think about it when I hear about how the queer community is "sexualizing children" when it was fucking heteronormative society flooding my pre-teen brain with crap like this is so normalized but fucked me up entirely as a kid.

Growing up as a boy in elementary school and junior high, I actively avoided having any kind of relationship with girls, even friendships, because of adults sexualizing us.

It wasn’t physical. I didn’t have a sexy body (still don’t), but the teachers and my mom were constantly watching for who was “sweet on” who else and gossiping, and I had enough anxiety and undiagnosed ADHD/autism/whatever things going on already, plus homework and the usual pressures of school.

Mom volunteered at school a lot, the faculty and staff knew her, and anything that happened to me within a couple days led to a “is there something special that happened at school you want to tell me about” from my smiling mom on the drive home. (Dad grew up in Chicago and hated living in cities, so we always lived in some exurb with nothing around, 20+ minutes from school and my friends.)

So I got really good (as I’m sure many here can relate) at controlling every last scrap of information that could be a problem later. Which, since I couldn’t just threaten folks into silence, always meant not creating the information in the first place.

It never stops either! After I brought my mom to open house at work once (I was 40), one of my female coworkers came up to me afterwards and said my mom had been asking them if there was anyone I was interested in.

And if I complain, it’s suddenly my fault because I’m not letting her be a mother!

So for the rest of her life, mom is getting a curated, museum set piece version of my life.

“Why don’t you cut her out of your life?” While she is not my enemy, there is wisdom in “keep your friends close, and your enemies closer,” that I feel applies in my particular case.

Sexualizing kids hurts all of us. I’m in full agreement with the folks above. It needs to stop.

A lot of people around me are having kids and every day it becomes more apparent that hitting your children to punish them is insane because literally everything can be a horrible punishment in their eyes if you frame it as such.

Like, one family makes their toddler sit on the stairs for three minutes when he hits his brother or whatever. The stairs are well lit and he can see his family the whole time, he’s just not allowed to get up and leave the stairs or the timer starts over. He fucking hates it just because it’s framed as a punishment.

Another family use a baseball cap. It’s just a plain blue cap with nothing on it. When their toddler needs discipline he gets a timeout on a chair and has to put the cap on. When they’re out and about he just has to wear the cap but it gets the same reaction. Nobody around them can tell he’s being punished because it’s in no way an embarrassing cap, but HE knows and just the threat of having to wear it is enough.

And there isn’t the same contempt afterwards I’ve seen with kids whose parents hit them. One time the kid swung a stick at my dog, his mother immediately made him sit on the stairs, he screamed but stayed put, then he came over to my dog and gently said “Sorry Ellie” and went back to playing like nothing happened, but this time without swinging sticks at the nearby animals.

low key cannot believe there is discourse like "how dare you expect children to say 'trick or treat' when you open the door on halloween, they should be allowed to stay silent, they don't owe you anything"

ok uhm yeah they don't have to do anything at all but don't you think it's at least mildly weird. to open the door for a stranger. and they just stare at you. in silence. like if they don't wanna say the halloween line on halloween ok whatever but they can say "hey what's up"?

this cannot be a boomer take please tell me I'm not a boomer

big mistake posting this on the social anxiety website but ok listen

I'm not even making this some pseudo ritual thing like "the social contract of the evening is that you invoke the words 'trick-or-treat' after which I return the favor with candy~" i literally do not care if your kid says "hey bitch what's crackin" because that's funny and I'll gladly give them candy

I'm talking about like...maybe it's an ideal evening for your kid to learn to say at least 1 word to another person in their neighborhood even if that 1 word is "thanks" as they run away with candy. and ofc there are exceptions to every situation on earth and it's frustrating having every take here spun around like "but what about [X] group of people with this specific issue"-- alright. if a kid has trouble speaking and holding basic conversations on a night when thousands of strangers are out on the streets and they also have to navigate said streets, then they should absolutely not be alone, and there should be an adult with them who would presumably speak for them. like holy shit wouldn't it be fucked up if they were alone

IDK idk idk this is all coming back to my teacher friends saying that young parents today are extremely weird so who knows. whatever.

LITERALLY yes oh my god all this I'm framing these tags

like there is a particular brand of young parent (and this is getting prevalent to the point where I've seen it parodied on multiple tv shows) that doesn't set any boundaries with their kids because they think it's "controlling" or inherently abusive or???

and they don't make the kid do anything they don't want to do which. sounds lovely and ideal on paper but um kids do not want to bathe. they do not want to leave the playground when it's time to go home. they do not want to stop pulling the big unfamiliar dog's tail. like I'm sorry but you NEED to sometimes make your kids do things they don't want to do and this includes like, basic courtesy to other human beings. sorry I'm such a bitch about this.

The alternative to "making your kids do things they don't want to do" is literally "figuring out why they don't want to do it and working with them to find a solution".

maybe the solution is that you explain to them so they understand. maybe you need to have expectations like "I need you to stop doing things ASAP when I ask you to because it might be a safety issue, even if you don't immediately see how it is one, but we will always talk about it afterwards."

but like. it's not "they just never do the thing". you're teaching your kid that nobody owes anybody anything else, and that they will never have to do anything they don't like, and that's neither true, nor healthy, not conducive to any kind of society you should want to live in (it's libertarianism, bud. you're raising libertarians.)

your kids are people, and one of the most valuable skills they can learn is how to have conversations about why things are the way they are, whether they should be that way, what has the potential to change, and how to change it.

if they don't want to say "trick or treat", that's understandable! but do they know why people say that, and how it can be positive? why don't they want to say it; is there a way to make it easier? are there any alternatives they can think of? now that they understand why people say it, maybe they can think of one that fits the situation and their needs!

if your kid isn't listening to people when they're trying to talk, ask why that might be happening. what are the situational factors (other things are distracting them, the person talking is hard to hear or hard to listen to, etc.)? what about the personal factors (they have a hard time focusing for that long)? what strategies can they use to make listening easier- like fidgets, or headphones- and how can others support them in doing so- like reminders, or minimizing distractions?

put the effort in to make it a learning experience! you don't need to force them to do anything, and really, you shouldn't. but giving up on the issue teaches them to give up on these things, when they can in fact be really great opportunities to practice critical thinking, self-regulation, healthy compromise, and coexistence with others.

These are exactly the strategies people need to be reminded of right now, so thank you.

I want to remind people that the baseline Adverse Childhood Experiences Score for this generation of kids went up during the pandemic. They're going to act different because their trauma load is different. Trauma causes problems with memory, sensory processing, and executive function. It's normal for traumatized kids to backslide developmentally and require the support and coaching of a much younger child.

Whole families *can* reinforce each other's avoidance responses and that's some of what we're seeing here but what's even more common is that parents are dealing with other developmental delays that are even more disruptive so smaller stuff is going to the wayside. Like stranger anxiety is obviously sticking around longer than usual but so are bed wetting and sleep disturbances.

It's distressing to see kids struggle like this and we can feel pretty powerless but small positive interactions are still helping so plant the seeds of community interaction anyway. If you're getting a bunch of shut-down, deer-in-headlights kids at your door and no one is initiating the "trick or treat" interaction, flip the script and greet them first. Try not to take their wariness personally. With continued support they'll get more bold eventually.

This last bit.

Man, these kids are really fucked up socially and they are carrying trauma loads that I can't imagine.

If they look confused and scared, you know what you can do?

✨️Be the adult and model social interactions!✨️

You know that whole "it takes a village" shit? Yeah! This is it! This is when you get to be a village!

You don't have to prompt them to say Trick or Treat. You can just greet them normally, compliment them on their costumes, engage them. Kids are sponges and mimics. Show them how you want to be interacted with! They'll do it back!

The pandemic started almost 4 years ago. Your average kid under about age 7.5 - 8 has vague memories at best of what you and I consider Normal Halloween. Anybody 6 or under pretty much has no idea what "normal" anything is like.

This is a time when you get to either be the shitty bitchy adult that gave them weird looks when they freeze up or don't know how to interact, or the cool awesome adult that smiled at them so they smiled back, who didn't judge them.

(And like... there have been theatrical parodies of too-permissive parents since there has been theater. The idea that over-permissive parenting is a new complaint is pretty funny. "Everybody knows" that parents today are just too permissive. "Everybody knew" that 20 years ago when my kid was 3. The grain of salt I need for that bit of this post is just a little bit bigger than my van.)

All amazing points and so important to take in. I think I have done a couple of these, but not habitually or intensely. But it's good awareness for me.

I hate family vloggers so much imagine having this little respect for your adolescent kid’s privacy and personal life

Do You Know What Children Are

They don’t have jobs, nor do they pay for rent, utilities, or food. That’s the textbook definition of a freeloader.

i would gladly bury you alive

Reblog to send people who call children freeloaders all the way to hell

Towards parenting that respects the bodily autonomy of children? Not sure about viability. Children are such an ethical nightmare. It seems very bad that they are often subjected to things they don't want but you can't grant them full autonomy ofc

Honestly!!! This is just psychological trauma in the making

THANK YOU

I’ve asked parents about this and they always say they are teaching the child responsibility and “respect for other people’s things.” If I point out that the child accidentally broke their own toy they always say “I bought them that toy” or “my sister gave that to them.”

The problem is that parents view all possessions as not really belonging to the child. A part of them always seems to think that the adult who provided the money is the real owner

If a parent breaks a dish they see it as breaking something that already belonged to them, but if a child breaks it they see it as the child breaking something that belonged to the parents

People raising children need to realize that household possessions belong to the entire household. If everyone has to use that plate then it belongs to everyone and anyone can have a forgivable accident with it. It’s okay to deem certain possessions as just yours and ask everyone in the house to respect that, but extend the same respect to your child’s belongings

Big mood. I know most of these are talking about little little kids, but here’s a tale from middle school. I had forgotten to charge my phone one night, and this was back when cell phones used to beep loudly when they were low on battery. I kept hearing the noise throughout the afternoon and not recognizing what it was because I’d never heard it before. When I finally did realize what it was, I was in science class and my fellow classmates were making presentations. I reached into my bag to try to turn off the phone, and then the low-battery sound went off, loud enough for the teacher to hear it. She confiscated my phone in front of everyone, and I didn’t get it back until after the weekend because it was a Friday. I was really embarrassed, especially to tell my parents.

When I got my phone back that Monday, my teacher said it was important for me to learn this lesson now since in college they wouldn’t tolerate phones going off. Fast forward to when I was in college, any time someone’s phone went off, either the professor would tell them to turn it off, or they would say, “Oh, my bad,” and turn it off themselves, and everyone would move on. I even had a professor who danced around while someone’s phone went off, and it was a welcome moment of levity during the lecture.

I say all this to say, one of the worst aspects of being a child/teen was adults assuming my intentions were malicious.

God I’ve been reading these posts for a while and each time I am struck with the realization that certainly not all parents were supposed to be a parent

“I say all this to say, one of the worst aspects of being a child/teen was adults assuming my intentions were malicious.” YES this

The problem is, even if families are forgiving the culture around children still effects the child. I use myself as proof of that.

A few times between the ages of 4 and 18 I broke things. I broke my grandma’s favorite Christmas ornament. Her first question was: “Are you hurt?” and when I apologized profusely she said “I’m just glad you weren’t hurt.”

I broke a few plates. I broke a couple glasses. Every time my dad’s first response was “Did you get cut?” the second step was cleaning up the broken bits, and the third was a discussion of what led to me breaking it and how I could avoid doing that in the future.

Same with spills. Same with stains. My biggest “punishment” from my immediate family was being taught how to clean up the mess I made and being shown in detail how to avoid the same mistake in the future if it was avoidable. There were consequences for my actions, but they were the direct result of those actions and nothing much beyond that.

My family tried so hard to teach me how to deal with accidents in a healthy way. They were patient. They treated every slip-up as a learning opportunity. They showed me a lot of love. The other adults still got to me. Teachers still punished and publicly shamed me and other students for our mess-ups. Extended family members outside of my small supportive circle still yelled at me. My friends’ parents still got mad.

To the point where whenever I messed up my first instinct was that my dad or grandparents were going to punish me, or yell at me, or hit me, even though they never did. They just didn’t. They always responded with patience and an attitude of “I’m glad you’re safe and I want to help you learn from this.” And I was still afraid of messing up. Mortified. Expecting the worst every time.

It’s like… we need to change the culture around this, man. Completely.

Also, not entirely related but this shit exposes one of the biggest things I habitually point out about the hypocrisy of the pro-hitting children moral framework: it’s generally would be seen as morally wrong to physically harm an adult for messing up the same way.

Like if an adult guest (adult, fully capable of defending themself from me) came to my house and accidentally dropped one of my plates and I started trying to beat the shit out of them everyone would agree that it’s assault and morally wrong for me to do. But if it’s a child (easily physically overpowered, can’t stop me from hitting them) then suddenly some of those same people would think that beating them for that same mistake would be not only okay but, in fact, a moral imperative. All justifications for why it’s okay to hit children are ultimately fronts for their actual reason, which is simply “i think beating children is okay because I can do it and they can’t stop me”

Look, with very few exceptions no one sets out with the intention of being a shitty abusive parent. A lot of shitty parents think they're doing it right. A lot of shitty parents think they're doing their best. A lot of shitty parents think that abusive shit they do is not really abusive and for the greater good of their child.

A lot of shitty parents love their kids, and would die for them, but they can still be abusive and shitty parents because they do shit they learned from their parents and don't pause a moment to think they may be doing it wrong because "I love my kid, abusive parents don't love their kids, so I can't be an Abusive Parent, not me, I'm good". A lot of shitty parents have their good moments, their good sides, and their kids can love them for it and then be doubly hurt when the good moment ends and things are shitty again.

Shitty parents are complicated people, the kids they raise are complicated people, and human relationships as a whole are a complex hot mess. There is not one right or wrong way to respond to abuse or choose how to handle the relationship to a shitty parent. No we don't wanna hear how you'd personally handle it in our shoes. You're not in our shoes. STFU.

BTW this is not some weird defense of shitty and abusive parents but for Christ's sake, this attitude that Shitty Parents - either real or fictional - are monsters out of a scary story who are contractually obliged to be shitty 100% of the time, all around, in every aspect of their lives, is actually harmful. It's untrue. It's stupid. It will lead kids of Shitty Parents to think that well, THEIR parents are not 100% evil and dastardly all the time, therefore they're not Actually Abusive, I must be exaggerating.

Shitty parents are not old school Disney villains breaking into song about how they love to do evil deeds to hurt their own children. They're people. Learn to tell the two things apart, for fuck's sake.

To expand on the crumbling of the patriarchal edifice of the family.

If society agrees that children can know themselves, and have a right to self determination…. Everything else that Conservatives argue they have a right to exert over children crumbles. As just two examples….

ALL corporal punishment rightfully becomes recognised for the assault it is.

Failure to appropriately consider the wishes of children in medical care and provide information in an age appropriate way is recognised as child abuse and malpractice.

Children are entire people, they deserve all of the rights, privileges and protections afforded to adults.

*holds up a finger*

Let’s talk about “appropriately consider,” and “provide information in an age-apropriate way.”

Most adults, most parents, especially recent empty-nesters, are going to have some grievous misconceptions about how children think.

The first thing they’ll say in response is, “what if they need vaccinations? I should just let them say no? What if they have cancer and refuse medical treatment?”

People who are authoritarian parents raise children who think things are wrong because mommy and daddy said. They will do the forbidden thing as soon as their parents’ backs are turned because they were never given a rational reason not to. This doubly so with authoritarian helicopter parents, whose kids run the risk of alcohol poisoning once they get off to school, because they were only taught “no,” and never taught a reason.

Even their religion fails to explain why murder is wrong in terms of its impact of the victim’s family and community. It’s just because God said. And there is exactly one punishment for every crime, which is damnation. Christianity is very bad at teaching ethics and morality, and that’s the religion of the dominant culture.

It becomes appropriate to teach “natural consequences” starting at age 3 or so, and if you start that early, you can expect a child to have mastered the ability to consider information about natural consequences and to make rational choices as of around age 8. Source: I was trained as a teacher, taught ages Pre-K - Grade 8, and have taken explicit coursework in developmental psychology.

But we do not do that. We shelter children from the fact that reality has real consequences, like death and disease, even until the ages of 13. I was once told by a parent that no 13 year old should have to think about death or disease.

And so, as a consequence, when kids get very sick, with something life threatening, it’s the first time they’ve ever even considered something like that happening to them, they freak out, and have a lot of catching up to do.

“These shots might hurt a little bit, for just a second, but they protect us from diseases that can kill us” IS something you can and should say to a four year old. Along with, “I love you and don’t want you get very sick or die. That would make me very sad.” And you can be certain that if you explain that, and your kid understands it, they are unlikely to refuse.

But parents don’t want to say that because the idea scares them, and they think it is somehow better or kinder for a child to be blindsided by the reality of death. I didn’t make it to 18 before a loved one died. I didn’t make it to 10 before I lost a beloved pet.

I didn’t make it to 8 before I had my first major depressive episode and started having obsessive ideas of death. And I didn’t have the language I needed to tell my parents that I was suicidal. I could have understood, but no one wanted to sully my virgin ears by explaining.

And likewise, kids WILL understand, “some people will not want to be friends with you, or they may even want to hurt your body, if you start living as a girl right now.” A four year old can understand that. I promise you. If they can understand the consequences of talking to strangers, if they can understand about getting sick, if they can understand that they can make and lose friends, they have all they need in order to make decisions about socially transitioning.

Moreover, they can try it out without any medical interventions. And so it’s reversible.

A person I know decided to push really hard for “no hitting the kids, at all”, and his wife agreed, although she’d been raised with Some Hitting and thought it was normal. And then she discovered that her child wasn’t afraid of her at all, and she could pull a hand back and the child would just giggle because that wasn’t a threat, and she suddenly realized that actually it had fucked her up so deeply that she couldn’t even see it.

Anyway, good job parenting.

@ every parent in the world: yes your kid is special because every child is special but they are not specialer than every other child so please be normal about them

Some parents have done what I can only describe as fandomize their child where they’ve taken the child and altered it in their mind to make a cooler version that fits their specific interests, and now sometimes I have to remind them of the canon material.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m a youth theater director and teacher. Every audition season is a personal ordeal.

Target audience reached

Worth saying every once in a while: parents are an oppressor class, the ur-oppressor class, and parental authority is the ur-authority. As has been so often said in science fiction and so little appreciated in everyday life, the responsibility that comes with creating life is grave, and such projects, if undertaken at all, should not be undertaken lightly. If you decide to do it you must be prepared to do it justly, and if you do not do it justly you are culpable. To act justly from a position of power means to relinquish that power whenever it is not disastrous to do so. Parents have a responsibility to work towards their children's safety and wellbeing and a greater responsibility to respect their children as people and to cede authority over their children's lives judiciously as this becomes viable in each domain.

The problem of just parenting is difficult and perhaps unsolvable, but I'm not an anti-natalist, so in the meantime we must settle for minimally unjust parenting. On a personal level, understand what a grave thing it is to take up the de facto authority of parenthood. On a political level, the power of parents as a class must be absolutely broken. Child liberation now.

That anarchist meme that says "the only authority I respect is my mom"? Fuck that meme. Your mom may be a good person and you may love her very much, and I support you in this, but she has no more justified authority over you than a cop or a teacher or anyone else. Free your mind.