A story within a story where a mother sits her rowdy children down and tells them a story about a the world's sweetest, kindest mother who never lost her temper, never cursed and never yelled at her children, no matter how rowdy they could get. She would only gently, kindly told them to not do the dangerous things. One day she sweetly, kindly told her children to not go play at the riverbank, because it's dangerous and they might slip on the rocks, fall into the water, and die. Her children do not listen. They go play at the riverbank, where they slip on the rocks, fall into the water, and die.

And the sweet perfect mother of the story comes to the riverbank, sees that all her children drowned, and starts crying so bitterly that angels overhear her, and the angels say to each other, "she does not deserve this, this woman has never done anything wrong in her life, this should not have happened to her", and feeling great pity for her, bring her children back to life, and after that they always listened to their mother and lived happily ever after.

And the storyteller's children, who at this point are familiar with the concept that these stories are supposed to have some sort of a moral or lesson in them, interject to point out that their mother hasn't always done everything perfectly, she isn't always sweet, curses a lot, and as a matter of fact loses her shit at her kids all the time. She isn't like the mother of the story at all.

And their mother agrees: Her children are correct. She is not a perfect mother who has never done anything wrong. Angels will not have pity on her, and they will not bring her little shits back to life if they go to the river and die. So they better fucking not go get themselves killed in the first place.

I’m just thinking about how many times I’ve heard my dad on a long call with an obvious scammer and I’ll start begging him to get off the phone because I always think he’s a very easy mark and he’ll just keep going and then after a while he’ll say something like “I died 20 years ago” and hang up.

Virgin Millennial Daughter with 20 hrs of screentime a day: Dad! They’re scamming you! Dad! Stop! They will take your savings and your identity! Hang up before they SWAT you!

Chad Boomer dad with a flip phone he has not recharged since 2014: Well gee I wish I could give you my bank account number after you spent all this time on the phone explaining this car deal with me but I don’t have access to my finances because I am in Rikers for felony murder.

Oh this reminds me of a story from my youth, which I don’t Actually Remember Happening, but it has been recounted to me.

Basically when me and my bro were little, once, my mom had been making us supper. and she left the room for a minute for something, and when she came back, my brother was standing on a chair, and I was passing him green beans, which he was setting on the blades of the ceiling fan.

Now, when my mother saw this, she did what any respectable parent would do, and told us to sit our butts down and wait til our dad gets home.

Not much later, dad got home from work, ready to sit down to supper.

And mom sighs and goes, “honey, it’s hot in here, would you turn the fan on?”

Not much later, dad

got home from work, ready to

sit down to supper.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

What are your baby’s stats?

(me, my parents, my sister, and the baby are sitting at the kitchen table eating lunch)

baby, pointing at the light fixture over the table and signing "on": o.*

my sister: we actually can't turn that light on right now, because the lightbulb inside is burnt out! it needs a new one.

baby: ighbu.

sister: yes, lightbulb! granddaddy said after we eat he's going to climb up there on a ladder and change it, and then the light will come on!

baby: gadada! adda, uuu! ighbu o!

sister: exactly!

baby, signing "on" and pointing at the light and then my dad, with increasing urgency: GADADA ADDA UUUU. O.

my sister: we're going to finish eating first though, ok?

baby: nonono. O. gadada adda uuu.

[a split second goes by]

baby, pointing to himself: ba. adda uuu. ighbu.

me: you're going to climb the ladder and change the lightbulb yourself?

baby: dzyeah. *pointing to the buckle where he is buckled into the high chair* ububu.

me: unbuckle you? so you can change the lightbulb?

baby, highly businesslike: dzyeah.

*pronounced like "on" without the n

this comment passes peer review

im so done with seeing articles about kids and screen time that doesnt mention parent behaviors even once. “kids are always on their phones” so are the parents! which the kids look to for how they should behave! ipad babies didn’t chose to only play on their ipads, thats what their parents gave them!

an anecdotal example: when i was a kid, all my parents would do in their minimal free time was watch tv and then they would be surprised when in my sister and i’s minimal free time we would also only watch tv/play video games. they scolded us for not reading books, but they never read books. they scolded us for not going outside but they never went outside.

“kids are always on their damn phones” my mom is in her 60s and opens up candy crush anytime she’s sitting — it isnt just the kids

My friend’s always complaining how her kids are always on their tablets, but they were over at my house for an entire afternoon and while I was hanging out with them, they were talking, laughing, bouncing all over the living room, constantly harassing each other, yes, but neither of them touched their tablets. Then my housemate, who is one of the main adults in their lives, more so than me, was like “hey look at this anime” and suddenly they were parked in front of the TV. Me: Why did you do that? They don’t need screen time right now, they were having fun. They can watch anime at home. Him: It’s to keep them from getting bored so we can eat dinner. And I thought they’d like it.

... I swear it made me so frustrated. They had a cat and a laser pointer. They were entertaining themselves just fine.

that kid gets it

Dino cube :)

My 2 year old son is obsessed with your Dino cube. When I showed him he audibly gasped and took my phone from me so he could zoom in and look at different parts of Dino cube. He looked at Dino cube’s face and turned to me and said “happy!!!” and I said yes, Dinosaur is happy!

He spent 5 minutes just admiring every part of Dino cube, he would’ve spent longer if I’d let him lol. Picture saved so he can look more later.

Genuinely the cutest thing I’ve read :’) Your sons “happy!!” comment is the single most greatest art critique I’ve received

I can’t get over this little girl…..pretending to be long dead while someone digs up her body out of the ground. The jewelry laid out beside her…the hair clips….this is everything

I LOVE this she’s not even pretending to be an archaeologist she’s pretending she’s the long-dead mummified remains of a Celtic princess who’s been excavated by an archaeologist I’m living for it

I think there’s an argument to be made that protecting the children from relatively tame shadows of adults concepts actually makes things worse for them.

Like nothing is worse for me as an adult than the entirely unwarranted and unwanted sense of fear or scandalization from perfectly common stuff. And I don’t blame some wonderful TV show for using the word “fuck” or showing a nipple. My responses to those things are entirely constructed and cultural, and those shows are often doing me a kindness by giving me a context in which to safely re-examine them and my relationship to them.

And I just think actually there were a lot more opportunities to have a well adjusted outlook on life for the kids whose parents just told them what fuck meant.

[@dontbopthebunny reply: Will you give another example of what you mean, please?]

I can do my best. I don't know if you are just looking for simple examples. I don't think this is a simple one-to-one direct causation thing, where there are simple rules you can make for what is or isn't appropriate to discuss with kids when and if you follow them your kid will grow up mentally healthy and if you don't you've traumatized them forever.

But, for example, when I was in sixth grade I had a friend for the first half of the schoolyear who was in trouble.

I don't even remember her last name at this point, and I was an incredibly sheltered eleven-year-old. So I genuinely cannot tell you what was going on. I can tell you something wasn't right. Something with an older boyfriend and her divorced parents and stepdad? Something awful that I did not understand and did not know how to communicate.

Something she didn't tell a lot of people about, because it was a secret.

And I can't tell you how it ends. I don't know what happened to her. She disappeared from school after winter break and never came back.

I can tell you that on the two occasions I tried to talk to adults about it during our friendship, their first instinct was to protect me at the exclusion of her. The reaction was very much one of, whatever she is telling you, you shouldn't be learning about that, and it doesn't sound safe for you to be her friend, and I don't know if she's a good influence, and I am scared for you - the one who isn't being abused and is so sheltered she doesn't know how to recognize even the most basic signs about her friend. I'm not even sure they recognized this was probably some kind of abuse situation.

All they heard was an eleven-year old bringing up topics that sound like they might have something to do with sex or drugs and that's inappropriate. You're too young for that, and your friends are too, so if they are talking about it they are bad friends.

But here's the thing! Not only was she in more danger because of adults felt more inclined to protect this wealthier girl from a stable family at this other girl's expense, I was in more danger too! I had no idea how to even think of what she told me. I barely understood sex existed. And my understanding of dangerous adults was entirely based around relatively useless Stranger Danger training. Because adults felt inclined to warn me of the relatively unlikely danger of some random person asking me into a van, but not the much more likely and actively present danger of possibly my friend's parents being sexual predators or abusers of some kind.

If I hadn't been made to feel like I was maybe inviting Satan into my life by even knowing what sex was, maybe I could've better understood what my friend was trying to tell me. Maybe I could've better asked for help. And if the adult community around me had been more focused on listening to children and less on "protecting" them, maybe they could've actually protected someone.

My genuine feeling is that if a kid is old enough to ask, they are old enough to be given an honest answer (at a level they can understand). Even if the answer is sad, scary, or even traumatizing. I think it's fine to say, "the answer is scary, would you like to know, or would you just like to know Mom has it handled and it will be okay?" - and if the kid insists on knowing, try to tell them in safe and nonjudgmental environment.

We actually put children at an incredible disadvantage by labeling them "innocent and pure". Children, thank goodness, are no such thing. Children are feral little creatures who were born to survive. When I worked in daycare the kids favorite game was eating babies - they would stick dolls in the toy oven and microwave, they would SET IMAGINARY TABLES AND HAVE IMAGINARY FEASTS with an infant doll as the main entree. They thought this was hilarious.

You are not going to be able to keep trauma from your children. You are not going to be able to keep your children from trauma. You can only choose how much support you give them through trauma.

I also feel like sometimes we generate trauma by trying to separate ourselves, our society, and our children from their fleshy mortal reality. Even secular people in America like to conceptualize a person as having a kind of True Moral self, the SuperEgo is the Ideal You, that you must strive for. The "temptations" of the flesh as things to be overcome. Hunger, violent urges, lust, illness. These are external forces acting on us, not regular features of being human. Not just, like, things. That we feel. That are normal. That, yes, we need to deal with and not turn into problems for other people, but are not themselves things we need to be "protected" from experiencing or knowing about or talking about.

But the hide and deny and lie and "protect" version of teaching kids about these concepts - like foreign invaders instead of native features - hurts kids. If your kid is not supposed to know things they know, not be curious about things they are curious about, not think the things they think or feel the things they feel, they are going to be traumatized by their own normal thoughts and feelings. You generated the trauma where there was none.

All you're doing by telling your kid that Fido moved to a nice farm upstate where he's happy is arresting their development, denying them the chance to learn how to conceptualize the world as it is, and how to manage and care for themselves in it.

Kids are violent. They bite and push and shove. Kids are sexual. Sometimes infants get boners. (I have seen a one-year-old's boner while changing a diaper! It's awkward!!!! It's so awkward!!! But it shouldn't be, because it's natural and it's not sexual in the way adults are sexual. At that age, you ignore it. No need to give a one year old a shame complex). Sometimes toddlers masturbate! And that's a normal thing for them to do! They need to be taught manners about it, but they aren't doing anything wrong. Kids can experience loss and trauma. They get in car accidents, their friends can get cancer, they will experience bad things that are too big for them to deal with.

This isn't me saying "So go out and expose your three year old to the most fucked up shit you can think of." Do not do that. Please still monitor what they're watching, please watch how you talk around them, please still carefully introduce them to ideas at a level they can understand.

This is me saying, I think most of the push to "protect" kids is based around what adults wish wasn't true for them, as if pretending and wishing can somehow make it so for the next generation. If I never tell my kid about abuse, they will get to live in a world where abuse doesn't exist. But that's not what happens! Now they just live in a world where abuse exists and they can't recognize it and are ashamed to ask for help!

And this kind of fragile insulated approach to child-rearing is also just, like, incredibly classist and white. It's not about protecting everyone's sense of safety. No one cared about protecting Ruby Bridges, but now white parents panic about teaching their kids her name. White parents pull their kids out from learning about The Holocaust and slavery. They use the idea of protecting their kids from topics are "scary" or "upsetting" as a way to protect their child's, and so their own, sense of privilege and entitlement. They aren't worried about their kids. They are worried about themselves.

And ironically these kind of guarded tower approaches to childcare can actually create trauma out of the innocuous. Not all discomfort is equal. Yeah, it'll probably be a bit awkward for everyone when your kid asks where babies come from, but that's certainly going to be less traumatic than them learning when they're fifteen and pregnant.

"Protect the children" is far too often a dogwhistle that means anything from

1) I want to be able to control my children through shame

2) I want to be able to plug my ears and ignore systemic injustice

3) I want to oppress this group of people and can exploit the idea of children to do so

4) I want to protect myself from my children's judgment

5) I myself have not healthily come to terms with the ideas and realities I am now expected to guide my children through, and I do not want to work on myself

Taking care of children is obviously a hugely important thing to do. And we're only just figuring out what is and isn't good for them. We are so new to actually learning the best practices for raising safe and healthy kids.

IDK. If you're going to study how to rear healthy human children, I think you first need to acknowledge what a human is, and accept that with compassion and understanding. And a human is a hungry, sometimes horny, complex social animal, mortal and flesh as all animals are.

Honestly I think coming to terms with that reality, that we are physical and irrational and one day we will die, is also a huge trauma we need to cope with as a society across all aspects of life. Not just child-rearing. But how are your kids supposed to learn to best navigate that reality if you yourself cannot face it?

me, to the kids i worked with last week: welcome to medieval camp everyone! can anyone think of any fun medieval activities we might do here at camp this week?

kid: well, they used to do this thing where they would take your body and make it into four pieces and i think it was called quartering.

me: that’s called torture! we will not in fact be participating in torture this week! …anyone else?

Jacques d'Amboise Playing with His Children, Seattle, Washington, 1962 - Ph. John Dominis

#adorable!!!

So pure