I’ve seen people talk about the main theme of the owl house being acceptance, and I think they’re completely right about that. But I haven’t really seen anyone look at the sub themes depicted in the show around the acceptance theme.
Specifically how the owl house is really advocating for child autonomy. Specifically in the ways of discipline, showing that communicating and talking with children ends up being a lot more beneficial and effective than punishing them.
The most obvious example comes with the collector, where instead of talking to him, King’s dad punished the kid by putting him in essentially time out, for the actions of his siblings. Which he would’ve learned if he had talked to the collector. And then following that, every interaction before talking with Luz, has the collector being used or placated in some way instead of being treated like an actual child due to the amount of power he has. The titan trappers revering him as some sort of god, Belos manipulating him, and even king attempting to appease the collector, instead of really talking to him. Though for king it’s a bit more understandable. Even so, the show showcases the collector’s change only after he’s talked to like a person, and then shown why his views were wrong.
Luz, who’s the main focus of the show, has her character arc and journey centered around being punished for her not fitting in at school. And while, yes, some of Luz’s antics that were shown seemed to be legitimately dangerous, the real solution would’ve been to talk with her and teach her about safety and why bringing wild animals and fireworks into a school building is dangerous. It should have also been that Luz should be able to talk and negotiate with her teacher about what would be acceptable for her projects with her endless creativity. The solution was not to essentially punish Luz for being creative, and what that only did was make her feel worse about herself and more isolated from the people she thought would be on her side. And then we were shown in thanks to them and for the future, Camilla’s growth into understanding that not talking to Luz about this, and essentially forcing her into normality, was not the way to go about things.
And we see this theme again, with Willow forced into the abomination track because her parent’s thought that was what was best for her, until she was able to showcase her skills and switch to what she was actually good at. Alador realizing he missed a lot of Amity’s growth by not talking to her, and then making it up to Amity by letting her set the boundaries and reestablishing their relationship. Odalia being controlling and not listening to her children which lead to actively harming their social development, until she was confronted and then shut out. Belos manipulating Hunter, isolating him, and abusing him, not even listening to what he had to say. And all of these situations were made better and more bearable when they were given the chance to take charge and be heard.
All this, in an attempt to showcase that children can be vulnerable and malleable, but they are also smart and understanding. And instead of deciding what a child needs, it’s important to communicate with the child instead, asking what they need and listening to what they’re saying. And implementing that by guiding and supporting them, not attempting to control them to what someone else thinks is right.
Children are smart and observant, they just need to be taught how to communicate, and viewed and thought of as actual human beings.
In a way, the owl house is attempting to advocate for it’s audience, and that’s beautiful.
yesss i was thinking this exact same thing and was gonna write a meta post about it, but you already said it pretty much perfectly here
pretty much every parent-child conflict here (aside from when the “parent” is plain old evil, like belos) is defined by the parent being well-intentioned and doing what they *thought* was best for their child whilst ignoring what their child actually wants/needs
like with your examples, camila, willow’s dads, and alador fell into this by making their children do what they *thought* would give them a bright future, even if that made them unhappy. gwen also did this to eda (even after eda became an adult) when she tried to cure eda’s disability against her wishes, which ultimately pushed eda away and fractured their relationship. gwen also needed to listen to/pay attention to lilith more.
(and it’s debatable whether odalia falls into this category as well and actually wanted what was best for her children in her own twisted and misguided way, or if she’s in the “didn’t even have remotely good intentions here” category alongside belos. but either way, she ultimately refused to listen to her children and change. and so, like with belos, the only way for her children to truly be happy was for her influence to be removed from their lives)
we also see heavy criticisms of the education system and how little autonomy students are given and how damaging that is. and then we see the good that giving students more autonomy and a say in their education can do. principal bump remarked how much better his students were doing after he allowed multi-track studies, which happened all because he *listened* to luz and the detention kids
in this show, children are given the responsibility communicate with the adults in their lives. but the onus is ultimately put on the adults to *listen* to what the children are saying
