#I'm upset because im on my period and having mood swings and my brother just ate the last chocolate chip cookie

[lena-thinks-too-much]

Batdad's Mediocre Parenting

It should be noted that this headcanon is my take on fanon Bruce and has not resemblance to canon Bruce mostly because Bruce's parenting skills are wildly inconsistent in the comics.

So Bruce is kinda of a head over heart kinda guy right? As someone with a dad who approaches emotional problems with pure logic and nothing else, I kinda get it. Genuinely, if I hear "think like an engineer" while I'm going through a crisis one more time I'm going to break something. (I love him though, he's doing his best)

Bruce Wayne who loves his children and isn't great at expressing it. Bruce Wayne who wants to make all their problems go away but isn't particularly cognisant of how they would want to go about that.

Bruce Wayne who appeals to their logical side because that's what he understands best.

I think this is why, when his kids mess up, Bruce has a tendency to stick his foot in his mouth. Emotions muddy the mind and make decisions difficult. Solution? Push the emotions aside and focus on cold hard facts. But his kids are teenagers who aren't as emotionally constipated as he is so they can't actually do that.

So everytime he fires or benches someone, he thinks it's obvious it's out of concern. "You're acting rash and impulsive" or "you disobeyed direct orders" translates to 'I'm afraid you're going to get hurt'. But they don't hear that part.

I think the source for this theory is actually from Tim's run as Robin. I know I said I wasn't going to bring canon into this but it's relevant.

So right before Tim officially quits as Robin because Jack Drake finds out, he was actually indeterminately benched(it was like a couple weeks or so), followed by him quitting. Actually they day Jack forces him to quit Tim had just made up his mind to be Robin again

This was because of a series of events where a villain attacked Steph and breaks her leg, while threatening to kill her and Tim loses his shit and starts whaling on the guy. Then I think the guy disappears or disintegrates or something? I don't really remember but Tim fully believes he just killed a man and it really fucks with him. they find out later that the guy survived but that's irrelevant to the point

because Tim is convinced he just committed murder, he kinda starts losing control in the field. It gets bad enough that Bruce basically tells him to either get his shit together or stay home because he's a liability. Tim gets pissed off at Bruce's cold lack of empathy for his struggle and basically quits on the spot.

The reason I bring this up is because that conversation could have easily been read as Bruce appealing to logic instead of emotion. After all, Tim was the robin most similar to Bruce and Bruce is a logically driven person. Bruce probably relates to time via facts and logic. Bruce tried to put it in terms that he thought Tim would understand: logically pointing out the objective observations of behavior and why they're a problem, when Tim was too emotional to think logically.

so yeah. TLDR: Bruce is a good parent who cares about his kids, he's just really bad at speaking their language