#parenting :)

[mostly-funnytwittertweets]

[leche-flandom]

Okay this gave me flashbacks to Nam. First off, my husband and I are raising our daughter without religion. So it was extremely confusing when, years ago, the kid led me a circle of toys she had arranged in front of the fireplace, told me to kneel in it, and tell Santa (via the fireplace) what I want for Christmas. And she that she had already told Santa this way, and she'd give me privacy. Even more unbelievable than that was the fact that I actually did it because it was 2020 and I had nothing else to do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Cookies represent the body of Santa while the milk represents the blood of Santa

[ineffectualdemon]

"Children deserve bodily autonomy and to be recognised as people and deserve to be treated with respect. "

And

"Sometimes you have to tell a kid what to do because they are too young to understand that running out in traffic is not a fun game or that only eating icing for breakfast is going to make you sick. They literally don't know what's best for themselves a lot of the time because they are still learning how to be a person. "

Are statements that can coexist

Similarly:

"Kids are not stupid. Don't talk to them like they are."

And

"Kids often need things explained to them in simple to understand terms"

Can also coexist

[1000-life-hacks]

[anexperimentallife]

El: I wanna go to school today!

Me: I told you it's closed for Christmas time, baby. I can't make school be open for you.

El: BUT YOU ARE SUPER STRONG, DADDY!

😆

[nyxelestia]

This is why so many girls and women have a kneejerk hostility to "girly things." To us, these aren't just an aesthetic we don't like; they are symbols of all the times and ways our own friends and family didn't understand us and proved that they didn't want to.

Gendered parenting is so weird. As a little kid I was a total daddy's girl, I was told I would always try to sneak into the garage, I was always very interested in everything he was doing and would follow him around while he was working, but while my family was never the type to outright say "you can't do that because you're a girl", they simply didn't entertain the idea that I could possibly be interested in cars. Then when my little brother was born, it was just assumed he would become a mechanic like our dad because he was a boy. Even though he, unlike me, didn't like being in the garage much and wasn't all that interested in what dad was doing. Once he got to a certain age, dad started making him help and would drag him away from his actual interests for it, which lead to a lot of arguing and not much actual learning.

Gendered expectations sort of create doubles of children. There's the real child with their actual personality, interests and behaviors, and then there's the Gender Child.

My real brother hated soccer and team sports. The Gender Child that existed only the minds of the adults in his life needed to play soccer because that's what a Boy Child does.

Growing up, I always felt like adults didn't actually know me as a person and they weren't interested in getting to know me. Because they felt they'd already learned everything there was to know about me when they were told "it's a girl".

When I talk about how I never got gifts I actually liked from my relatives (to this day I still don't like getting gifts that aren't something I picked out myself), it isn't actually about the gifts themselves. I don't even remember them. What I do remember is the feeling of being given gifts that were seemingly not bought with the real me in mind. They were for the Girl Child™️ version of me. The me that adults wanted me to be, not who I actually was.

[auxryn]

Playing Zelda with my kiddo but he wants me to "fix the rifts" and I just want to hang out in my pajamas drinking smoothies in the desert with Dohna and the Gerudo girls 😣

[mostly-funnytwittertweets]

[animentality]

[drferox]

Darling child will hopefully appreciate this in the morning.

Sometimes I’m amused at how different my kiddo is from me. Today’s example is that she really likes horses, specifically the scene from Frozen 2 where the water horse is trying to murder Elsa.

Kiddo is 4 years old, and as such there is no punctuation that can adequately convey their dynamic vocal range, and so emojis will have to do.

For those unfamiliar with Frozen 2, Elsa (with her ice powers) attempts to cross the sea, in which lurks Nokk, the water horse. It’s a very thematic and scary scene, but the horse never actually gets named in the movie.

“Elsa’s horse name Posy ☺️☺️☺️❤️❤️❤️” my child explains.

“Posy 😀” my darling murmurs happily as the water horse appears, charging from the inky depths.

“POSEY!😃😃🥳🤩🤩!” Delighted squeals reverberate through my house, as a volume usually only reserved for the Wiggles, while the water horse actively tries to murder what is apparently the second favourite character in this movie.

“Aw, Posy… 😕😞😔” and a resigned sigh as the water horse is frozen and Elsa escapes.

“I told you Posy was good.” 😌

[thehmn]

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.

[asynca]

my parents never came to anything I did.

I have so many memories about this, but one in particular: when I was away at camp with 89 other teenagers, and at the one-month mark the post was collected distributed to all the dorms. 89 other children tore open their boxes and, shovelling handfuls of sweets their parents had sent them into their mouths, read pages-long letters and handed around photos of their brothers and sisters.

I didn't. I didn't get anything, I sat on my empty bed watching them. The teachers had to call my parents and ask if perhaps the post had gone missing...? but my parents were surprised they were required to interact with me while I was away.

Well, today, my 3-year-old daughter had a fun-run. The childcare centre invited parents to come but stressed that if we weren't able to, it was alright. There was no fucking way I wasn't going. My daughter wasn't going to be the only child there without a parent watching.

I got time off work and stood there in the beating sun and plastered in greasy sunscreen waiting to see my little girl emerge from inside the centre and stand on the track.

When she did, her little eyes searched through the crowd person-by-person for me, and absolutely lit up like the sun when she spotted me.

Mine filled with tears as I waved at her and cheered.

I'm breaking the cycle.

[cpericardium]

seems reasonable

[isaacparents]

Yeah, this is just being a parent. They look like you, or your family, and they aren’t evil or trying to replace you, even though some people think that, they just want to be loved and learn to be a person and you’re their best model.

what if your doppelgänger wasn’t evil it was just a person. what if your doppelgänger wasn’t trying to replace you it was just trying to learn to be a person and you were the best model it had. what if your doppelgänger looked at you with your eyes and said with your voice that it just wanted to be loved. what then.

[anexperimentallife]

I love this.