New parent? Planning to have a baby and questioning the standard parenting ideas? Don’t miss this critical discussion!
A conversation between prospective parents, about taking children seriously.
food
“If you do X, I will give you Y”
Offering a child a small treat (whatever it may be) might seem unobjectionable, because parent/carer and child both ‘win’. But what’s really happening here is that you’re implicitly teaching them that if they want something that seems appealing, to get it they will have to do things they don’t want to do. You’re essentially supporting a pattern of exchanging one’s happiness/dignity/ethical standards/morals for some prize.
How do you determine what food to give your children?
How do you yourself determine what to eat? It is the same with children. What we eat is determined by a number of things, including what we feel like eating, which may be affected by our ideas about health and other things.
Vegetarian parents, meat-eating child
If something shouldn’t be illegal because it’s wrong to force people to comply with the moral theory without agreeing with it, then it’s wrong to force one’s own children to comply with it.
Consistent rules set in concrete or children thinking for themselves with parents available to advise
Parents value consistency in themselves but when their children are consistent, the parents call them ‘stubborn’ or ‘strong-willed’.