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.
Don’t think for them
Our coercion of our children boils down to thinking for them, and expecting our children to follow our instructions. But children can think for themselves.
“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’.
(Not) doling out looks and latitude
Whenever parents try to stop being in charge of stuff, and stop doling out looks or latitude, life with the kids gets easier and more rewarding.
Scientism vs morality
How scientism allows one to escape from the merely human arena of morality with a single bound. Parents’ disputes with their children are over a moral issue—what they should do, or what should be done to them. While professionals may have some expertise over factual issues, that does not entitle them to pose as authorities on the moral issue. To assume that it does is anti-rational. It is scientism.