Holy crap! I have so much to say! I have a 30-year-old son and a 25-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter. I'm so grateful that I had a friend with teenage boys when my boys were little. She taught me that teenage boys are still boys and they still love to play even though they're growing into man bodies. So she brought her kids over to play with mine because they never got to play anymore! When we went to the playground together they had the excuse of having small children with them... And small was relative cuz I think my oldest was 10 or so? But still it meant they weren't those big menacing monster men who were trying to hurt the babies! I remember being that mom when I had a single toddler but then I had an older kid who still like to play who was just a year older than he was last year and still just as playful!!
Also, I love you questioning the dominant paradigm of fear-based parenting!! I feel like 90% of parenting advice today is based on but what if??!! My 25-year-old son has a 3-month-old and I'm continuously finding ways to say things like " you're not parenting the what-ifs. You're parenting that kid that's right in front of you" cuz you can have some idea of what you're going to do down the line. But really you'll know your kid much better when you have to make those decisions. If it's a decision for tomorrow then hopefully you already know your kid and you can probably make that decision. I always like to have the kid on that committee of people making decisions for their lives. And in the moment sometimes I even share my fears with my children even when they were younger. Mostly I've just always tried to treat them as if they were actual humans, you know, people. Crate training them would have been easier, especially this third one, wherein my perspective was so vastly different than with the first. It was clear she was just a microscopic version of the person she was going to be when she grew up so I just tried to parent that person! And so now at 11 she thinks she's a whole person which of course she is. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts. I wish I could read every single one of them. Heck I forgot all about substack until today. My poor brain.
In 2017, before The Horrors had fully taken hold, my undergraduate class full of premed women asked me why hippies don't vaccinate their kids (this is when the anti-vaxers were mostly far left). My answer was a much longer version of what you just said. Somehow, living in a cognitive distortion bubble with other anti-vax parents makes them feel temporarily less terrified of--gestures to all of this. But my 20-year-old science students knew that not vaccinating your kid actually raises the risk of them becoming disabled, dying, or killing someone else's kid. Parenthood is terrifying, but not for the reasons all the parenting police think. My kid's high school had three lockdowns last semester. They also had adult male protesters screaming through megaphones that queer kids are abominations. My kid's school is an arts magnet where queer kids feel safe. I would gently redirect anyone's vaccine hesitancy towards GUN VIOLENCE. I hope your kid enjoys the hell out of camp. Mine is tromping around in the woods, fighting Greek monsters because Camp Half Blood is a real thing in Austin :) The only thing I worry about them getting is chiggers.
I feel like such a boomer saying "how did we survive when we were young???" But then you see these tik tok comments and the rage bubbles within. I'm not even a parents and I feel bad for the scrutiny parents must experience from arm-chair experts.
Unpopular opinion here…based on the responses…but the only way I would be ok with sleep away camp is if it was with all girls at a camp with all female counselors. It’s not about perceived fear or fear mongering, but real, lived experiences that I have personally had and have known several peers to have had as well. Sexual abuse and assault are real and it’s our jobs as parents not to put our children in harms way where the potential for that happening is drastically increased (like an overnight camp or sleepover where men and teenage boys will be present). It’s not fear based parenting, it’s instinct to protect our children. I’m part of the Xennial generation, born 1979, when parenting was pretty lax. How did we survive when we were young? Usually on our own, with scars and trauma that a lot of us are still trying to reconcile while simultaneously protecting our kids in today’s world. So not all of us are “fear-based parenting” on “what if” scenarios. A lot of us are just trying to keep our kids safe while allowing them to continue to experience childhood without going through the trauma we lived.
Holy crap! I have so much to say! I have a 30-year-old son and a 25-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter. I'm so grateful that I had a friend with teenage boys when my boys were little. She taught me that teenage boys are still boys and they still love to play even though they're growing into man bodies. So she brought her kids over to play with mine because they never got to play anymore! When we went to the playground together they had the excuse of having small children with them... And small was relative cuz I think my oldest was 10 or so? But still it meant they weren't those big menacing monster men who were trying to hurt the babies! I remember being that mom when I had a single toddler but then I had an older kid who still like to play who was just a year older than he was last year and still just as playful!!
Also, I love you questioning the dominant paradigm of fear-based parenting!! I feel like 90% of parenting advice today is based on but what if??!! My 25-year-old son has a 3-month-old and I'm continuously finding ways to say things like " you're not parenting the what-ifs. You're parenting that kid that's right in front of you" cuz you can have some idea of what you're going to do down the line. But really you'll know your kid much better when you have to make those decisions. If it's a decision for tomorrow then hopefully you already know your kid and you can probably make that decision. I always like to have the kid on that committee of people making decisions for their lives. And in the moment sometimes I even share my fears with my children even when they were younger. Mostly I've just always tried to treat them as if they were actual humans, you know, people. Crate training them would have been easier, especially this third one, wherein my perspective was so vastly different than with the first. It was clear she was just a microscopic version of the person she was going to be when she grew up so I just tried to parent that person! And so now at 11 she thinks she's a whole person which of course she is. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts. I wish I could read every single one of them. Heck I forgot all about substack until today. My poor brain.
In 2017, before The Horrors had fully taken hold, my undergraduate class full of premed women asked me why hippies don't vaccinate their kids (this is when the anti-vaxers were mostly far left). My answer was a much longer version of what you just said. Somehow, living in a cognitive distortion bubble with other anti-vax parents makes them feel temporarily less terrified of--gestures to all of this. But my 20-year-old science students knew that not vaccinating your kid actually raises the risk of them becoming disabled, dying, or killing someone else's kid. Parenthood is terrifying, but not for the reasons all the parenting police think. My kid's high school had three lockdowns last semester. They also had adult male protesters screaming through megaphones that queer kids are abominations. My kid's school is an arts magnet where queer kids feel safe. I would gently redirect anyone's vaccine hesitancy towards GUN VIOLENCE. I hope your kid enjoys the hell out of camp. Mine is tromping around in the woods, fighting Greek monsters because Camp Half Blood is a real thing in Austin :) The only thing I worry about them getting is chiggers.
I feel like such a boomer saying "how did we survive when we were young???" But then you see these tik tok comments and the rage bubbles within. I'm not even a parents and I feel bad for the scrutiny parents must experience from arm-chair experts.
Unpopular opinion here…based on the responses…but the only way I would be ok with sleep away camp is if it was with all girls at a camp with all female counselors. It’s not about perceived fear or fear mongering, but real, lived experiences that I have personally had and have known several peers to have had as well. Sexual abuse and assault are real and it’s our jobs as parents not to put our children in harms way where the potential for that happening is drastically increased (like an overnight camp or sleepover where men and teenage boys will be present). It’s not fear based parenting, it’s instinct to protect our children. I’m part of the Xennial generation, born 1979, when parenting was pretty lax. How did we survive when we were young? Usually on our own, with scars and trauma that a lot of us are still trying to reconcile while simultaneously protecting our kids in today’s world. So not all of us are “fear-based parenting” on “what if” scenarios. A lot of us are just trying to keep our kids safe while allowing them to continue to experience childhood without going through the trauma we lived.