11 ms·

I fully agree that you have to take children seriously, respectfully and make sure they are able to live life to the fullest. But the "rules are bad" trope is,

I fully agree that you have to take children seriously, respectfully and make sure they are able to live life to the fullest. But the "rules are bad" trope is, unfortunately, a trend in The Netherlands. Parents that live by this rule are sacrificing themselves. It's bad parenting. I see a lot of parents (mothers mostly) in public places desperately trying to explain their dissatisfaction to their misbehaving children. The children meanwhile are completely disregarding them and will continue doing whatever they were doing untill the parents give up. The parents will end up awkwardly trying to ignore their children, visibly ashamed but still unable to use their authority for fear of breaking their chosen path to happy parenting. They won't even raise their voice. As a parent, I see this all the time. In school, on the street, in stores, it's everywhere. Reasoning with kids that are completely unwilling to listen to your "adult talk" is completely hopeless. Rules aren't fun but they aren't bad either. You don't have to explain your rules everytime, just make sure you enforce them consistently.

davedx 9y ago
I live in the Netherlands, have 4 kids. I don't see what you see. Anecdotal evidence is a really terrible way to inform your parenting.
- spiderfarmer 9y ago
  Sometimes what you experience firsthand is ten times more valuable then what you read on the internet. And maybe the struggling parents I saw are a local problem. But judging by the upvotes, there are more people who have similar experiences.
  - Trombone12 9y ago
    Or maybe its just the childless Americans (raised in a culture where spanking is widely accepted) that upvote the tough line on child discipline. I mean, your original post was really about how to enforce rules, though you spent most of it conjuring up the image of publicly annoying children and then assuming their parents don't set any rules. Somewhat surprisingly you also describe how the same parents that supposedly don't set rules clearly trying (but failing) to enforce said non-existing rules... Just say what you mean: you make your children obey you by physical means.
    - beaconstudios 9y ago
      I hope I'm misreading your implications when you say "you make your children obey you by physical means", because it sounds like you're accusing the parent commenter of child abuse. I'm sure that's not what you intended but I wanted to make it clear how that could come across.
      - RegEx 9y ago
        Spanking isn't considered abuse in American culture. But you can make children obey physically without spanking. There is snatching from them, picking them up, etc. Those are physically asserting yourself over them to enforce a specific outcome. Not saying that's good or bad, just showing how the poster didn't imply abuse.
        beaconstudios 9y ago
        The original commenter didn't mention physical discipline though - in fact, they explicitly stated that the parents in question wouldn't even raise their voice, which I took to mean that the solution was to verbally discipline misbehaving children rather than trying to explain the rules to them as you would an adult peer.
        AstralStorm 9y ago
        Sometimes these other attempts do not work. (I had to use medieval methods exactly once for very good reason: electric sockets. Child safety and covers only go so far.)
    - hackinthebochs 9y ago
      >Just say what you mean: you make your children obey you by physical means. You say this like its inherently a bad thing. Do you think children are abused by their nervous system that keeps them from biting their tongue and chewing on their jaw by causing them pain when they do so? Does this process cause them mental trauma? If not then why do we act like using a proportional amount of physical means to instill correct behavior in young children is inherently a bad thing? This "enlightened" parenting movement has really jumped the shark.
  - comstock 9y ago
    You’re getting upvotes most likely because most of the people on HN are either childless (and don’t fully understand what parenting involves) or don’t take an active role in parenting (this is unfortunately true of the people I know in real life who are on HN).
- taneq 9y ago
  There's a ton of selection bias on both sides of this discussion. You were motivated to post your personal counterexample in order to defend Dutch parenting (whereas Dutch parents with misbehaving children would not be), and the poster above would have been noticing the misbehaving children regardless of how many well-behaved children were nearby.
ekianjo 9y ago
This part is laughable: > Some parents are having a hard time. They sacrifice for their children and give so much. They want some rules to keep things under control. But rules can’t create good family relationships. Cooperative learning and problem solving is the only win/win approach. You can't spend time explaining ALL the rules around in society because it takes literally years to explain the ins and outs of everything. And kids need to know how to behave well before they can master speech and language, so it's pretty obvious you need some level of rules and some level of obedience. I am totally for "explaining why", but just saying "rules are bad" sounds like a very poor generalizing principle.
- Trombone12 9y ago
  In practice you can probably get away with explaining some fairly general rules that cover most of day to day life early on and defer detailed exception clauses for later. Explaining all the rules is what school is for, basically.
  - tonteldoos 9y ago
    > Explaining all the rules is what school is for, basically. And this is where so many people go wrong. Parents are teachers too, and it's their job to teach their children how to fit into society, behave, be decent people, etc. A lot of rules, like math tables, help you learn the basic foundational building blocks. Once you have those, you have a reference to understand more things. School is, basically, for most of the other stuff.
  - erasemus 9y ago
    >Explaining all the rules is what school is for, basically. Heh. My school published a list of rules which included: 'Any breach of common sense is also a breach of school rules.'
  - d0mine 9y ago
    Gödel suggests If you can explain all the [sufficiently complex] rules; your system is inconsistent (contradictory rules are true). If the rules are consistent, some things can't be explained.
DiThi 9y ago
> But the "rules are bad" trope is, unfortunately, a trend in The Netherlands. Parents that live by this rule are sacrificing themselves. It's bad parenting. Ironically the problem arises from a self inflicted rule: "don't be angry". If they truly thought from first principles they would have realized.
thaumaturgy 9y ago
If true, this would be an unfortunate ignorance of Kohlberg's theories of moral development (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg%27s_stages_of_moral_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg%27s_stages_o...).
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  These are not laws. The observations and patterns do not exactly match across cultures. The basic premise of moral rationality is plenty flawed as well.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
anon-20171203A 9y ago
Let me provide you a personal experience that might help put this "rules are bad" trope in context. One day I was with my daughter (~24 months old) at the Zoo and she wanted an Ice Cream and I said "nope". She looked around with wide eyes and noticed all the people near by. Then, she did something I had never seen before -- she dropped down on the ground, twisted and swirled, and started to scream; for quite some time. I calmly sat down nearby and asked her: "when you're done, could you let me know?". Over the next minute or so, several parents gathered around to gawk at the spectacle. When my daughter got close enough to some urine on the ground, I got up, walked over and said: "careful, icky pee here". Without stopping the rolling or the screaming, she immediately recognized and steered clear of the urine. I then sat down again and said, "when you're done, could you let me know?". After another minute or two longer, with hoarse voice and a few bruises, she stood straight up and said: "Fine; I'm done. Monkey next?". What was problematic was the reaction of other parents. During the episode, they became increasingly anxious looking at each other and trying to catch my attention. One of the mothers asked me "Where is your wife?", to which I responded: "at work, but don't worry, I'm the primary care giver". A father said (after being nudged by his wife): "well, you're just going to sit there?" to which I calmly responded: "It's a temper tantrum". One final mother didn't say a word, but made sure to give my daughter comforting eyes and looked harshly at me, making sure I knew she was dialing someone (police?) on her cell phone. Once my daughter got up, we inspected her pants for horse urine and talked about how that was an extreme waste of time. Later on I asked her what the Tantrum was about. She explained it quite clearly to me: "well, daddy, one other boy just had one and he got the ice cream, so I wanted to see if that would work". I explained to her that this was pretty bad behavior and that if I ever see it again, we will go home immediately. I've had a few tantrums since, but none of them have been public. My daughter and I then had a very fantastic afternoon talking about Monkeys and more effective ways to communicate her desires. This was a very unexpected experience for me. I seriously didn't expect that in 1-2 minutes, I'd have a dozen adults gathering around in a circle. I didn't expect 2 of them would be brave enough to hurl insults. I didn't expect one of them to be implicitly threatening police (CPS?). I can see how many parents would have caved under such peer pressure. Perhaps it's not the parent's fear of the children that leads to these problems, but instead, fear of what other parents might say or do? So. I'm not sure how to connect this to this thread. First I'm not sure a "rule" would have helped. Punishing her wasn't going to help (I evaluated going immediately home, but I think the event was traumatic enough for her already). I'm not sure. Would you do it differently? If you saw me on the bench, would you think that I had given up?
jaredklewis 9y ago
Just going to insert my layman’s opinion here, but I think the article’s suggested methods are good. Children learn by example and they are always watching. If a child is misbehaving In public, the child is still watching. How does my parent (my role model) solve their problems? By yelling? By hitting? Or by talking? And to counter anecdote with anecdote, I have seen plenty of misbehaving children in public with parents frantically trying to control them by yelling at them or spanking them, and it usually only results in even louder crying and more defiance. Children misbehave as a kind of experimentation. At least some bad behavior is unavoidable, and it is an excellent chance for parents to give their children a lesson in conflict resolution.
- m_mueller 9y ago
  As a father, my 2 cents: There's something in between talking and yelling. Call it the 'stern' talk if you will. I get this authoritative voice, usually giving the little guy two choices: Either accept what you have right now peacefully (i.e. take your winnings), or play me again and I'll take away some of your freedom (pick him up, put in baby car, put to bed, something like that). So far it has proven very effective with my 2yo, calms him down immediately and after a little while his mood tends to be great. The little bastards seem to like when they get to know their boundaries, it seems to give them a feeling of safety. So far its also not becoming more frequently necessary (which I fear, because inevitably it will loose effectiveness at some point). Maybe 0.5-1.0 occurrences per day or so. Also, it's only ever needed when he's with his mother and I'm there (the 'good cop' who can't be strict with him until she breaks down...), when I'm alone with him he pretty much behaves 100%. Kids, they are masters at what they're doing...
  - tonteldoos 9y ago
    This. Children thrive on boundaries. It gives them an 'area' within which they can fully explore, learn, play, etc, while KNOWING that as long as they stay within those lines, everything will be fine. I call it THE VOICE, and I try and keep its use to the minimum, so as to not reduce its effectiveness. However, when I do use it, mine knows he has to stop pushing boundaries, or there will be repercussions.
deeg 9y ago
I completely agree. In the book Reviving Ophelia [1] the author asserts that the most well-adjusted girls were the ones who had plenty of well-defined boundaries at home. Rules are good and accepted in the adult world; why would the child world be any different? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reviving_Ophelia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reviving_Ophelia
- crankylinuxuser 9y ago
  You mean, treat them as good submissives and order them as appropriately? No. Seriously, what would be said about myself if I started making huge sweeping generalizations about a gender? Its bad for males, and its bad for females. Primarily, any effect one "tries" to find is so close to 50% its useless. Tl;Dr. Reviving Ophelia is junk science, meant only to sell more of their books.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- memorymappings 9y ago
  Well behaved women rarely make history. This could be precisely the reason why women do so poorly socioeconomically, because they are taught to be endlessly obedient and subservient without question. It may make them well behaved, but it makes for terrible leaders who need to defy societal norms to perpetuate or see through a novel idea or business model, terrible self esteem for STEM fields when women need to feel confident in their own understanding of how things work and be willing to dig into the why's instead of mentally reoienting to the politically correct or expected answer. It's bad for basically every level of Independence that women need to excercise to be socioeconomic equals. Bringing up well behaved women with excessive boundaries in correlation to children is precisely the issue with society. I think I'm going to go ahead and buy that t-shirt that says "raise boys and girls the same way" If boys get to play in the woods and turn their sisters curling irons into backyard bombs, go out late at night then girls should have the same freedom to comfortably practice exploration, tinkering with stuff and breaking stuff and building stuff and roaming about without their mothers worried about where they are going and loading them down with more domestic chores than their male siblings.
JustinCEO 9y ago
>But the "rules are bad" trope is, unfortunately, a trend in The Netherlands. Parents that live by this rule are sacrificing themselves. It's bad parenting. TCS explicitly says don't sacrifice yourself, even in the specific essay linked. The people in the Netherlands are not doing TCS. It's a common trap people fall into though, even with conventional parents. I agree that self-sacrifice is bad. There's a lot to TCS other than not having rules though. You can't just drop rules and expect everything to work out great. That would be naive. You have to actively seek out solutions that work for you and your kid. And really work, not "work" in a compromising, sharing-of-misery kind of way. >I see a lot of parents (mothers mostly) in public places desperately trying to explain their dissatisfaction to their misbehaving children. What you aren't seeing is the thousands of times the child has been thwarted, denied, forced, coerced, dragged around, insufficiently helped, etc. >The children meanwhile are completely disregarding them and will continue doing whatever they were doing untill the parents give up. Does that strike you as the approach a child would take if their parent were typically super helpful, responsive, and had a really strong strong track record of taking the child seriously? >The parents will end up awkwardly trying to ignore their children, this is not TCS! >visibly ashamed ashamed of their helpless, dependent children who are actively upset about something! >but still unable to use their authority for fear of breaking their chosen path to happy parenting. You describe a sad situation but something that is not at all a criticism of TCS. It's rather compatible with the TCS worldview (the bare facts of the situations described, not your interpretation) >They won't even raise their voice. Having a big person yell at you isn't helpful or nice.
- einarvollset 9y ago
  You have never had children, right? Or if you did, you had one and they’re still pre-toddler? I know that some people had horrible parents that mistreated them and hence they ended up being very sensitive to any parental reprimand. That sucks. None the less, kids need unconditional love, but they also need boundaries. Loving them means you sometime have to lay down the law. It’s not fun. It’s a hell of a lot easier to not do it.
  - hateduser2 9y ago
comstock 9y ago
You sound very judgmental. Bring up kids is hard, what those “mothers” are doing is hard, physically exhausting work which often takes 18 hours a day. You know nothing of their personal circumstances but decide to judge them anyway. For me, it’s amazing that many full time care givers can hold it together as well as they do.
jakobegger 9y ago
As a parent, I’ve stopped judging other parents. When I see a parent struggling with a “misbehaving” kid in public, I don’t see a failed parent. I just see someone in a difficult situation with no easy way out. I don’t think “This wouldn’t have happened if the parent followed my parenting philosophy.” Parenting is hard, we all struggle, and dismissing other people’s ways is easy, but it doesn’t do anything besides making you feel good about yourself.
- new299 9y ago
  I really find the original comment very strange, and quite shocking that it's currently the top comment. In particular the way it singles out "mostly mothers" as being "bad parents". Parenting is very hard, if these mothers are the sole/primary care-givers they are doing an extremely difficult job. For those who haven't experienced this, the difficulty in my view is not dealing with an isolated situation. It's dealing with these situations every day, over an extended period of time. It's hard work, and it's hard to get everything right.

davedx 9y ago

I live in the Netherlands, have 4 kids. I don't see what you see. Anecdotal evidence is a really terrible way to inform your parenting.

spiderfarmer 9y ago
Sometimes what you experience firsthand is ten times more valuable then what you read on the internet. And maybe the struggling parents I saw are a local problem. But judging by the upvotes, there are more people who have similar experiences.
- Trombone12 9y ago
  Or maybe its just the childless Americans (raised in a culture where spanking is widely accepted) that upvote the tough line on child discipline. I mean, your original post was really about how to enforce rules, though you spent most of it conjuring up the image of publicly annoying children and then assuming their parents don't set any rules. Somewhat surprisingly you also describe how the same parents that supposedly don't set rules clearly trying (but failing) to enforce said non-existing rules... Just say what you mean: you make your children obey you by physical means.
  - beaconstudios 9y ago
    I hope I'm misreading your implications when you say "you make your children obey you by physical means", because it sounds like you're accusing the parent commenter of child abuse. I'm sure that's not what you intended but I wanted to make it clear how that could come across.
    - RegEx 9y ago
      Spanking isn't considered abuse in American culture. But you can make children obey physically without spanking. There is snatching from them, picking them up, etc. Those are physically asserting yourself over them to enforce a specific outcome. Not saying that's good or bad, just showing how the poster didn't imply abuse.
      - beaconstudios 9y ago
        The original commenter didn't mention physical discipline though - in fact, they explicitly stated that the parents in question wouldn't even raise their voice, which I took to mean that the solution was to verbally discipline misbehaving children rather than trying to explain the rules to them as you would an adult peer.
      - AstralStorm 9y ago
        Sometimes these other attempts do not work. (I had to use medieval methods exactly once for very good reason: electric sockets. Child safety and covers only go so far.)
  - hackinthebochs 9y ago
    >Just say what you mean: you make your children obey you by physical means. You say this like its inherently a bad thing. Do you think children are abused by their nervous system that keeps them from biting their tongue and chewing on their jaw by causing them pain when they do so? Does this process cause them mental trauma? If not then why do we act like using a proportional amount of physical means to instill correct behavior in young children is inherently a bad thing? This "enlightened" parenting movement has really jumped the shark.
- comstock 9y ago
  You’re getting upvotes most likely because most of the people on HN are either childless (and don’t fully understand what parenting involves) or don’t take an active role in parenting (this is unfortunately true of the people I know in real life who are on HN).
taneq 9y ago
There's a ton of selection bias on both sides of this discussion. You were motivated to post your personal counterexample in order to defend Dutch parenting (whereas Dutch parents with misbehaving children would not be), and the poster above would have been noticing the misbehaving children regardless of how many well-behaved children were nearby.

ekianjo 9y ago

This part is laughable: > Some parents are having a hard time. They sacrifice for their children and give so much. They want some rules to keep things under control. But rules can’t create good family relationships. Cooperative learning and problem solving is the only win/win approach. You can't spend time explaining ALL the rules around in society because it takes literally years to explain the ins and outs of everything. And kids need to know how to behave well before they can master speech and language, so it's pretty obvious you need some level of rules and some level of obedience. I am totally for "explaining why", but just saying "rules are bad" sounds like a very poor generalizing principle.

Trombone12 9y ago
In practice you can probably get away with explaining some fairly general rules that cover most of day to day life early on and defer detailed exception clauses for later. Explaining all the rules is what school is for, basically.
- tonteldoos 9y ago
  > Explaining all the rules is what school is for, basically. And this is where so many people go wrong. Parents are teachers too, and it's their job to teach their children how to fit into society, behave, be decent people, etc. A lot of rules, like math tables, help you learn the basic foundational building blocks. Once you have those, you have a reference to understand more things. School is, basically, for most of the other stuff.
- erasemus 9y ago
  >Explaining all the rules is what school is for, basically. Heh. My school published a list of rules which included: 'Any breach of common sense is also a breach of school rules.'
- d0mine 9y ago
  Gödel suggests If you can explain all the [sufficiently complex] rules; your system is inconsistent (contradictory rules are true). If the rules are consistent, some things can't be explained.

DiThi 9y ago

> But the "rules are bad" trope is, unfortunately, a trend in The Netherlands. Parents that live by this rule are sacrificing themselves. It's bad parenting. Ironically the problem arises from a self inflicted rule: "don't be angry". If they truly thought from first principles they would have realized.

thaumaturgy 9y ago

If true, this would be an unfortunate ignorance of Kohlberg's theories of moral development (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg%27s_stages_of_moral_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg%27s_stages_o...).

AstralStorm 9y ago
These are not laws. The observations and patterns do not exactly match across cultures. The basic premise of moral rationality is plenty flawed as well.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

anon-20171203A 9y ago

Let me provide you a personal experience that might help put this "rules are bad" trope in context. One day I was with my daughter (~24 months old) at the Zoo and she wanted an Ice Cream and I said "nope". She looked around with wide eyes and noticed all the people near by. Then, she did something I had never seen before -- she dropped down on the ground, twisted and swirled, and started to scream; for quite some time. I calmly sat down nearby and asked her: "when you're done, could you let me know?". Over the next minute or so, several parents gathered around to gawk at the spectacle. When my daughter got close enough to some urine on the ground, I got up, walked over and said: "careful, icky pee here". Without stopping the rolling or the screaming, she immediately recognized and steered clear of the urine. I then sat down again and said, "when you're done, could you let me know?". After another minute or two longer, with hoarse voice and a few bruises, she stood straight up and said: "Fine; I'm done. Monkey next?". What was problematic was the reaction of other parents. During the episode, they became increasingly anxious looking at each other and trying to catch my attention. One of the mothers asked me "Where is your wife?", to which I responded: "at work, but don't worry, I'm the primary care giver". A father said (after being nudged by his wife): "well, you're just going to sit there?" to which I calmly responded: "It's a temper tantrum". One final mother didn't say a word, but made sure to give my daughter comforting eyes and looked harshly at me, making sure I knew she was dialing someone (police?) on her cell phone. Once my daughter got up, we inspected her pants for horse urine and talked about how that was an extreme waste of time. Later on I asked her what the Tantrum was about. She explained it quite clearly to me: "well, daddy, one other boy just had one and he got the ice cream, so I wanted to see if that would work". I explained to her that this was pretty bad behavior and that if I ever see it again, we will go home immediately. I've had a few tantrums since, but none of them have been public. My daughter and I then had a very fantastic afternoon talking about Monkeys and more effective ways to communicate her desires. This was a very unexpected experience for me. I seriously didn't expect that in 1-2 minutes, I'd have a dozen adults gathering around in a circle. I didn't expect 2 of them would be brave enough to hurl insults. I didn't expect one of them to be implicitly threatening police (CPS?). I can see how many parents would have caved under such peer pressure. Perhaps it's not the parent's fear of the children that leads to these problems, but instead, fear of what other parents might say or do? So. I'm not sure how to connect this to this thread. First I'm not sure a "rule" would have helped. Punishing her wasn't going to help (I evaluated going immediately home, but I think the event was traumatic enough for her already). I'm not sure. Would you do it differently? If you saw me on the bench, would you think that I had given up?

jaredklewis 9y ago

Just going to insert my layman’s opinion here, but I think the article’s suggested methods are good. Children learn by example and they are always watching. If a child is misbehaving In public, the child is still watching. How does my parent (my role model) solve their problems? By yelling? By hitting? Or by talking? And to counter anecdote with anecdote, I have seen plenty of misbehaving children in public with parents frantically trying to control them by yelling at them or spanking them, and it usually only results in even louder crying and more defiance. Children misbehave as a kind of experimentation. At least some bad behavior is unavoidable, and it is an excellent chance for parents to give their children a lesson in conflict resolution.

m_mueller 9y ago
As a father, my 2 cents: There's something in between talking and yelling. Call it the 'stern' talk if you will. I get this authoritative voice, usually giving the little guy two choices: Either accept what you have right now peacefully (i.e. take your winnings), or play me again and I'll take away some of your freedom (pick him up, put in baby car, put to bed, something like that). So far it has proven very effective with my 2yo, calms him down immediately and after a little while his mood tends to be great. The little bastards seem to like when they get to know their boundaries, it seems to give them a feeling of safety. So far its also not becoming more frequently necessary (which I fear, because inevitably it will loose effectiveness at some point). Maybe 0.5-1.0 occurrences per day or so. Also, it's only ever needed when he's with his mother and I'm there (the 'good cop' who can't be strict with him until she breaks down...), when I'm alone with him he pretty much behaves 100%. Kids, they are masters at what they're doing...
- tonteldoos 9y ago
  This. Children thrive on boundaries. It gives them an 'area' within which they can fully explore, learn, play, etc, while KNOWING that as long as they stay within those lines, everything will be fine. I call it THE VOICE, and I try and keep its use to the minimum, so as to not reduce its effectiveness. However, when I do use it, mine knows he has to stop pushing boundaries, or there will be repercussions.

deeg 9y ago

I completely agree. In the book Reviving Ophelia [1] the author asserts that the most well-adjusted girls were the ones who had plenty of well-defined boundaries at home. Rules are good and accepted in the adult world; why would the child world be any different? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reviving_Ophelia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reviving_Ophelia

crankylinuxuser 9y ago
You mean, treat them as good submissives and order them as appropriately? No. Seriously, what would be said about myself if I started making huge sweeping generalizations about a gender? Its bad for males, and its bad for females. Primarily, any effect one "tries" to find is so close to 50% its useless. Tl;Dr. Reviving Ophelia is junk science, meant only to sell more of their books.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
memorymappings 9y ago
Well behaved women rarely make history. This could be precisely the reason why women do so poorly socioeconomically, because they are taught to be endlessly obedient and subservient without question. It may make them well behaved, but it makes for terrible leaders who need to defy societal norms to perpetuate or see through a novel idea or business model, terrible self esteem for STEM fields when women need to feel confident in their own understanding of how things work and be willing to dig into the why's instead of mentally reoienting to the politically correct or expected answer. It's bad for basically every level of Independence that women need to excercise to be socioeconomic equals. Bringing up well behaved women with excessive boundaries in correlation to children is precisely the issue with society. I think I'm going to go ahead and buy that t-shirt that says "raise boys and girls the same way" If boys get to play in the woods and turn their sisters curling irons into backyard bombs, go out late at night then girls should have the same freedom to comfortably practice exploration, tinkering with stuff and breaking stuff and building stuff and roaming about without their mothers worried about where they are going and loading them down with more domestic chores than their male siblings.

JustinCEO 9y ago

>But the "rules are bad" trope is, unfortunately, a trend in The Netherlands. Parents that live by this rule are sacrificing themselves. It's bad parenting. TCS explicitly says don't sacrifice yourself, even in the specific essay linked. The people in the Netherlands are not doing TCS. It's a common trap people fall into though, even with conventional parents. I agree that self-sacrifice is bad. There's a lot to TCS other than not having rules though. You can't just drop rules and expect everything to work out great. That would be naive. You have to actively seek out solutions that work for you and your kid. And really work, not "work" in a compromising, sharing-of-misery kind of way. >I see a lot of parents (mothers mostly) in public places desperately trying to explain their dissatisfaction to their misbehaving children. What you aren't seeing is the thousands of times the child has been thwarted, denied, forced, coerced, dragged around, insufficiently helped, etc. >The children meanwhile are completely disregarding them and will continue doing whatever they were doing untill the parents give up. Does that strike you as the approach a child would take if their parent were typically super helpful, responsive, and had a really strong strong track record of taking the child seriously? >The parents will end up awkwardly trying to ignore their children, this is not TCS! >visibly ashamed ashamed of their helpless, dependent children who are actively upset about something! >but still unable to use their authority for fear of breaking their chosen path to happy parenting. You describe a sad situation but something that is not at all a criticism of TCS. It's rather compatible with the TCS worldview (the bare facts of the situations described, not your interpretation) >They won't even raise their voice. Having a big person yell at you isn't helpful or nice.

einarvollset 9y ago
You have never had children, right? Or if you did, you had one and they’re still pre-toddler? I know that some people had horrible parents that mistreated them and hence they ended up being very sensitive to any parental reprimand. That sucks. None the less, kids need unconditional love, but they also need boundaries. Loving them means you sometime have to lay down the law. It’s not fun. It’s a hell of a lot easier to not do it.
- hateduser2 9y ago

comstock 9y ago

You sound very judgmental. Bring up kids is hard, what those “mothers” are doing is hard, physically exhausting work which often takes 18 hours a day. You know nothing of their personal circumstances but decide to judge them anyway. For me, it’s amazing that many full time care givers can hold it together as well as they do.

jakobegger 9y ago

As a parent, I’ve stopped judging other parents. When I see a parent struggling with a “misbehaving” kid in public, I don’t see a failed parent. I just see someone in a difficult situation with no easy way out. I don’t think “This wouldn’t have happened if the parent followed my parenting philosophy.” Parenting is hard, we all struggle, and dismissing other people’s ways is easy, but it doesn’t do anything besides making you feel good about yourself.

new299 9y ago
I really find the original comment very strange, and quite shocking that it's currently the top comment. In particular the way it singles out "mostly mothers" as being "bad parents". Parenting is very hard, if these mothers are the sole/primary care-givers they are doing an extremely difficult job. For those who haven't experienced this, the difficulty in my view is not dealing with an isolated situation. It's dealing with these situations every day, over an extended period of time. It's hard work, and it's hard to get everything right.