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Some general advice to fight the pressure to be a perfect parent to a perfect child - 1. Forget the term "playdate". Don't schedule your kids' time to play wit
by dsnuh 9y ago
Some general advice to fight the pressure to be a perfect parent to a perfect child -
1. Forget the term "playdate". Don't schedule your kids' time to play with other children. I know it sounds strange, but adults used to have adult lives and people would just go visit each other. Their kids would play together while the adults did their thing.
2. Don't post pictures of your kid all the time on social media. No one really cares. Sorry. Send those pictures to your parents or friends directly. Better yet, go over to visit them and show them pictures in person. If you can, drop social media as much as you can stand, and just enjoy the fact that you love your child as much as every parent without turning parenting into social signalling and narcissistic indulgence.
3. Remember that your kids will leave you. They will go away to preschool, grade school, maybe college. And then one day, they will leave for the last time to set out on their own. Yes, you need to protect them, but if you are fearful and see the world as ugly, your kids will sense that growing up and most likely feel the same way. Do you want to send them out to the wide world with a viewpoint that the world is a scary place? Is the world a scary place? Why did the world turn ugly and scary when you had a child?
These are just my opinions, and there is no wrong way to do it. There's all sorts of ways of living. I just hope you find something that gives you some faith in your ability to raise a child that will turn out just fine. Because he or she will.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago> 2. Don't post pictures of your kid all the time on social media. No one really cares. Sorry. Send those pictures to your parents or friends directly. For many people, social media is how you send things to parents and friends. It's more straightforward than managing an email list, and needn't be any less real a connection. I don't deny that ubiquitous social media is deforming our interactions, but I think a lot of people don't understand why Facebook et al got so popular in the first place. It's not just email for idiots. It's a tremendously useful tool for maintaining connections with a large and changing group.
- dsnuh 9y agoUse whatever app or medium you choose, my advice was simply that sending directly to specific people is a better than flooding your IG or FB with photos of junior every day.
- Dramatize 9y ago90% of my Instagram content is my kid. Though I use it as a way to record highlights for me and my wife, rather than for outside consumption.
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoHow is emailing photos to specific people materially different than posting photos to a Facebook account followed by the same people? (Particularly if the account is otherwise private.)
- dsnuh 9y agoHow many people really care? Seriously? I love my kids as much as the next guy, but unless you are talking about a small group of people, yeah, in my opinion that amounts to narcissistic oversharing. I mean if you catch something hilarious, sure, share it. But it seems to me that those kind of posts should be few and far between. We've entered an age where voyuerism == friendship. No one really cares. Do you care about some high school pal's post of their kids activities?
- icc97 9y agoI personally think there is a significant difference. The birthday messages I get on FB are worthless, but if someone sends me an email or a card that is worth something. The connection via Facebook is so trivial and transient but it is better than no connection to people I'd have no contact with otherwise. The people I email photos too will probably look at them a few times and may want to print them and will send an email response. Via FB it's all seen and then forgotten in 30s
- soperj 9y agoI actually enjoy all the birthday messages I get on FB. Not because they say happy birthday, but because I actually respond to every single one of them, and catch up with people who actually made the slightest effort to wish me a happy birthday.
- 5ilv3r 9y agoFacebook is notorious for making those connections impossible when they are truly needed most. It's a marketing tool with aggressive filtering, not a family message board.
- dsnuh 9y agoAgreed. I wish that I could get my family and close friends to join a Mattermost server I host, but so far, FB has a stranglehold on everyone it seems.
- paulryanrogers 9y agoXMPP had federation. Sadly it didn't last long at the big providers.
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoUnfortunately, it's both. Wal-Mart is a good comparison--their policies are awful and they blight the communities around them, but they provide real value to individual users. It's how they maintain their hold.
- dm319 9y agoYes,I have three kids, and I'm rarely on Facebook because I find it a toxic place. But I was recently at a wedding, and was prompted to post a few photos up (more to share the photos with the bride/groom in a way that can also be seen by their friends too). It surprised me the number of messages I got saying how people loved seeing pictures of the kids and how they'd grown etc etc. I don't have time to keep up with a lot of these old friends (many live far away) so I count this as a positive interaction on facebook.