6 ms·

You don’t learn how to parent, you learn how to live, in a wholehearted way, and you model that for your children. Good parenting is foremost about growing up

by orasis 3y ago

You don’t learn how to parent, you learn how to live, in a wholehearted way, and you model that for your children. Good parenting is foremost about growing up before your kids do.

Guthur 3y ago
Wholeheartedly agree, the thought that we can school our way out this seems overly simplistic. And I'd go as far as to say the schooling philosophy is part of this pathology. Society decided to dump most doctrinal support but unfortunately this has left a significant portion of the masses with little direction. But also many have little inclination or time to work it out for themselves. And even if you did start to read Jung, Nietzsche, Hegel, Hiedeger or whichever philosopher you chose there's a myriad of directions one could take it and it's a heady mix. I've started to read these philosophers but I bring it a traditional Creator grounding and it's still pretty wild. Ultimately I don't think we have a clue what we're doing and we are prone to getting very scared and taking it out on those around us or in our care.
d--b 3y ago
This is terrible "magic thinking" advice. Kids are VERY counterintuitive (mine at least). Our kid has had behavioral problems at school and at home. And it's extremely difficult to understand the root of the issues (it turns out that the pandemic, moving houses, starting school and having a baby brother all at once can be a bit much for a 3 year old). Literally EVERYONE who is not a professional told us to smack our kid into submission. But by reading stuff and talking to professionals, you learn that some kids do have weird ways of expressing their emotions, and that acknowledging that and supporting them works. You have to completely turn the way you speak to them around. It's really hard to do cause nobody wants to confort a kid who's annoying, but it works. None of the stuff I do with my kids would have been possible had I not learnt it as an adult. Stop the magic thinking. Read about children, they're weird and wonderfully different.
- pastage 3y ago
  > smack our kid into submission What does this mean? I never talk child care in any significant way on the net, so I feel there are way to many ways too misinterpret this. Even the nice interpretation of this would border on illegal here. (FWIW I think I agree with you on all accounts and I have had it easy)
  - kodah 3y ago
    Beatings. I'm in my 30s and I was beat as a kid. You'd be surprised how legal and still often recommended it is, especially with neurodivergent young boys. One of the founders of the DevOps movement once gave a talk on Dallas where he described striking a young boy who had hit his daughter because he thought especially young white boys need to learn consequences.
    - gabereiser 3y ago
      Especially in neurodivergent young boys, for sure. Speaking from experience.
      - roflyear 3y ago
        Getting hit as a kid didn't teach me anything positive.
        lxxxvi 3y ago
        If hitting kids did anything positive, we'd be living in the worst not the best time to be alive.
        roflyear 3y ago
        What?
  - d--b 3y ago
    I am in France, where hitting kids has become illegal only in 2019. There is a practice we call fessee which consists of slapping the butt of your kid, which sort of hurts but fades quickly. It’s been around forever here and when I was a kid in the 80s was the ultimate threat (our fathers got the “martinet” which is small whip). Anyways, although illegal, hurting your kid is a very common practice around here. On that subject: humiliation in school by teachers has been prohibited since 1953, and is still common here too. In the first school my kid went to, there was a board on the wall in the hallway where they would write the name of bad boys to public-shame them.
- goodpoint 3y ago
  > Literally EVERYONE who is not a professional told us to smack our kid Respectfully, if that's true I urge you to find a new social circle.
  - roflyear 3y ago
    Right? Kids are different, but honestly not that different from adults. Just more impressionable, because they are learning the world. And of course less knowledgeable and developed by definition. But they work a lot of the same ways. Would you make it practice to hit adults??? No? Why are you teaching kids that this is what happens? It makes no sense.
    - hackinthebochs 3y ago
      Of course it makes sense. Pain is the universal teacher. It's why every organism that can move under its own power experiences pain. We are extremely good at learning pain avoidance. We even used to hit adults (and far worse) to get them to behave. So yes, of course it makes sense. Whether it results in positive outcomes is the only legitimate question.
    - blharr 3y ago
      For many of these people, yes. They would absolutely make it practice to hit adults.
  - rib3ye 3y ago
    They may be referring to close family members. These are the people mostly likely to offer unsolicited parenting advice in my experience.
    - TheNewsIsHere 3y ago
      That and (though I’m not speaking on behalf of OP) social media destinations like Facebook, where most of us are likely to have had “friends” we haven’t seen since high school and will never see again in person. The people in my family who smacked their kids aren’t professionals. Plenty of professionals hit their kids though.
dghughes 3y ago
My parents were married in 1966 ages 22 and 23, two children the next two years, a house three years after married. Dad was a high school dropout although his Dad my grandfather had a painting business. But my grandfather died aged 52 just as my Dad was beginning his life with Mom. So yes he did some growing up fast I really forget how hard it must have been for him and Mom with all that happening all at the same time. My grandfather was married to my grandmother and had nine kids and then even a few grandchildren all before the age of 52 when he died. So here I am now no children, not married, I'm past at the age my grandfather died. Staggering to my mind how mature the previous generation was or had to be.
- irdc 3y ago
  > Staggering to my mind how mature the previous generation was or had to be. Or how immature they really were?
AdamN 3y ago
I can't downvote this enough. Sure, it's true that experience is the best way to learn but that method leads to alot of dead ends that society then has to deal with. Saying that parents can self-learn and self-evolve totally distracts the reader away from the original comment which is about the critical need for society to better support parents structurally. Most of us don't live in multi-generational communes where this stuff might happen without a structured approach ... and for all those new parents who do not, the need is great.
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> You don’t learn how to parent Actually I do. This is exhibit A, not only have they learnt nothing, but will reject every opportunity to learn. Exactly like my Father. I have a daughter growing up, and every time there is a decision to make, I check what people like this would do, and do the opposite. Or at least make sure to avoid that.
roflyear 3y ago
This is such bullshit. My mother tried to be a good mom but never addressed her mental health issues, leading to four kids having pretty severe problems twenty, thirty years later. She took decades from us, though she "tried to live" but didn't want to learn anything she didn't already know.
sidewndr46 3y ago
This is the mistake that most parents make. They assume that what worked for them will work for their children.
ripvanwinkle 3y ago
>> Good parenting is foremost about growing up before your kids do This unfortunately is not a given and that's the crux of the discussion. If every parent were able to achieve complete knowledge and wisdom about all things parenting before they had kids we wouldn't be talking of any of this.

by orasis 3y ago

You don’t learn how to parent, you learn how to live, in a wholehearted way, and you model that for your children. Good parenting is foremost about growing up before your kids do.

Guthur 3y ago

Wholeheartedly agree, the thought that we can school our way out this seems overly simplistic. And I'd go as far as to say the schooling philosophy is part of this pathology. Society decided to dump most doctrinal support but unfortunately this has left a significant portion of the masses with little direction. But also many have little inclination or time to work it out for themselves. And even if you did start to read Jung, Nietzsche, Hegel, Hiedeger or whichever philosopher you chose there's a myriad of directions one could take it and it's a heady mix. I've started to read these philosophers but I bring it a traditional Creator grounding and it's still pretty wild. Ultimately I don't think we have a clue what we're doing and we are prone to getting very scared and taking it out on those around us or in our care.

d--b 3y ago

This is terrible "magic thinking" advice. Kids are VERY counterintuitive (mine at least). Our kid has had behavioral problems at school and at home. And it's extremely difficult to understand the root of the issues (it turns out that the pandemic, moving houses, starting school and having a baby brother all at once can be a bit much for a 3 year old). Literally EVERYONE who is not a professional told us to smack our kid into submission. But by reading stuff and talking to professionals, you learn that some kids do have weird ways of expressing their emotions, and that acknowledging that and supporting them works. You have to completely turn the way you speak to them around. It's really hard to do cause nobody wants to confort a kid who's annoying, but it works. None of the stuff I do with my kids would have been possible had I not learnt it as an adult. Stop the magic thinking. Read about children, they're weird and wonderfully different.

pastage 3y ago
> smack our kid into submission What does this mean? I never talk child care in any significant way on the net, so I feel there are way to many ways too misinterpret this. Even the nice interpretation of this would border on illegal here. (FWIW I think I agree with you on all accounts and I have had it easy)
- kodah 3y ago
  Beatings. I'm in my 30s and I was beat as a kid. You'd be surprised how legal and still often recommended it is, especially with neurodivergent young boys. One of the founders of the DevOps movement once gave a talk on Dallas where he described striking a young boy who had hit his daughter because he thought especially young white boys need to learn consequences.
  - gabereiser 3y ago
    Especially in neurodivergent young boys, for sure. Speaking from experience.
    - roflyear 3y ago
      Getting hit as a kid didn't teach me anything positive.
      - lxxxvi 3y ago
        If hitting kids did anything positive, we'd be living in the worst not the best time to be alive.
        roflyear 3y ago
        What?
- d--b 3y ago
  I am in France, where hitting kids has become illegal only in 2019. There is a practice we call fessee which consists of slapping the butt of your kid, which sort of hurts but fades quickly. It’s been around forever here and when I was a kid in the 80s was the ultimate threat (our fathers got the “martinet” which is small whip). Anyways, although illegal, hurting your kid is a very common practice around here. On that subject: humiliation in school by teachers has been prohibited since 1953, and is still common here too. In the first school my kid went to, there was a board on the wall in the hallway where they would write the name of bad boys to public-shame them.
goodpoint 3y ago
> Literally EVERYONE who is not a professional told us to smack our kid Respectfully, if that's true I urge you to find a new social circle.
- roflyear 3y ago
  Right? Kids are different, but honestly not that different from adults. Just more impressionable, because they are learning the world. And of course less knowledgeable and developed by definition. But they work a lot of the same ways. Would you make it practice to hit adults??? No? Why are you teaching kids that this is what happens? It makes no sense.
  - hackinthebochs 3y ago
    Of course it makes sense. Pain is the universal teacher. It's why every organism that can move under its own power experiences pain. We are extremely good at learning pain avoidance. We even used to hit adults (and far worse) to get them to behave. So yes, of course it makes sense. Whether it results in positive outcomes is the only legitimate question.
  - blharr 3y ago
    For many of these people, yes. They would absolutely make it practice to hit adults.
- rib3ye 3y ago
  They may be referring to close family members. These are the people mostly likely to offer unsolicited parenting advice in my experience.
  - TheNewsIsHere 3y ago
    That and (though I’m not speaking on behalf of OP) social media destinations like Facebook, where most of us are likely to have had “friends” we haven’t seen since high school and will never see again in person. The people in my family who smacked their kids aren’t professionals. Plenty of professionals hit their kids though.

dghughes 3y ago

My parents were married in 1966 ages 22 and 23, two children the next two years, a house three years after married. Dad was a high school dropout although his Dad my grandfather had a painting business. But my grandfather died aged 52 just as my Dad was beginning his life with Mom. So yes he did some growing up fast I really forget how hard it must have been for him and Mom with all that happening all at the same time. My grandfather was married to my grandmother and had nine kids and then even a few grandchildren all before the age of 52 when he died. So here I am now no children, not married, I'm past at the age my grandfather died. Staggering to my mind how mature the previous generation was or had to be.

irdc 3y ago
> Staggering to my mind how mature the previous generation was or had to be. Or how immature they really were?

AdamN 3y ago

I can't downvote this enough. Sure, it's true that experience is the best way to learn but that method leads to alot of dead ends that society then has to deal with. Saying that parents can self-learn and self-evolve totally distracts the reader away from the original comment which is about the critical need for society to better support parents structurally. Most of us don't live in multi-generational communes where this stuff might happen without a structured approach ... and for all those new parents who do not, the need is great.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago

> You don’t learn how to parent Actually I do. This is exhibit A, not only have they learnt nothing, but will reject every opportunity to learn. Exactly like my Father. I have a daughter growing up, and every time there is a decision to make, I check what people like this would do, and do the opposite. Or at least make sure to avoid that.

roflyear 3y ago

This is such bullshit. My mother tried to be a good mom but never addressed her mental health issues, leading to four kids having pretty severe problems twenty, thirty years later. She took decades from us, though she "tried to live" but didn't want to learn anything she didn't already know.

sidewndr46 3y ago

This is the mistake that most parents make. They assume that what worked for them will work for their children.

ripvanwinkle 3y ago

>> Good parenting is foremost about growing up before your kids do This unfortunately is not a given and that's the crux of the discussion. If every parent were able to achieve complete knowledge and wisdom about all things parenting before they had kids we wouldn't be talking of any of this.