Saturday, May 27, 2023

You’re screwing up your kid: An American saga

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You're screwing up your kid: An American saga   

The endless cycling — and recycling — of parenting advice.

On a recent Monday, my son didn’t want to go to school.

The straps of his bicycle helmet were too loose, or possibly too tight, and because he is 4, this was a catastrophe that simply could not be borne. He informed me, through tears, that he would not be leaving the house, and neither would I nor his baby brother, who was already strapped to my chest and ready for day care. Then he lay down on his bed with his shoes on and refused to move.

As a millennial parent in 2023 with a phone and a medium Instagram addiction, I had a lot of advice at my fingertips for handling such a situation. “Authoritative” parenting, a calm but firm style characterized by clear boundary-setting, would probably dictate that I explain to my child, without raising my voice, that his behavior was not okay and we needed to go to school (I tried this). Advocates of “gentle” parenting, a more recent trend that discourages rewards and time-outs in favor of trying to understand the feelings behind a child’s behavior, might suggest I ask my son why he didn’t want to go to school (I tried this, too). Some of the homesteading, homeschooling influencers I see on my feeds might suggest that I pull the kid out of pre-k entirely and go live in the woods (I won’t say I didn’t think about it). I probably could have tried some tricks from devotees of free-range parenting, French parenting, or tiger parenting, schools of thought Jessica Grose of the New York Times mentions in a recent rundown, but I was getting pretty exhausted.

Continued here


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