Parenting Outside America

Apparently the Atlantic had a brain fart and published a good article. I figure I'll read it so you don't have to.

Turns out parenting is fairly simple

-don't be fake
-let other families help
-have genuine empathy
-when the kids want to help, let them

To summarize the articles:
Americans get way too excited. Calm down. Even if children are trying to manipulate you, they're too childish to do it well, so ignore it. The nuclear family is an utterly retarded idea. Hunter tribes don't need to hit their children and neither should you. 

Americans by and large are too narcissistic/childish to be decent parents, regardless of how well you advise them about parenting. Europeans must have had hunter-style parenting at one point, but the knowledge was interrupted by something. I suspect it's largely from Prussian school exposure, what with Prussian school being specifically designed to make the victims childish. Might also have been the black plague.

You are most likely not childish and narcissistic, but you will have picked up bad habits from being around everyone else. A quick examination of the habits' stupidity will break them almost immediately.

Children are excitable, which means parents don't need to be. The mildest reward or punishment is sufficiently intense to affect their behaviour. (If you have memories that go further back than three days, you may recall this yourself.) You know you're bigger than a kid, right? Don't get bound up in shoulds or oughts. If you can't stand it, you don't have to put up with it. Physically abjure it. E.g. if tantrums in the grocery store are such a huge issue, stop taking them shopping with you. You're a big boy aren't you? Figure it out.

Because you're in control, you can calm down. If you're calm, the children will be much less stressed. If the children aren't wound up, they don't snap. If the kids aren't going nuts, it is much easier to remain calm. (This also works okay on animals.)

"Sally just approached everything they did with the most calmness and composure I have ever seen. At one point, a little toddler, maybe 18 months at the time, I think he was pulling the dog's tail or something. Sally picked him up and, when she did, he scratched her face so hard that it was bleeding. I would have been irate, but Sally, I saw her kind of clench her teeth, and just say, in the calmest voice, “We don’t do this.” Then she took him and flipped him around with this playful helicopter move, and they both started laughing. Then it was over—there was no conflict around it."

Because you know you will win, you don't have to fight. Assume victory.

Also, if you make a mistake, don't make a big deal out of it and it won't be a big deal. The kids also know it's out of character for you.

Does parenting even with two parents seem exhausting? (Let alone one?) Well duh, that's a dumb idea. Pre-modern societies couldn't stop kids from imposing on other families even if they wanted to. You're supposed to take breaks and pass your kids off sometimes. The children want to hare off somewhere else. All you have to do is let them. Let the grandparents have them for as long as both find it tolerable. Ideally, let them go watch other adults work.

Admittedly this is complicated by car-supremacist laws.

Seems to me America screwed up badly when they allowed factories to become hostile to children. Probably at the behest of a whiny minority who hates children. Supervising children should be part of what work is like.

Children don't like being treated like children. They know the point of being a child is to learn to act like an adult. Allowances have to be made - there's some things you just can't do when you're two feet tall - but children want to act as adult as they can. Maybe give them a child-sized seat so they can sit the way adults do on adult chair. Don't give them a child-coloured child-material chair, especially if it's still too big. 

Subtle social cues are enough to thoroughly control adult behaviour. Again with some caveats regarding the weak understanding of children, children are more sensitive, not less. That said, even inside a proper framework, their self-control is weak, which is where the calmness, control, and empathy comes in. 

Children universally ask to 'help' with the chores shortly after they master that whole walking and talking thing. Their 'help' will not be very helpful at first. As if they're children or something. However, the last thing you should do is discourage them from doing chores. Americans spend years discouraging their children from 'helping' with chores, and are then baffled the children are so resentful when they suddenly start demanding help with chores. 

 

Children often have emotions they don't know the meaning of. It's your job as a parent to help them try things until they figure out what it is they need.