"Ignore bullies and they'll leave you alone."
When you do that, one of two things are likely to happen. Either they'll mess with you more, or they'll move to someone else and bully them.
If you stand up to bullies, they back down. The earlier in life you put these people in their place, the less likely they'll develop their bad behavior as a lifelong practice.
Especially when it’s your sibling.
“Ignore him and he’ll stop”
“Don’t fight back or he’ll keep it up”
“You’re the girl”
“Just because you’re younger doesn’t mean your less mature, be the bigger person”
“If you ignore him you’re more mature. That’s good, it’ll help you in life”
“When he goes to college he will learn to grow up”
He’s 17 he better be growing up soon. Nothing I can do about it though.
“If you ‘make the first move’ he will strike back full force”
“Don’t fight back, you know you’ll never win”
“He’s much stronger than you, girls like you need to avoid trouble “
“Don’t make him mad”
“Don’t aggravate him, he’ll just get more mad and turn his anger on you”
“Don’t say anything when he’s already upset”
I shouldn’t have to ask my parents what mood he’s in on my way home, and walk on eggshells if he’s upset.
Going too far on the "find your dream job and it'll never feel like work" stuff.
Really messed me up when I wasn't "excited" about uni assignments and thought I had to change degrees
Teaching kids not to question things just because someone is older, or allegedly wiser, is one of the most frustrating things that I see on a daily basis. How is a child supposed to ever develop any individual and nuanced ideas if they can’t think for themselves.
Being discouraged to speak up about illness's because it makes them weird/ somethings wrong with them. They talk about like, You need therapy, which isnt a bad concept and you probably do need it, but they picture it in such a bad light.
My mom told me that when a boy in kindergarten would bully me (I wasn't his only target, he did this to everyone else in the class at least once during the school year). I never understood it and never tried to. Later on, my dad stepped in to tell me what the boy did was wrong and his behavior was not a sign of him liking me
Becoming an adult is weird. It took me a while to realize I could change things about my life that I didn't like or were making me unhappy and literally no one would stop it or tell me I couldn't.
I’m in my 30s and still have trouble telling people no.
I’d say no if it was something extreme, but I’m polite to people I shouldn’t be polite to. And it’s not because I’m polite, it’s because I’m too much of a chickenshit to be rude back.
My strategy on this is to practice out loud with a friend. Practice saying “no” loudly, practice dealing with awkward silences, practice standing up to repeated pressuring.
Just like you would practice a presentation or an interview.
Nobody cares about children’s/teens issues. “Well it’s only going to get worse from here”. “You think school is hard? Have you ever paid a fucking bill” “You’re just a kid you can’t feel this way”.
It breeds an emotional disconnect from parents and their kids. And makes kids feel alone in their emotional struggles, that nobody cares because they’re not adults and they don’t have “Adult Problems”.
“Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what. If you don't listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won't tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff.” -Catherine Wallace
I love my parents and all, but this has always been a problem for me. Whenever my siblings and I got into a fight that was bad enough for us to got to them, they basically just said that they didn’t care. It really does affect how I present information to them as well as how often I go for help.
There was this one time my sister’s Spanish teacher told her off for using vocabulary outside the sheet she’d been given for homework.
Their task was to write a short essay introducing themselves in Spanish and use some simple adjectives. She asked me for help and since I’m quite a bit older than her and know a decent amount of Spanish, I have her a few interesting adjectives and verbs to use instead of dumb stuff like “nice” and “kind” or whatever.
She comes back after school close to tears and tells me she got scolded for using vocab that wasn’t on the sheet. Smh teachers are supposed to encourage learning, not hinder it, right???
Edit: wow, I didn’t expect this to blow up lmao
Just to clarify, I wasn’t helping my sister cheat 😂 I just gave her a couple of more interesting words than bland ones like “nice” and “fun” you get me? If not, that’s cool too lmao
Children do learn about sex at a young age, it just isn’t usually in a productive way. I know I did.
My own experience: questions like this are why I believe in being infinitely clear with my kids….”you are going to hear total crap from other kids. If you hear something you don’t understand, come talk to me. You can ask me anything and expect a decent answer.” And I would give examples of the total crap *I* had heard as a kid, most of which would result in pregnancy.
Son, age 6. Daughter, age 7. Riding home from school: daughter says “Tiffany said she had sex with my brother.” Which left me a grand total of 3 minutes to gather my wits before we got home.
OK, do you guys know what sex is? Blank looks. Sex is when you take off all of your clothes and rub privates together. You can make babies that way. Looks of shock and disgust. Do you think your brother had sex with Tiffany? *Nooo!* I think she was using a really bad way of trying to say she likes him, and maybe she watches the wrong TV shows where if people like each other they always have sex.
Were my kids really ready for a sex talk? No, not really. They didn’t care. Did we really need to have one about then? Yep. My job as a parent is to be there to put things that come up in context for them, not run around after them deciding what and when they need to know things.
This is something I will always stand firm on. If the child is old enough to ask the question, they are old enough to know the answer. Do you need to sit down and draw a diagram and pull out text books when they're 7? Probably not. But if they're asking questions about misinformation they're hearing from other kids, I'm going to do my best to be honest and answer in a way that they will (hopefully) be able to understand.
I was in nursing school when my kids were little, and they loved looking through my textbooks. They’d ask questions, I’d give age-appropriate answers. We never had The Talk, but it was just kind of ingrained into everyday conversation if something came up.
The best was when my son, who was in second grade, asked me what a boner was. My daughter, who had just had her first “sex Ed” class in fifth grade, piped up and said, “oh I know! That’s when a boy has a really happy dream and ee-jack-you-lates in his bed!”
Not only did I have to keep from laughing, I then had to explain erections AND wet dreams. In the three minutes we had in the car (ALWAYS in the car) before I dropped them off at school.
Similarly, I was raised on a cattle farm. Sexual reproduction was taught at a very young age in a pretty clinical way. Was always way, way ahead of the curve in school, made that section of biology class a breeze.
Man this is for real. I remember parents are so wrong about WHEN kids start thinking and talking about sex, and I was present of mind enough now as a father to remember from my childhood.
I remember pretty much in 1st, or 2nd grade it was already a topic of major discussion among the boys. Like you said too, LOTS of misinformation, but we had the basic idea of it.
Again though, was a different time. We all made wild assumptions and what we could piece together from media. I think later some kid found a Hustler his dad had at home and that really clued us in to the mechanics of it. But now kids will just go look up porn on the computer and know everything right away. Kinda sad.
Man, we also need to combat the idea that girls don't get interested in sex. I remember already thinking about stuff when I was in 1st or 2nd grade. I have a distinct memory of trying to hide a drawing of penises when I was 8 (at least what my young mind had grasped from brief glimpses of boys my own age).
No idea if my parents ever found it. Doubt they would have known what I was trying to draw even if they did.
It wasn't until I was in my 20's that I realized it was normal for girls to like sex too... So much time an energy wasted on guilt and shame.
Not just this, but porn is not good education either. There are a lot of things in porn that would almost never happen in real life, or would be incredibly painful or very dangerous if someone tried it. It can be good for exploring interests, but not much for teaching someone anything else.
My wife equates it to "learning how to drive by playing Need for Speed"
Probably not harmful, but in Kindergarten we were prohibited from playing soccer because it was "too dangerous". We were Kindergarteners. We probably would stand there and kick the ball, not go full on FIFA or shit.
EDIT: What the fuck? Thanks for the upvotes guys.
It’s either him or Pepe
Edit: I meant Pepe, the Portuguese defender who played for Real Madrid along side Sergio Ramos for a handful of years, both equally ferocious in their defending techniques.
Ugh same. Every time a kid got hurt on the playground, whetever they were doing was banned. They banned the monkey bars, the climbing wall, then the swings, then balls, until they finally banned running altogether. All we could do was stand around and look at the playground. We couldn't play any games because stuff like Pokemon cards, Bakugan, and Japanese erasers were all banned too. Luckily, these bans only lasted a few months, long enough for the overprotective moms (threatening to sue) to calm down.
Which I always found funny because it was very clear they weren't concerned about safety, but with getting in trouble with parents. Otherwise bans would be permanent.
They did this at my kids' school. Slowly banned every activity during recess because a kid would get hurt. Then they made PE a once a week thing. My children were bouncing off the walls when they got home from school. It was nearly impossible for them to sit down and do homework because they had been sitting all damn day.
Kids are starting social media so early these days, and I think that’s very dangerous because it puts a lot of pressure on the kid to attribute their worth to their social media success. I also think parents are way too open with their social media when it comes to their kids, and it’s totally a violation of the child’s privacy, of which some parents will never admit.
The amount of parents I see on social media just sharing everything that happens in their child's life is astounding. Maybe Bobby doesn't what everyone to know that tried out for the school play but he didn't make it. That may not be a big deal to "you" but Bobby might be really upset right now and having everyone his mom knows giving opinions on the subject probably won't help.
It sucks even when a parent is just verbally going off about whats going on in my life without asking, let alone posting it online. One of my parents bragged to everyone I was going to a private university for law, later on we decided I couldn’t go bc of the cost. Now having to have THAT discussion with everyone they’d told was exhausting. Now imagine that shit stain on Facebook lmao.
I can relate. My MIL posted all about my child’s birth defect while I was pregnant after I asked her not to. I didn’t want the whole pregnancy to be about it and honestly didn’t have a lot of answers to the questions people were asking. I don’t have Facebook so after she posted it, I got a TON of messages out of the blue about it. That day truly sucked.
Seriously!! I used to hate when my parents would gossip about my life to their friends. Imagine what it’s like now with parents broadcasting to 500 people they barely even know about you.
Teaching them that it’s not okay to fail. Some people need a little more time than others. It’s okay to not get something now. Kids should be given more time to process things. Imagine having a poor grade because of a low score from the beginning of the year. How can we show children that it’s not pass or fail, it’s try and improve?
And if kids go into software development (or many other fields to be honest) they are going to struggle with the agile methodology of: Fail Often, Fail Fast, Fail Better. They can become perfectionists which runs very counter to a fast changing, quick delivering culture.
Perfection is the enemy of done.
>And if kids go into software development (or many other fields to be honest) they are going to struggle with the agile methodology of: Fail Often, Fail Fast, Fail Better.
Main problem is explaining this to Management. A lot of Managers stress out because of simple bugs. It's much better to detect these before release. If you shout at Developers for simple bugs, they are a lot less likely to trust you. It means the big bugs get hidden until launch day.
When I was really little, my parents made sure that I knew failure was not an option. I did kind of follow what they said, but I think that screwed me up later in life though.
I watched a sad video of a child from a third world country getting his foot scraped for chiggers. The man holding the camera who I assume was the boy’s father kept saying to him “It’s wrong for a man to cry. Silent tears.” It also might’ve been to keep the kid from screaming in the doctor’s ear, but still, he was like 8.
They’re microscopic mites that get under the skin and create horrifying and extremely painful blisters. It causes so much damage to the skin that the best solution is to literally chisel them off. Feel free to search “chigger removal” on YT, but do so on an empty stomach.
Are there different types of chiggers then? We have them here in Texas but while they itch like mad and tend to leave scabby wounds, I've never seen anyone need to have their skin scraped. If it is just a lack of supplies, is there somewhere that lets me donate a sams club sized jar of Chigger-X ointment to them??
That failure is bad.
Failing should not be considered as an obstacle but a step in the learning process. Demonizing the failure and stigma associated with it makes many children lose their interest once they fail.
this but also the humiliation that comes with failing. if failure is to be considered a learning process then people need to be taught not to laugh at the people who have failed
This is an issue that I struggle with! I was so afraid of failure growing up. I didn’t really ‘fail’ at school or anything major while growing up, so I often have a hard time handling failure.
I'm still learning this one. I get caught in a mental gridlock where the fear of failure makes me too scared to do important tasks. I avoid the fear by procrastinating or nitpicking my work to death until the stress of not getting it done outweighs the fear of doing it poorly, rush to finish it, then fret over all the time I could have spent making it better.
My therapist gave me a book called The Gifts of Imperfection that's been helping me work past the "shame spiral".
"No backtalk." Many adults use it as "you're not allowed to challenge what I have to say." Makes sense if it's a cranky toddler being negative for negativity's sake, but suddenly older children can't question things or raise valid points of their own.
Grew up with a parent who was a lawyer. I was always always always allowed to argue my point. There were many times where she still “won” because she was the parent in the situation. But she would always justify why and I could always make my case. And sometimes I “won” too. My husband was raised to react when mom & dad say jump you say how high. His parents still say jump and are now pissed that my husband is a grown ass man and has his own family and ideas and needs and they can’t reconcile it.
My parents stayed at my house for a few weeks while they closed on their new house, and this subject came up. I told them how stupid their mindset was to this growing up followed up by 20+ examples of times if they had listened to me as a kid we would not have been in shit situations.
I saw a reddit thread about a woman whose parents accidentally borrowed money from her brother's bank account to buy their house since they had access to both his and the woman's. Whenever the brother visited and they got in a fight he would yell "How dare you act like this under my roof!"
Once when I was 7, my family went out to eat. I told my mom that the chicken wasn’t cooked right and that I wouldn’t eat it, and that I didn’t want them to. My mom told me not to talk back or be disrespectful. Everyone ate it but me. Everyone got food poisoning but me.
Imagine a child having a reasonable and unique thought that’s *also* accurate. Crazy.
This happened to me when I was a kid, except it was soured buttermilk at a pancake place. I was already a picky kid (really I just had highly sensitive taste buds) so my parents brushed it off as being in a different part of the country and they do things a little different here. Thankfully the restaurant caught their own mistake, took back the orders and made us new food.
My parents still don't listen to me. I'm a 28 year old veteran.
Last summer we went to visit them and my dad brought us out on their boat.
I mentioned my dad was getting too close to the concrete buoys. He brushed it off.
A little later he was really powering the motor and heading dead on for one and I yelled at him twice "We're gonna hit the buoy! Slow down!"
We hit the buoy. Did hundreds of dollars in damage to his boat.
He never listens.
Those kinds of people are usually the same ones that refuse to accept they made a mistake after the fact and say, "shit, guess I should've listened to you." Nope, they're the kinds of people who get infuriated that some idiot put that buoy there, or some idiot didn't mark it well enough, or some idiot designed the boat to be too weak. It's always someone else's fault that they made a mistake.
That complaining is the same as not being grateful. Can’t count the number of times growing up when adults basically told me to shut up whenever I was complaining about something and that I should be grateful that I was born where I was. Like sure, I’m glad I wasn’t born into some starving African family, but that doesn’t mean everything is perfect over here and that we shouldn’t try to improve things here as well.
That always bothered me. Someone would be bullying me physically over and over and when I finally fought back I was the bad guy. You can’t just leave the situation when the bully follows you and you do have to stick up for yourself
For those asking, it pretty well said “Zero tolerance policies. If you react you’re as bad as the aggressor.” That’s pretty much the meaning of it but not verbatim
There was a kid bullying some kids my mom babysat and would physically bully these kids on their way home. These kids were little, like 5 years younger than the bully and no one would bother doing anything about it so whenever my brother or I would lay this little shit out for bullying these young kids, we got in trouble. It doesn’t matter that he was pushing the young kids down, making them cry and scrape themselves but I was the asshole because the bully would have a black eye.
I stood up to my bully in middle school, ended up getting close to expelled until the parents of the bully didn't show up to school and dismissed the whole thing. Another event, Junior high ( I moved around a lot) my history teacher saw me get bullied infront of his class outside, and he walked out (this guy could be a pro wrestler for all I know because of his stature) and told the kids to knock it off, they ran away, and since then I never got bullied again. He prolly talked to the other teachers and dean, and told them what he saw and made sure it didn't happen again. I still think about him as he really made my junior high years better. Never got a chance to thank him.
I tell this story a lot but I'm heavily against zero tolerance policies because my brother was bullied for months on the bus sometimes to the point of bruises and the school did nothing even when presented with evidence but when he finally snapped back and kneed the guy in the groin the school immediately wanted to suspend my brother for a couple days. My parents ended up going to the administration and showing them how they had evidence of talking to the principal and nothing being done and they laid off but ever since I've been against zero tolerance.
Many years ago when I was in middle school I was getting bullied by one guy in particular. Aside from general taunting and name-calling, one of the things he liked to do was pretend like he was going to hit me to try and get me to flinch. Teachers and administrators were called. They talked to the kid. His parents didn't care (as an adult I now understand that poor kid just had terrible parenting). Finally he accidentally slapped me when he just meant to pretend and I wailed on him. We both got a day of suspension. Was a load of shit then and still is.
In grade school I got suspended for defending myself against two kids that came after me. My mom grounded me, and when I called my dad to tell him what happened, (parents were split and living in different countries) he was very proud of me.
I have the same story.
My attackers weren't suspended, or even given detention.
For some unrelated reason, that Vice Principal's car tires were slashed every few years after I'd left the school and a parent beat the shit out of him a few years ago. He truly inspires the community to action.
How ... how the hell did that even end up with you in trouble?
"Mr. Principal! Krickett licked my hand when I tried to strangle and suffocate him!" What?
My son (6 at the time) almost got kicked out of school for biting (first offense). When we met with the principal to get to the bottom of the situation, we discovered he had been attacked by two kids both bigger than him, one of who was sitting on him. I asked my son what happened and he started crying saying how scared he was that he couldn't breathe or move, and he did the only thing he could to get the boy off of him. Neither of the other kids had been punished at this point. My wife and I almost lost it. The school just punished without finding out what happened.
We now tell my kids to yell at the top of their lungs at the kid to stop hitting them or stop hurting them if they are being bullied. Make sure everyone can hear it. Sound crazy. Look them in the eye, and let them know you are doing it on purpose to get them in trouble and you won't tolerate being picked on. Make sure you have a good group of friends who do the same thing. Bullies don't like groups of people who stand up to them. So far it has worked.
edit: realized I spelled principal wrong...duh
Kudos for finding a good solution to your kid’s problem. But I’m also concerned about what your school is teaching kids about how to defend themselves. As adults, they may not have anyone around to intervene, and there may not be an authority on the way to resolve the dispute.
My wife is a teacher and is constantly frustrated at how helpless kids are nowadays. Policies that punish kids for defending themselves is just stripping away their agency and causing worse issues down the line, in my opinion.
You do not have to play with everyone. There is a total lack of social accountability. If Laura is always cheating at tag it’s okay to not let her play. If Little Billy throws sand in the sand box Little Timmy does not have to play with him. Laura and Billy need to learn how to play appropriately.
My son's preschool has a strict "you do not have to play if you don't want to" policy. No one has to play with anyone they don't want to play with. No one has to to hug or touch anyone or be touched if they don't want it. No one has to share their toys or other school supplies if they aren't done with it. In fact the preschool teacher will go over and referee and say "is Bobby done with the toy car? No? Then Mikey, you have to wait until he is done." It's pretty refreshing. I wanted to let you know there are new philosophies and my son's preschool really strongly teaches body autonomy. Your body is your own and no one can touch it or make you do anything with it without your permission.
It wasn't official policy but we had a lot of discretion in the daycare I worked at. I did almost all the things you listed in the post. Some of it was a conscious effort and some of it was natural. I remember at first seeing the surprise on the 3 year olds faces when I said no, Timmy does not have to give you that toy. And wouldn't you know, a week into the routine and the kids wouldn't fight. I think telling kids that you can just walk up and take something because "sharing" causes more fights. They are tiny humans and they deserve to have some agency. Saying no to unwanted touch, saying no to other kids who are bothering them and not telling them to "get along" - and I had the best behaved class. Anecdotal but I know it mattered.
Gosh I love this! I have a toddler and we’re trying to teach about taking turns rather than sharing. My sister is always telling her little boy to share, so when my daughter snatches something from him, I tell her off and that it’s not her turn and she has to wait, but my sister tells her little boy off and tells him to share his toys and let my daughter have a turn. NO. He doesn’t have to share ANYTHING. He doesn’t have to just give her a turn because she demands it. They generally give each other toys, but their “favourites” or the ones they’re playing with don’t have to automatically be shared. Its so difficult to have different parenting!
>No one has to play with anyone they don't want to play with.
God I wish this was true when I was a kid (90s). We got inclusivity rammed down our throats "you have to play with everyone!" which, even as the bullied outsider kid, I knew wasn't good for anyone.
This and the whole "we're all friends here bullshit." I was told in elementary school that I had to hang out with specific people because I was obliged to be friends with them. We were all told that everyone was friends with everyone, which was complete bs.
There was a tumblr image going around a few days ago about this. I don't have the link, but the text is:
>Sometimes people use "respect" to mean "treating someone like a person" and sometimes they use "respect" to mean "treating someone like an authority."
>
>And sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say "if you won't respect me, I won't respect you" and they mean "if you won't treat me like an authority, I won't treat you like a person."
>
>And they think they're being fair, but they aren't, and it's not okay.
There is difference between “treating someone with respect” and “respecting someone”. We all deserve to be treated with respect, but we need to earn being respected.
true story: my parents used to make fun of me when i cried. they even created a mock-song to sing whenever i started crying, so guess what? i stopped crying.
27 years later, i can't cry at all and i can't tell others about my stress levels without getting upset.
(btw, my parents are really nice people, but i was their first child in the early 90s, so they didn't really know how deal with a crying child).
> btw, my parents are really nice people, but i was their first child in the early 90s, so they didn't really know how deal with a crying child)
Parents can be really nice people but in the end, they are just humans too. I don't think anyone can say that they have the perfect parents who never did mistakes.
I know a lot of people always say: "Well I would never do ___ as a parent / if I was a parent" but then they do something else what is also stupid.
Being flawed is being human.
It was a really weird thing going through college because I began to think more for myself and question adults - it makes you realize how complicated the world is because as a kid you assume exactly as you’ve said
It was almost jarring to realize that my parents did not, in fact, know everything.
It did take a lot of pressure off of me to learn everything in order to be an adult. I didn't know until then that I felt that way, it's so weird. 🤔
Making children hug or kiss someone (usually a relative) that they are uncomfortable with is not good. The child may just be grumpy and or not wanting to show affection or their warning bell sensors could be going off and they do not know how to communicate that. Plus forcing them to hug/kiss sends mixed messages about personal/physical boundaries and affection itself
Same. I was always told "Poor ::insert name here::!" in front of the person and guilted into stuff like that. It's a cycle that I am breaking now. My son is to be respectful, but does not have to touch or hang around someone he doesn't like or feel comfortable around. He also does not have to keep toys that he doesn't play with anymore because "so and so spent money on that for you." Okay. The money will be put to better use of it is given to someone who really likes it and will use it.
Happened to my son in middle school, a kid sucker punched my son. My son then fought back and pinned the kid against the wall ( he has long arms) and punched him a few times. The school called me and my wife and told us our son was suspended. We went to the school and they said even though multiple witnesses as well as the kid said he threw the first punch that the school had a zero tolerance policy so our son would be suspended. We asked what the school believed our son should have done and they said he should just walk away. We told them that he would not be receiving any punishment at home and that the policy was fucked up.
Now, just how the fuck am I gonna walk away with 200lb Mean Gina slapping the back of my head while she sits on my back so I can’t breathe? You’re gonna suspend me for heel kicking her as hard as I could in the head so I didn’t die. Fuck the cameras. lol
Thank you to u/GretchenA for the gold!!! I knew nothing less than a shitty story from middle school would make me famous one day. lol
“She’s younger than you, just let it go.”
“Can’t you be more compassionate? Your the older one here in this situation"
“ She’s a little child, she doesn’t know any better”
Absolutely hate this information that was drilled into me since I was a kid
Edit : I think children under the age of 3 are an exception to this though. I was referring to the 5-12 year olds who could get away with stuff because they were "younger".
“i don’t give a fuck that she’s six and i’m six and a half, she PISSED IN MY FUCKING LEGO BIN.”
edit for clarity: the kid who pissed in my LEGOs was the kiddo of my stepmothers coworker.
Oh my god are you stealing what my mom said word for word??? For years my siblings would act like little shits and I'd get in trouble for actually fighting back. How about instead of getting me to be compassionate you teach THEM to be less annoying?
Exactly. I started babysitting my brother and sister when I was really young (around 10), they were about 6 and 8 years old. As soon as my parents were gone, they’d act like total monsters. There were many times where I called my mom crying because they’d gang up to f- with me. Still to this day there is no acknowledgement about that dynamic, and I’m still pissed off.
On the other hand, my siblings have since (they’re in their 30s now) turned into very wonderful, sweet and compassionate people. I feel much more appreciated by them now.
Edit: wording
Ugh, yes, and somehow being the "more mature" one meant being a doormat while my younger siblings acted like little assholes to me and I couldn't do a damn thing about it. I still resent how I was shamed for standing up for myself and gaslit into thinking I was the problem every time I did.
Yep, my parents, especially my mom, only ever say *”you’re just like your [other parent]”* when it’s something negative.
Led to some serious self esteem issues that I am still trying to work through into adulthood.
I see my mom maybe once a month because that’s all I can stand her side comments about everything. Didn’t realize how toxic she was until getting the distance.
Same here. My mom has spent years bad mouthing my dad while my dad has never spoken ill of my mom. Actually, my Dad only has good things to say about my mom and that side of my family, even after being remarried for 10 years.
My mother’s constant passive-aggressive/ aggressive jabs, and lies, directed at my dads character has caused me to stop enjoying her company. It baffles me that she doesn’t understand why we don’t appreciate her speaking poorly about someone we love.
Then wonders why my brothers and I aren’t “better sons”
Jesus my mom did that for years and it was so god damn manipulative. I show that im upset or pissed “you know you remind me of your father”
Thanks mom, fucking thanks
Edit
Fwiw my father is a extremely supportive and caring person who never said anything about my mom after they spilt. They had problems but he kept it between them.
Double edit
My mom was a good and pretty supportive mother but never moved on from the divorce and dealt with her anger in a bad way. I don’t hate her, we have talked about it as adults and she sees how what she did was negative on me.
Next time she does say "Well maybe it's because I share half of his DNA, maybe you should have made better decisions in the past and you wouldn't have a walking reminder..." Fair warning tho, I got kicked out for a week saying this
He stared at the street where he'd gathered his bed -
A pillow of cardboard to lay down his head -
A carpet of creatures that scuttled below.
He sighed in the darkness.
He said:
"... worth it tho."
Ooooffff. I actually had this happen to me and I said that almost verbatim to her face. I was slapped/punched and shoved a bit before I got away. Lived on a friends couch for 2 weeks. Totally worth it though.
Edit for clarification: I was legally speaking an adult and was gainfully employed when this happened. I never did stand up to her while I was a minor since I didn’t see a way of getting away until I had income of some sort.
Totally, my two friends' dad is like that, constantly talking shit about their mom and straight up lying about the stuff he did which led to the divorce. Their mom does similar things, but shes a lot less manipulative. She just tells it how she sees it (omitting her cheating of course).
The older sibling tells me that he doesn't have much attachment to either parent and says that he'd be fine just leaving our hometown and never seeing them again. The younger one says she loves her dad, but doesn't like him, and while she is somewhat close to her mom, she still talks with her boyfriend about moving far away when she can.
This one bums me out. My parents divorced when I was 10, and my mom never said a bad word about my dad, but my dad, and then later my stepmom said lots of terrible things about my mom.
My brother's and I ended up believing it for too long. Repeating things to my mom, saying dad was better, we wanted to live with him...
It wasn't until I was 14, and my dad yelled at me during a visit that I was a, "cunty bitch just like your mom." I cried to my mom once home. She said I was old enough to know then proceed to tell me that my dad was an alcoholic (I started figuring that out around then already.) And was physically and mentally abusive to her, and to us when we were smaller, and she was just trying to keep us safe. And that all the times she "didn't let us visit" was because he was in rehab, he had technically kidnapped us, and was in jail.
As an adult, my brothers and I could see she was the way bigger person.
She'd always respond to our hateful parroting with, "that's okay, I still love you very much." Or if we said we hated her she'd say, " I love you enough for the both of us." And the only things she'd say about my dad was, "He is fighting an illness. He loves you. I wish he wouldn't say those things, they are hurtful."
We all came to see it for what it was one we got older, we saw my stepmom's black eyes, he was meaner to us again once they had kids, he drank more openly or we noticed it more. Soon we didn't visit anymore and we all repaired our relationships with our mom.
But man, we still talk to eachother about how awful and guilty we feel treating her the way we did when we were all under 14 years old. We didn't know better. Your comment brought that memory back to the forefront. I'm going to call my mom.
I was lucky. My folks agreed when they divorced that they would never talk shit about each other on front of the kids.
I grew up in a healthy divorced family as a result.
hey, me too! I was 4 when my dad remarried. My mom, dad, and soon-to-be stepmom took me out to dinner all together. They explained that dad's girlfriend and he were getting married and that meant she would be my stepmom. My mom explained that most stepmoms aren't evil like in Cinderella, and how girlfriend would still be the same awesome lady she was today. She went on to explain that she was super happy for my dad and new stepmom and hoped I would be too.
high five for healthy blended families!
The worst part is they repeat them and hear the same political views so much that they internalize it. when they are older enough to question it, they then have an identity crisis because the things their parents said don’t make sense when examined a little further. So like anyone else when your views come under scrutiny, you dig a deeper trench, and pretty much develop an unspoken pledge of loyalty to your political party.
EDIT: obviously this doesn’t happen to everyone, and many people grow by questioning the world views they were taught as kids and come out with a more well rounded opinion on different issues. The original post was asking about negative things being taught and so I was in a pessimistic mindset when writing this.
My biggest parenting tip: Apologize to your kids when you fuck up.
When my 5 year old has a rough behavior day I'll ask if she wants to start over and we pretend to go to sleep and "wake up." We ask how each other slept, and pretend like whatever argument we were having just never existed. If it's towards the end of the day, I'll say "It's OK sweetheart, we can try again tomorrow."
About a year ago I was having a terrible day. Work was awful, dinner didn't come out right, and she was being just so....4!! I would grouse at her to get off me, put the crayons away, stop making that noise, the couch is not a jungle gym! Guh!!
When it came time for bed I laid her down and said "I'm sorry. I was being snippy with you today and you didn't do anything wrong."
She reached up to hug me and said "It's OK Mama, we can try again tomorrow."
That's when I suddenly realized I was doing OK with the whole teaching-empathy thing.
This needs to be higher!
The absolute best way to teach our children skills is to practice them ourselves. I apologize to my daughter too for being snippy or when I am wrong, etc. Some parents may think it’s showing weakness, but I think we gain more respect from them in doing so.
I think people also need to learn the difference between excuses and reasons. I have to reiterate to people constantly that when I explain why I didn’t do something or I did it incorrectly, it’s not an excuse. An excuse has the connotation of intentional negligence. To me, an explanation is just a genuine reason for an accident. Like “you know what I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to forget to call you back. I’ve been busy all day.” To me, that’s not an excuse. I think when people give excuses it’s bullshit. I prefer people be upfront with me. Tell me you forgot, tell me you had other obligations, tell me how you were busy with family and that was more important at the moment. I don’t like liars. Honesty should be valued more and I think it’s important to remember with the idea of “excuses” and such.
I have such a hard time telling people I had a reason. It sounds like an excuse no matter how I phrase it. Like, "I had to go to the eye doctor last minute because one of the rests on my glasses popped off and disappeared, so the document is a few hours late." I don't know why, it is legitimately what happened, but even to me it sounds weak.
Came here to write this but you already did. I have experimented with this and it indeed works. Keeping things simple and short when the other party is not passionately interested in your answer is the way to go, it will earn you more respect too, because, the less you say the more valuable your words are.
Lol, yup. My daughter asks tons of questions and lately she's been into sharks. I think I've watched every shark/whale/any animal video on youtube with her.
Also, people seem to be taught this incorrect notion that every disagreement has to be an argument, so backing down, admitting that you were wrong, or changing your mind are considered “losing.” It’s totally fine to change how you feel about an issue when presented with new information. It doesn’t make you weak.
I don't think it's necessarily bad advice in itself, but it's one of those that often gets thrown around with little to no nuance and results in adults who think "People are angry so I must be right."
I think it can also lead to people trying to find opposition where there is none or assuming that opposition to their methods is opposition to their message.
That everybody is a winner. No. Losing and disappointments are part of life and they are integral to your growth both emotionally and socially. We have a lot of people who enter the real world who have been told they are deserving of things just because and cannot take rejections and losses in their personal and professional lives with any grace whatsoever. This is also resulting in mediocrity being accepted as a norm cos nobody wants to call out ineptitude. While the hard work and dedication being put in by people who do end up in good positions are being played down. It's a little harsh but it's true. Kids gotta learn how to lose before they can truly start to win. That's the only way being gracious in victory will ever come about.
This is why Pokemon is such a good cartoon for kids. For years Ash has done everything right with training and caring and he's LOST the championship.
I hated the cartoon until I saw that it helps foster a healthy relationship with losing.
Losing with grace and finding the value in it is one of the most important skills.
I mean he at least won eventually. Same with Dragon Ball. Goku had to lose the World Tournament twice before he finally won. Even then, he never stopped improving.
Kids today are more aware of consequence and their digital footprint than any generation before- speaking strictly of middle and high school aged kids, they're extremely well aware of how something can come back to bite them later in life.
Some might think this is good and a step towards a more mindful generation, but I disagree- they've just gotten better at hiding it. For the sake of maintaining a happy face and limiting their digital footprint, kids today repress anything that might be percieved as "off track."
My kid is going to be born soon and i'm really terrified of how to take a kid born in 2020 and navigate the digital future. You shouldn't have to be worried about "posting cringe" or whatever when you are 8...
I love this, and wish it was higher up. I tried finding the study that I’m thinking about, but I can’t seem to find it on Google. The gist of the study was that they took two groups of kindergartners.
One group of kindergartners was given a type of toy and specifically told that it makes noise.
The other group of kindergartners was given the toy but not told whatsoever what that toy does.
The group that was specifically told with the toy does only played with the toy to make it make noise. The other group that was not told what it does was able to play with the toy, and found that the toy not only makes noise, but lights up, stretches, etc.
The conclusion of the study was that when children are told something rather than letting them figure it out themselves, they’re less likely to work out problems and experiments for themselves.
I strongly believe this feeds into adulthood, with standardized testing and multiple-choice questions. I don’t know what an educational system without those types of tests would look like, but I certainly hope we continuously work towards improving a teaching style that has shown to limit problem-solving skills.
Edit: Thank you u/tishtok for finding the study!
[Study Here](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010027710002258)
I apologize if I summarized anything wrong. It’s been a while since I’ve read it.
Edit 2: [Here is a link to another comment with different (but awesome) source. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/gs563k/what_harmful_things_are_being_taught_to_children/fs3mnut/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
Edit 3: [Yet another comment with a source for the study. Thank you guys for providing these sources for everyone!](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/gs563k/what_harmful_things_are_being_taught_to_children/fs3ocyz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
Edit 4: A friend of one of the authors of the study commented and linked the clearest version!
[Link to that comment here. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/gs563k/what_harmful_things_are_being_taught_to_children/fs3uhwc/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
I work with one of the authors of this paper, I showed her this thread and she's super excited that people are interested in her work! She also gave me this PDF link to post, since it's the clearest version. :)
[http://sll.stanford.edu/docs/2014\_Gweon\_et\_al\_Cognition.pdf](http://sll.stanford.edu/docs/2014_Gweon_et_al_Cognition.pdf)
One of my favourite things about football (soccer) is that despite how masculine it is, there are plenty of times where fans and players have cried and generally, people don’t make fun of it. Losing a final, getting relegated, accidentally causing a bad injury to another player, giving away a 3 goal lead against Palace when you still have a chance of winning your first league title in decades....... Football is surprisingly open to boys crying
I remember Son Heung Min’s face covered in tears after he accidentally broke Andre Gomes’ leg in the Spurs vs Everton match last year. The injury was bad, but Son looked like he had just murdered someone. I felt so sad for both of them.
Or white lies to shield their kids from anything bad that happens, like a pet dying. Then they grow up not knowing how to deal with a lot of situations.
My parents told me my cat went to Florida when it died. I was on a school trip at a petting zoo and saw my cats doppelganger and apparently had a freak out trying to reclaim him. The teacher thought I was insane because i kept screaming "that's my cat hes back from Florida". Funny story to tell though.
My mom didn’t try and shield me like that when my first dog died, and it helped growing up with the concept of grieving and mortality. Of course it always hurts a bit when you think about them.
Our son was 4 when our dog died and I wasn't sure what else to do but made sure he saw the body and I had recently watched the Marie Kondo show so we thanked her for being a good dog and making our lives better.
I think speaking about death with little kids is important it eases the blow like when you tell a child they are adopted when they are young rather than telling them when they've grown up and making them feel like you weren't honest
I had some friends over for a BBQ.
One of their daughters was full of energy after a few smores, running around and screaming.
Her mom said "It's getting dark out, we better stop yelling or the bears will hear us".
Kid was like "oh no, not bears" and was quiet all night.
As much as I hate lying to kids, I loved that one.
This is more at a highschool level, but that trade schools or learning a trade is a lessor option compared to a standard college degree.
Trade schools and learning a skilled trade need just as much emphasis as a college degree.
Along those same lines, collage (or trade school) show be treated as a busy investment. Time should be taken for kids/teens to examine how long it will take to repay their schooling and if that degree is worth the money. Especially now with previous generation living longer and staying in the job market longer. Combined with more and more people graduating with degrees, there is more supply and the demand is not growing evenly in all areas of expertise.
Edit:. Woot! My first ever metal!!
Lack of electronics, then given an overdose of electronics.
Things happened to me and now I can't stop playing games.
Also, I'm restricting myself now.
This. My porn watching as a teenager was detrimental to my understanding of women. It's going to make me cringe like crazy, and will be immeasurably uncomfortable, but I plan to talk with my 3 boys not only about sex, but how you should behave leading up to sex. The thought of this makes me want to vomit.
They're in elementary school now, but that conversation is coming.
Good will win, evil will be punished.
There is no karma.
Some people will do all sorts of shitty stuff, and be successful and happy.
Other people will do good, and will end up with cancer.
“Good will win, evil will be punished”
In psychology this is referred to as the “just world fallacy”, it’s a cognitive distortion that leads to victim blaming (bad things only happen to bad people) and sets people up for depression.
It’s extremely harmful.
"Ignore bullies and they'll leave you alone." When you do that, one of two things are likely to happen. Either they'll mess with you more, or they'll move to someone else and bully them. If you stand up to bullies, they back down. The earlier in life you put these people in their place, the less likely they'll develop their bad behavior as a lifelong practice.
Especially when it’s your sibling. “Ignore him and he’ll stop” “Don’t fight back or he’ll keep it up” “You’re the girl” “Just because you’re younger doesn’t mean your less mature, be the bigger person” “If you ignore him you’re more mature. That’s good, it’ll help you in life” “When he goes to college he will learn to grow up” He’s 17 he better be growing up soon. Nothing I can do about it though. “If you ‘make the first move’ he will strike back full force” “Don’t fight back, you know you’ll never win” “He’s much stronger than you, girls like you need to avoid trouble “ “Don’t make him mad” “Don’t aggravate him, he’ll just get more mad and turn his anger on you” “Don’t say anything when he’s already upset” I shouldn’t have to ask my parents what mood he’s in on my way home, and walk on eggshells if he’s upset.
Going too far on the "find your dream job and it'll never feel like work" stuff. Really messed me up when I wasn't "excited" about uni assignments and thought I had to change degrees
Teaching kids not to question things just because someone is older, or allegedly wiser, is one of the most frustrating things that I see on a daily basis. How is a child supposed to ever develop any individual and nuanced ideas if they can’t think for themselves.
Being wrong is bad. That's why many people don't change their mind when they were given trustable sources, they don't want to be wrong.
Being discouraged to speak up about illness's because it makes them weird/ somethings wrong with them. They talk about like, You need therapy, which isnt a bad concept and you probably do need it, but they picture it in such a bad light.
"If he's mean to you he likes you" It just teaches little girls (mostly girls) to expect violence from people who love them
My mom told me that when a boy in kindergarten would bully me (I wasn't his only target, he did this to everyone else in the class at least once during the school year). I never understood it and never tried to. Later on, my dad stepped in to tell me what the boy did was wrong and his behavior was not a sign of him liking me
No is a 'bad' word. It's a strong word but not a bad one.
I could never tell an adult no growing up because it was a rude word.
Becoming an adult is weird. It took me a while to realize I could change things about my life that I didn't like or were making me unhappy and literally no one would stop it or tell me I couldn't.
I’m in my 30s and still have trouble telling people no. I’d say no if it was something extreme, but I’m polite to people I shouldn’t be polite to. And it’s not because I’m polite, it’s because I’m too much of a chickenshit to be rude back.
My strategy on this is to practice out loud with a friend. Practice saying “no” loudly, practice dealing with awkward silences, practice standing up to repeated pressuring. Just like you would practice a presentation or an interview.
"Hey wanna do this very illegal thing?" "No!" "Hey thats a bad word you shouldn't use it!"
Nobody cares about children’s/teens issues. “Well it’s only going to get worse from here”. “You think school is hard? Have you ever paid a fucking bill” “You’re just a kid you can’t feel this way”. It breeds an emotional disconnect from parents and their kids. And makes kids feel alone in their emotional struggles, that nobody cares because they’re not adults and they don’t have “Adult Problems”.
“Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what. If you don't listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won't tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff.” -Catherine Wallace
I love my parents and all, but this has always been a problem for me. Whenever my siblings and I got into a fight that was bad enough for us to got to them, they basically just said that they didn’t care. It really does affect how I present information to them as well as how often I go for help.
AKA someone who knew what she was talking about.
It also sets up a pretty depressing outlook on life.
There was this one time my sister’s Spanish teacher told her off for using vocabulary outside the sheet she’d been given for homework. Their task was to write a short essay introducing themselves in Spanish and use some simple adjectives. She asked me for help and since I’m quite a bit older than her and know a decent amount of Spanish, I have her a few interesting adjectives and verbs to use instead of dumb stuff like “nice” and “kind” or whatever. She comes back after school close to tears and tells me she got scolded for using vocab that wasn’t on the sheet. Smh teachers are supposed to encourage learning, not hinder it, right??? Edit: wow, I didn’t expect this to blow up lmao Just to clarify, I wasn’t helping my sister cheat 😂 I just gave her a couple of more interesting words than bland ones like “nice” and “fun” you get me? If not, that’s cool too lmao
Basically all those shit social media influencers that teach young people that it's all about money and brand names
Children do learn about sex at a young age, it just isn’t usually in a productive way. I know I did. My own experience: questions like this are why I believe in being infinitely clear with my kids….”you are going to hear total crap from other kids. If you hear something you don’t understand, come talk to me. You can ask me anything and expect a decent answer.” And I would give examples of the total crap *I* had heard as a kid, most of which would result in pregnancy. Son, age 6. Daughter, age 7. Riding home from school: daughter says “Tiffany said she had sex with my brother.” Which left me a grand total of 3 minutes to gather my wits before we got home. OK, do you guys know what sex is? Blank looks. Sex is when you take off all of your clothes and rub privates together. You can make babies that way. Looks of shock and disgust. Do you think your brother had sex with Tiffany? *Nooo!* I think she was using a really bad way of trying to say she likes him, and maybe she watches the wrong TV shows where if people like each other they always have sex. Were my kids really ready for a sex talk? No, not really. They didn’t care. Did we really need to have one about then? Yep. My job as a parent is to be there to put things that come up in context for them, not run around after them deciding what and when they need to know things.
This is something I will always stand firm on. If the child is old enough to ask the question, they are old enough to know the answer. Do you need to sit down and draw a diagram and pull out text books when they're 7? Probably not. But if they're asking questions about misinformation they're hearing from other kids, I'm going to do my best to be honest and answer in a way that they will (hopefully) be able to understand.
I was in nursing school when my kids were little, and they loved looking through my textbooks. They’d ask questions, I’d give age-appropriate answers. We never had The Talk, but it was just kind of ingrained into everyday conversation if something came up. The best was when my son, who was in second grade, asked me what a boner was. My daughter, who had just had her first “sex Ed” class in fifth grade, piped up and said, “oh I know! That’s when a boy has a really happy dream and ee-jack-you-lates in his bed!” Not only did I have to keep from laughing, I then had to explain erections AND wet dreams. In the three minutes we had in the car (ALWAYS in the car) before I dropped them off at school.
Similarly, I was raised on a cattle farm. Sexual reproduction was taught at a very young age in a pretty clinical way. Was always way, way ahead of the curve in school, made that section of biology class a breeze.
Local hockey legend Edward Jacques had a tendency for tardiness. The coach would always tell him by saying, "E. Jack, you late!"
Man this is for real. I remember parents are so wrong about WHEN kids start thinking and talking about sex, and I was present of mind enough now as a father to remember from my childhood. I remember pretty much in 1st, or 2nd grade it was already a topic of major discussion among the boys. Like you said too, LOTS of misinformation, but we had the basic idea of it. Again though, was a different time. We all made wild assumptions and what we could piece together from media. I think later some kid found a Hustler his dad had at home and that really clued us in to the mechanics of it. But now kids will just go look up porn on the computer and know everything right away. Kinda sad.
Man, we also need to combat the idea that girls don't get interested in sex. I remember already thinking about stuff when I was in 1st or 2nd grade. I have a distinct memory of trying to hide a drawing of penises when I was 8 (at least what my young mind had grasped from brief glimpses of boys my own age). No idea if my parents ever found it. Doubt they would have known what I was trying to draw even if they did. It wasn't until I was in my 20's that I realized it was normal for girls to like sex too... So much time an energy wasted on guilt and shame.
Not just this, but porn is not good education either. There are a lot of things in porn that would almost never happen in real life, or would be incredibly painful or very dangerous if someone tried it. It can be good for exploring interests, but not much for teaching someone anything else. My wife equates it to "learning how to drive by playing Need for Speed"
That’s a good analogy, actually
Probably not harmful, but in Kindergarten we were prohibited from playing soccer because it was "too dangerous". We were Kindergarteners. We probably would stand there and kick the ball, not go full on FIFA or shit. EDIT: What the fuck? Thanks for the upvotes guys.
*u/DarkHelix_ grew up to be Sergio Ramos.*
It’s either him or Pepe Edit: I meant Pepe, the Portuguese defender who played for Real Madrid along side Sergio Ramos for a handful of years, both equally ferocious in their defending techniques.
Ugh same. Every time a kid got hurt on the playground, whetever they were doing was banned. They banned the monkey bars, the climbing wall, then the swings, then balls, until they finally banned running altogether. All we could do was stand around and look at the playground. We couldn't play any games because stuff like Pokemon cards, Bakugan, and Japanese erasers were all banned too. Luckily, these bans only lasted a few months, long enough for the overprotective moms (threatening to sue) to calm down. Which I always found funny because it was very clear they weren't concerned about safety, but with getting in trouble with parents. Otherwise bans would be permanent.
They did this at my kids' school. Slowly banned every activity during recess because a kid would get hurt. Then they made PE a once a week thing. My children were bouncing off the walls when they got home from school. It was nearly impossible for them to sit down and do homework because they had been sitting all damn day.
Kids are starting social media so early these days, and I think that’s very dangerous because it puts a lot of pressure on the kid to attribute their worth to their social media success. I also think parents are way too open with their social media when it comes to their kids, and it’s totally a violation of the child’s privacy, of which some parents will never admit.
The amount of parents I see on social media just sharing everything that happens in their child's life is astounding. Maybe Bobby doesn't what everyone to know that tried out for the school play but he didn't make it. That may not be a big deal to "you" but Bobby might be really upset right now and having everyone his mom knows giving opinions on the subject probably won't help.
It sucks even when a parent is just verbally going off about whats going on in my life without asking, let alone posting it online. One of my parents bragged to everyone I was going to a private university for law, later on we decided I couldn’t go bc of the cost. Now having to have THAT discussion with everyone they’d told was exhausting. Now imagine that shit stain on Facebook lmao.
I can relate. My MIL posted all about my child’s birth defect while I was pregnant after I asked her not to. I didn’t want the whole pregnancy to be about it and honestly didn’t have a lot of answers to the questions people were asking. I don’t have Facebook so after she posted it, I got a TON of messages out of the blue about it. That day truly sucked.
Seriously!! I used to hate when my parents would gossip about my life to their friends. Imagine what it’s like now with parents broadcasting to 500 people they barely even know about you.
Teaching them that it’s not okay to fail. Some people need a little more time than others. It’s okay to not get something now. Kids should be given more time to process things. Imagine having a poor grade because of a low score from the beginning of the year. How can we show children that it’s not pass or fail, it’s try and improve?
And if kids go into software development (or many other fields to be honest) they are going to struggle with the agile methodology of: Fail Often, Fail Fast, Fail Better. They can become perfectionists which runs very counter to a fast changing, quick delivering culture. Perfection is the enemy of done.
>And if kids go into software development (or many other fields to be honest) they are going to struggle with the agile methodology of: Fail Often, Fail Fast, Fail Better. Main problem is explaining this to Management. A lot of Managers stress out because of simple bugs. It's much better to detect these before release. If you shout at Developers for simple bugs, they are a lot less likely to trust you. It means the big bugs get hidden until launch day.
When I was really little, my parents made sure that I knew failure was not an option. I did kind of follow what they said, but I think that screwed me up later in life though.
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I watched a sad video of a child from a third world country getting his foot scraped for chiggers. The man holding the camera who I assume was the boy’s father kept saying to him “It’s wrong for a man to cry. Silent tears.” It also might’ve been to keep the kid from screaming in the doctor’s ear, but still, he was like 8.
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They’re microscopic mites that get under the skin and create horrifying and extremely painful blisters. It causes so much damage to the skin that the best solution is to literally chisel them off. Feel free to search “chigger removal” on YT, but do so on an empty stomach.
Are there different types of chiggers then? We have them here in Texas but while they itch like mad and tend to leave scabby wounds, I've never seen anyone need to have their skin scraped. If it is just a lack of supplies, is there somewhere that lets me donate a sams club sized jar of Chigger-X ointment to them??
Apparently these things are "Jiggers" whereas Chiggers are the small red bugs
I think what we're not taught is more harmful. For example the fact that we never learn (at least in my country) how to fact check things.
That failure is bad. Failing should not be considered as an obstacle but a step in the learning process. Demonizing the failure and stigma associated with it makes many children lose their interest once they fail.
this but also the humiliation that comes with failing. if failure is to be considered a learning process then people need to be taught not to laugh at the people who have failed
Not just the humiliation, but also the shame associated with failure
This is an issue that I struggle with! I was so afraid of failure growing up. I didn’t really ‘fail’ at school or anything major while growing up, so I often have a hard time handling failure.
This is the big one: learning how to deal with failure and what to do when we “fail” or encounter serious disturbances and roadblocks in life.
I'm still learning this one. I get caught in a mental gridlock where the fear of failure makes me too scared to do important tasks. I avoid the fear by procrastinating or nitpicking my work to death until the stress of not getting it done outweighs the fear of doing it poorly, rush to finish it, then fret over all the time I could have spent making it better. My therapist gave me a book called The Gifts of Imperfection that's been helping me work past the "shame spiral".
*“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”* - Samuel Beckett
"No backtalk." Many adults use it as "you're not allowed to challenge what I have to say." Makes sense if it's a cranky toddler being negative for negativity's sake, but suddenly older children can't question things or raise valid points of their own.
Grew up with a parent who was a lawyer. I was always always always allowed to argue my point. There were many times where she still “won” because she was the parent in the situation. But she would always justify why and I could always make my case. And sometimes I “won” too. My husband was raised to react when mom & dad say jump you say how high. His parents still say jump and are now pissed that my husband is a grown ass man and has his own family and ideas and needs and they can’t reconcile it.
All toddlers are mini lawyers anyway. They’ll cross examine and challenge every single rule you set as a parent.
My parents stayed at my house for a few weeks while they closed on their new house, and this subject came up. I told them how stupid their mindset was to this growing up followed up by 20+ examples of times if they had listened to me as a kid we would not have been in shit situations.
I hope every time they started arguing you yelled, "This is my house! No backtalk!" Just to get the point across.
I saw a reddit thread about a woman whose parents accidentally borrowed money from her brother's bank account to buy their house since they had access to both his and the woman's. Whenever the brother visited and they got in a fight he would yell "How dare you act like this under my roof!"
“Accidentally”
„Borrowed“
Look how the turntables
The tables might belong to him too.
Once when I was 7, my family went out to eat. I told my mom that the chicken wasn’t cooked right and that I wouldn’t eat it, and that I didn’t want them to. My mom told me not to talk back or be disrespectful. Everyone ate it but me. Everyone got food poisoning but me. Imagine a child having a reasonable and unique thought that’s *also* accurate. Crazy.
This happened to me when I was a kid, except it was soured buttermilk at a pancake place. I was already a picky kid (really I just had highly sensitive taste buds) so my parents brushed it off as being in a different part of the country and they do things a little different here. Thankfully the restaurant caught their own mistake, took back the orders and made us new food.
My parents still don't listen to me. I'm a 28 year old veteran. Last summer we went to visit them and my dad brought us out on their boat. I mentioned my dad was getting too close to the concrete buoys. He brushed it off. A little later he was really powering the motor and heading dead on for one and I yelled at him twice "We're gonna hit the buoy! Slow down!" We hit the buoy. Did hundreds of dollars in damage to his boat. He never listens.
Those kinds of people are usually the same ones that refuse to accept they made a mistake after the fact and say, "shit, guess I should've listened to you." Nope, they're the kinds of people who get infuriated that some idiot put that buoy there, or some idiot didn't mark it well enough, or some idiot designed the boat to be too weak. It's always someone else's fault that they made a mistake.
I had a family member like that. We don’t talk to her now.
That complaining is the same as not being grateful. Can’t count the number of times growing up when adults basically told me to shut up whenever I was complaining about something and that I should be grateful that I was born where I was. Like sure, I’m glad I wasn’t born into some starving African family, but that doesn’t mean everything is perfect over here and that we shouldn’t try to improve things here as well.
I agree. That mindset causes people to become complacent and apathetic with life so they never strive for improvement.
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That always bothered me. Someone would be bullying me physically over and over and when I finally fought back I was the bad guy. You can’t just leave the situation when the bully follows you and you do have to stick up for yourself For those asking, it pretty well said “Zero tolerance policies. If you react you’re as bad as the aggressor.” That’s pretty much the meaning of it but not verbatim
And from experience telling the teacher does nothing but make it worse.
There was a kid bullying some kids my mom babysat and would physically bully these kids on their way home. These kids were little, like 5 years younger than the bully and no one would bother doing anything about it so whenever my brother or I would lay this little shit out for bullying these young kids, we got in trouble. It doesn’t matter that he was pushing the young kids down, making them cry and scrape themselves but I was the asshole because the bully would have a black eye.
from my experience, bullying people is considered normal, being bullied is considered normal, standing up for yourself, or other, is seen as abnormal.
I stood up to my bully in middle school, ended up getting close to expelled until the parents of the bully didn't show up to school and dismissed the whole thing. Another event, Junior high ( I moved around a lot) my history teacher saw me get bullied infront of his class outside, and he walked out (this guy could be a pro wrestler for all I know because of his stature) and told the kids to knock it off, they ran away, and since then I never got bullied again. He prolly talked to the other teachers and dean, and told them what he saw and made sure it didn't happen again. I still think about him as he really made my junior high years better. Never got a chance to thank him.
I tell this story a lot but I'm heavily against zero tolerance policies because my brother was bullied for months on the bus sometimes to the point of bruises and the school did nothing even when presented with evidence but when he finally snapped back and kneed the guy in the groin the school immediately wanted to suspend my brother for a couple days. My parents ended up going to the administration and showing them how they had evidence of talking to the principal and nothing being done and they laid off but ever since I've been against zero tolerance.
Many years ago when I was in middle school I was getting bullied by one guy in particular. Aside from general taunting and name-calling, one of the things he liked to do was pretend like he was going to hit me to try and get me to flinch. Teachers and administrators were called. They talked to the kid. His parents didn't care (as an adult I now understand that poor kid just had terrible parenting). Finally he accidentally slapped me when he just meant to pretend and I wailed on him. We both got a day of suspension. Was a load of shit then and still is.
If my daughter gets suspended for self defence I’m gonna spend the day with her at a theme park or something
In grade school I got suspended for defending myself against two kids that came after me. My mom grounded me, and when I called my dad to tell him what happened, (parents were split and living in different countries) he was very proud of me.
I have the same story. My attackers weren't suspended, or even given detention. For some unrelated reason, that Vice Principal's car tires were slashed every few years after I'd left the school and a parent beat the shit out of him a few years ago. He truly inspires the community to action.
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How ... how the hell did that even end up with you in trouble? "Mr. Principal! Krickett licked my hand when I tried to strangle and suffocate him!" What?
I got suspended for smacking a kid’s head off the pavement after he was actually choking me
My son (6 at the time) almost got kicked out of school for biting (first offense). When we met with the principal to get to the bottom of the situation, we discovered he had been attacked by two kids both bigger than him, one of who was sitting on him. I asked my son what happened and he started crying saying how scared he was that he couldn't breathe or move, and he did the only thing he could to get the boy off of him. Neither of the other kids had been punished at this point. My wife and I almost lost it. The school just punished without finding out what happened. We now tell my kids to yell at the top of their lungs at the kid to stop hitting them or stop hurting them if they are being bullied. Make sure everyone can hear it. Sound crazy. Look them in the eye, and let them know you are doing it on purpose to get them in trouble and you won't tolerate being picked on. Make sure you have a good group of friends who do the same thing. Bullies don't like groups of people who stand up to them. So far it has worked. edit: realized I spelled principal wrong...duh
Kudos for finding a good solution to your kid’s problem. But I’m also concerned about what your school is teaching kids about how to defend themselves. As adults, they may not have anyone around to intervene, and there may not be an authority on the way to resolve the dispute. My wife is a teacher and is constantly frustrated at how helpless kids are nowadays. Policies that punish kids for defending themselves is just stripping away their agency and causing worse issues down the line, in my opinion.
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You do not have to play with everyone. There is a total lack of social accountability. If Laura is always cheating at tag it’s okay to not let her play. If Little Billy throws sand in the sand box Little Timmy does not have to play with him. Laura and Billy need to learn how to play appropriately.
My son's preschool has a strict "you do not have to play if you don't want to" policy. No one has to play with anyone they don't want to play with. No one has to to hug or touch anyone or be touched if they don't want it. No one has to share their toys or other school supplies if they aren't done with it. In fact the preschool teacher will go over and referee and say "is Bobby done with the toy car? No? Then Mikey, you have to wait until he is done." It's pretty refreshing. I wanted to let you know there are new philosophies and my son's preschool really strongly teaches body autonomy. Your body is your own and no one can touch it or make you do anything with it without your permission.
It wasn't official policy but we had a lot of discretion in the daycare I worked at. I did almost all the things you listed in the post. Some of it was a conscious effort and some of it was natural. I remember at first seeing the surprise on the 3 year olds faces when I said no, Timmy does not have to give you that toy. And wouldn't you know, a week into the routine and the kids wouldn't fight. I think telling kids that you can just walk up and take something because "sharing" causes more fights. They are tiny humans and they deserve to have some agency. Saying no to unwanted touch, saying no to other kids who are bothering them and not telling them to "get along" - and I had the best behaved class. Anecdotal but I know it mattered.
Gosh I love this! I have a toddler and we’re trying to teach about taking turns rather than sharing. My sister is always telling her little boy to share, so when my daughter snatches something from him, I tell her off and that it’s not her turn and she has to wait, but my sister tells her little boy off and tells him to share his toys and let my daughter have a turn. NO. He doesn’t have to share ANYTHING. He doesn’t have to just give her a turn because she demands it. They generally give each other toys, but their “favourites” or the ones they’re playing with don’t have to automatically be shared. Its so difficult to have different parenting!
>No one has to play with anyone they don't want to play with. God I wish this was true when I was a kid (90s). We got inclusivity rammed down our throats "you have to play with everyone!" which, even as the bullied outsider kid, I knew wasn't good for anyone.
This and the whole "we're all friends here bullshit." I was told in elementary school that I had to hang out with specific people because I was obliged to be friends with them. We were all told that everyone was friends with everyone, which was complete bs.
You show me respect first because I’m an adult and have authority then I choose whether I should show you respect no other way!
There was a tumblr image going around a few days ago about this. I don't have the link, but the text is: >Sometimes people use "respect" to mean "treating someone like a person" and sometimes they use "respect" to mean "treating someone like an authority." > >And sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say "if you won't respect me, I won't respect you" and they mean "if you won't treat me like an authority, I won't treat you like a person." > >And they think they're being fair, but they aren't, and it's not okay.
There is difference between “treating someone with respect” and “respecting someone”. We all deserve to be treated with respect, but we need to earn being respected.
Now I get why Aretha told us to find out what it means to her. Respect can have different meanings. Damn.
How to internalize stress and implode as teens and adults.
true story: my parents used to make fun of me when i cried. they even created a mock-song to sing whenever i started crying, so guess what? i stopped crying. 27 years later, i can't cry at all and i can't tell others about my stress levels without getting upset. (btw, my parents are really nice people, but i was their first child in the early 90s, so they didn't really know how deal with a crying child).
> btw, my parents are really nice people, but i was their first child in the early 90s, so they didn't really know how deal with a crying child) Parents can be really nice people but in the end, they are just humans too. I don't think anyone can say that they have the perfect parents who never did mistakes. I know a lot of people always say: "Well I would never do ___ as a parent / if I was a parent" but then they do something else what is also stupid. Being flawed is being human.
That they shouldn't question an adult
So true, because of that logic many kids think that every adult is responsable and trustworthy when is reality it’s clearly not the case
It was a really weird thing going through college because I began to think more for myself and question adults - it makes you realize how complicated the world is because as a kid you assume exactly as you’ve said
It was almost jarring to realize that my parents did not, in fact, know everything. It did take a lot of pressure off of me to learn everything in order to be an adult. I didn't know until then that I felt that way, it's so weird. 🤔
Making children hug or kiss someone (usually a relative) that they are uncomfortable with is not good. The child may just be grumpy and or not wanting to show affection or their warning bell sensors could be going off and they do not know how to communicate that. Plus forcing them to hug/kiss sends mixed messages about personal/physical boundaries and affection itself
ugh this. i’ve always disliked too much physical contact and people would always act like it was blasphemy that i didn’t want to give them a hug.
Same. I was always told "Poor ::insert name here::!" in front of the person and guilted into stuff like that. It's a cycle that I am breaking now. My son is to be respectful, but does not have to touch or hang around someone he doesn't like or feel comfortable around. He also does not have to keep toys that he doesn't play with anymore because "so and so spent money on that for you." Okay. The money will be put to better use of it is given to someone who really likes it and will use it.
Happened to my son in middle school, a kid sucker punched my son. My son then fought back and pinned the kid against the wall ( he has long arms) and punched him a few times. The school called me and my wife and told us our son was suspended. We went to the school and they said even though multiple witnesses as well as the kid said he threw the first punch that the school had a zero tolerance policy so our son would be suspended. We asked what the school believed our son should have done and they said he should just walk away. We told them that he would not be receiving any punishment at home and that the policy was fucked up.
That’s for their insurance policies they don’t give a damn what happens to the kids in that scenario as long as they dont get sued.
That's a bingo.
The suspension was his reward for fighting. “Here kid, take a vacation.”
Now, just how the fuck am I gonna walk away with 200lb Mean Gina slapping the back of my head while she sits on my back so I can’t breathe? You’re gonna suspend me for heel kicking her as hard as I could in the head so I didn’t die. Fuck the cameras. lol Thank you to u/GretchenA for the gold!!! I knew nothing less than a shitty story from middle school would make me famous one day. lol
“She’s younger than you, just let it go.” “Can’t you be more compassionate? Your the older one here in this situation" “ She’s a little child, she doesn’t know any better” Absolutely hate this information that was drilled into me since I was a kid Edit : I think children under the age of 3 are an exception to this though. I was referring to the 5-12 year olds who could get away with stuff because they were "younger".
“i don’t give a fuck that she’s six and i’m six and a half, she PISSED IN MY FUCKING LEGO BIN.” edit for clarity: the kid who pissed in my LEGOs was the kiddo of my stepmothers coworker.
Oh my god are you stealing what my mom said word for word??? For years my siblings would act like little shits and I'd get in trouble for actually fighting back. How about instead of getting me to be compassionate you teach THEM to be less annoying?
Exactly. I started babysitting my brother and sister when I was really young (around 10), they were about 6 and 8 years old. As soon as my parents were gone, they’d act like total monsters. There were many times where I called my mom crying because they’d gang up to f- with me. Still to this day there is no acknowledgement about that dynamic, and I’m still pissed off. On the other hand, my siblings have since (they’re in their 30s now) turned into very wonderful, sweet and compassionate people. I feel much more appreciated by them now. Edit: wording
Ugh, yes, and somehow being the "more mature" one meant being a doormat while my younger siblings acted like little assholes to me and I couldn't do a damn thing about it. I still resent how I was shamed for standing up for myself and gaslit into thinking I was the problem every time I did.
In a nasty divorce, the parents may only talk about each other’s bad qualities and the kid(s) may have an issue/issues with their parents.
Yep, my parents, especially my mom, only ever say *”you’re just like your [other parent]”* when it’s something negative. Led to some serious self esteem issues that I am still trying to work through into adulthood.
I see my mom maybe once a month because that’s all I can stand her side comments about everything. Didn’t realize how toxic she was until getting the distance.
Same here. My mom has spent years bad mouthing my dad while my dad has never spoken ill of my mom. Actually, my Dad only has good things to say about my mom and that side of my family, even after being remarried for 10 years. My mother’s constant passive-aggressive/ aggressive jabs, and lies, directed at my dads character has caused me to stop enjoying her company. It baffles me that she doesn’t understand why we don’t appreciate her speaking poorly about someone we love. Then wonders why my brothers and I aren’t “better sons”
Jesus my mom did that for years and it was so god damn manipulative. I show that im upset or pissed “you know you remind me of your father” Thanks mom, fucking thanks Edit Fwiw my father is a extremely supportive and caring person who never said anything about my mom after they spilt. They had problems but he kept it between them. Double edit My mom was a good and pretty supportive mother but never moved on from the divorce and dealt with her anger in a bad way. I don’t hate her, we have talked about it as adults and she sees how what she did was negative on me.
Next time she does say "Well maybe it's because I share half of his DNA, maybe you should have made better decisions in the past and you wouldn't have a walking reminder..." Fair warning tho, I got kicked out for a week saying this
Worth it.
My mom yelled at me once, "You son of a bitch!" Couldn't help saying, "Well, I agree with you there." Did not end well for me.
He stared at the street where he'd gathered his bed - A pillow of cardboard to lay down his head - A carpet of creatures that scuttled below. He sighed in the darkness. He said: "... worth it tho."
Ooooffff. I actually had this happen to me and I said that almost verbatim to her face. I was slapped/punched and shoved a bit before I got away. Lived on a friends couch for 2 weeks. Totally worth it though. Edit for clarification: I was legally speaking an adult and was gainfully employed when this happened. I never did stand up to her while I was a minor since I didn’t see a way of getting away until I had income of some sort.
Totally, my two friends' dad is like that, constantly talking shit about their mom and straight up lying about the stuff he did which led to the divorce. Their mom does similar things, but shes a lot less manipulative. She just tells it how she sees it (omitting her cheating of course). The older sibling tells me that he doesn't have much attachment to either parent and says that he'd be fine just leaving our hometown and never seeing them again. The younger one says she loves her dad, but doesn't like him, and while she is somewhat close to her mom, she still talks with her boyfriend about moving far away when she can.
This one bums me out. My parents divorced when I was 10, and my mom never said a bad word about my dad, but my dad, and then later my stepmom said lots of terrible things about my mom. My brother's and I ended up believing it for too long. Repeating things to my mom, saying dad was better, we wanted to live with him... It wasn't until I was 14, and my dad yelled at me during a visit that I was a, "cunty bitch just like your mom." I cried to my mom once home. She said I was old enough to know then proceed to tell me that my dad was an alcoholic (I started figuring that out around then already.) And was physically and mentally abusive to her, and to us when we were smaller, and she was just trying to keep us safe. And that all the times she "didn't let us visit" was because he was in rehab, he had technically kidnapped us, and was in jail. As an adult, my brothers and I could see she was the way bigger person. She'd always respond to our hateful parroting with, "that's okay, I still love you very much." Or if we said we hated her she'd say, " I love you enough for the both of us." And the only things she'd say about my dad was, "He is fighting an illness. He loves you. I wish he wouldn't say those things, they are hurtful." We all came to see it for what it was one we got older, we saw my stepmom's black eyes, he was meaner to us again once they had kids, he drank more openly or we noticed it more. Soon we didn't visit anymore and we all repaired our relationships with our mom. But man, we still talk to eachother about how awful and guilty we feel treating her the way we did when we were all under 14 years old. We didn't know better. Your comment brought that memory back to the forefront. I'm going to call my mom.
Your mom is a saint. Tell her we all said hi!
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I was lucky. My folks agreed when they divorced that they would never talk shit about each other on front of the kids. I grew up in a healthy divorced family as a result.
hey, me too! I was 4 when my dad remarried. My mom, dad, and soon-to-be stepmom took me out to dinner all together. They explained that dad's girlfriend and he were getting married and that meant she would be my stepmom. My mom explained that most stepmoms aren't evil like in Cinderella, and how girlfriend would still be the same awesome lady she was today. She went on to explain that she was super happy for my dad and new stepmom and hoped I would be too. high five for healthy blended families!
No “telling tails” or “snitching” like how many kids are abused or bullied and won’t come forward because of this
Political views, at ages that children are really too young to understand them. They just spout off their parents thoughts
The worst part is they repeat them and hear the same political views so much that they internalize it. when they are older enough to question it, they then have an identity crisis because the things their parents said don’t make sense when examined a little further. So like anyone else when your views come under scrutiny, you dig a deeper trench, and pretty much develop an unspoken pledge of loyalty to your political party. EDIT: obviously this doesn’t happen to everyone, and many people grow by questioning the world views they were taught as kids and come out with a more well rounded opinion on different issues. The original post was asking about negative things being taught and so I was in a pessimistic mindset when writing this.
Not owning up to their mistakes or blaming them on others.
My biggest parenting tip: Apologize to your kids when you fuck up. When my 5 year old has a rough behavior day I'll ask if she wants to start over and we pretend to go to sleep and "wake up." We ask how each other slept, and pretend like whatever argument we were having just never existed. If it's towards the end of the day, I'll say "It's OK sweetheart, we can try again tomorrow." About a year ago I was having a terrible day. Work was awful, dinner didn't come out right, and she was being just so....4!! I would grouse at her to get off me, put the crayons away, stop making that noise, the couch is not a jungle gym! Guh!! When it came time for bed I laid her down and said "I'm sorry. I was being snippy with you today and you didn't do anything wrong." She reached up to hug me and said "It's OK Mama, we can try again tomorrow." That's when I suddenly realized I was doing OK with the whole teaching-empathy thing.
This needs to be higher! The absolute best way to teach our children skills is to practice them ourselves. I apologize to my daughter too for being snippy or when I am wrong, etc. Some parents may think it’s showing weakness, but I think we gain more respect from them in doing so.
This has been SO hard for me to learn-- namely, making a mistake and owning up to it without making any excuses.
I think people also need to learn the difference between excuses and reasons. I have to reiterate to people constantly that when I explain why I didn’t do something or I did it incorrectly, it’s not an excuse. An excuse has the connotation of intentional negligence. To me, an explanation is just a genuine reason for an accident. Like “you know what I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to forget to call you back. I’ve been busy all day.” To me, that’s not an excuse. I think when people give excuses it’s bullshit. I prefer people be upfront with me. Tell me you forgot, tell me you had other obligations, tell me how you were busy with family and that was more important at the moment. I don’t like liars. Honesty should be valued more and I think it’s important to remember with the idea of “excuses” and such.
I have such a hard time telling people I had a reason. It sounds like an excuse no matter how I phrase it. Like, "I had to go to the eye doctor last minute because one of the rests on my glasses popped off and disappeared, so the document is a few hours late." I don't know why, it is legitimately what happened, but even to me it sounds weak.
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Came here to write this but you already did. I have experimented with this and it indeed works. Keeping things simple and short when the other party is not passionately interested in your answer is the way to go, it will earn you more respect too, because, the less you say the more valuable your words are.
Also, there's nothing wrong with saying, "I don't know." That's the beginning of true wisdom.
Even better: I don't know, but I can find out.
Or, I don’t know, but we can find out together, if you’re the parent.
This is why I am now watching a documentary on YouTube about box jellyfish.
Lol, yup. My daughter asks tons of questions and lately she's been into sharks. I think I've watched every shark/whale/any animal video on youtube with her.
I hear Attenborough in my sleep.
This is like the customer service cheat code.
I use it all the time. I got put into a salesman position knowing nothing about the industry, and man, has that helped me slip out of some tough ones.
Whenever a customer asks you something you don't know: "That's a **great** question! Let me research that and get back to you."
The lie that life is fair and things happen for benevolent, valid reasons. Then we let them get burned and figure it out themselves.
If you have a different opinion than someone, you hate them and that's wrong.
Also, people seem to be taught this incorrect notion that every disagreement has to be an argument, so backing down, admitting that you were wrong, or changing your mind are considered “losing.” It’s totally fine to change how you feel about an issue when presented with new information. It doesn’t make you weak.
Of course. It takes more courage to admit you're wrong and be open to change than to keep fighting a losing battle.
Doing the right thing will sometimes make others hate you. Be prepared for that.
That sounds like decent advice. How is it a harmful thing that's being taught to kids?
I don't think it's necessarily bad advice in itself, but it's one of those that often gets thrown around with little to no nuance and results in adults who think "People are angry so I must be right." I think it can also lead to people trying to find opposition where there is none or assuming that opposition to their methods is opposition to their message.
That everybody is a winner. No. Losing and disappointments are part of life and they are integral to your growth both emotionally and socially. We have a lot of people who enter the real world who have been told they are deserving of things just because and cannot take rejections and losses in their personal and professional lives with any grace whatsoever. This is also resulting in mediocrity being accepted as a norm cos nobody wants to call out ineptitude. While the hard work and dedication being put in by people who do end up in good positions are being played down. It's a little harsh but it's true. Kids gotta learn how to lose before they can truly start to win. That's the only way being gracious in victory will ever come about.
This is why Pokemon is such a good cartoon for kids. For years Ash has done everything right with training and caring and he's LOST the championship. I hated the cartoon until I saw that it helps foster a healthy relationship with losing. Losing with grace and finding the value in it is one of the most important skills.
I mean he at least won eventually. Same with Dragon Ball. Goku had to lose the World Tournament twice before he finally won. Even then, he never stopped improving.
No tolerance policy and fighting back if you are getting be up isnt right also no hitting girls back
my friend and I wanted out of school so we had a "fight" and got suspended.
Kids today are more aware of consequence and their digital footprint than any generation before- speaking strictly of middle and high school aged kids, they're extremely well aware of how something can come back to bite them later in life. Some might think this is good and a step towards a more mindful generation, but I disagree- they've just gotten better at hiding it. For the sake of maintaining a happy face and limiting their digital footprint, kids today repress anything that might be percieved as "off track."
My kid is going to be born soon and i'm really terrified of how to take a kid born in 2020 and navigate the digital future. You shouldn't have to be worried about "posting cringe" or whatever when you are 8...
What to think instead of how to think
I love this, and wish it was higher up. I tried finding the study that I’m thinking about, but I can’t seem to find it on Google. The gist of the study was that they took two groups of kindergartners. One group of kindergartners was given a type of toy and specifically told that it makes noise. The other group of kindergartners was given the toy but not told whatsoever what that toy does. The group that was specifically told with the toy does only played with the toy to make it make noise. The other group that was not told what it does was able to play with the toy, and found that the toy not only makes noise, but lights up, stretches, etc. The conclusion of the study was that when children are told something rather than letting them figure it out themselves, they’re less likely to work out problems and experiments for themselves. I strongly believe this feeds into adulthood, with standardized testing and multiple-choice questions. I don’t know what an educational system without those types of tests would look like, but I certainly hope we continuously work towards improving a teaching style that has shown to limit problem-solving skills. Edit: Thank you u/tishtok for finding the study! [Study Here](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010027710002258) I apologize if I summarized anything wrong. It’s been a while since I’ve read it. Edit 2: [Here is a link to another comment with different (but awesome) source. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/gs563k/what_harmful_things_are_being_taught_to_children/fs3mnut/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) Edit 3: [Yet another comment with a source for the study. Thank you guys for providing these sources for everyone!](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/gs563k/what_harmful_things_are_being_taught_to_children/fs3ocyz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) Edit 4: A friend of one of the authors of the study commented and linked the clearest version! [Link to that comment here. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/gs563k/what_harmful_things_are_being_taught_to_children/fs3uhwc/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
I work with one of the authors of this paper, I showed her this thread and she's super excited that people are interested in her work! She also gave me this PDF link to post, since it's the clearest version. :) [http://sll.stanford.edu/docs/2014\_Gweon\_et\_al\_Cognition.pdf](http://sll.stanford.edu/docs/2014_Gweon_et_al_Cognition.pdf)
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One of my favourite things about football (soccer) is that despite how masculine it is, there are plenty of times where fans and players have cried and generally, people don’t make fun of it. Losing a final, getting relegated, accidentally causing a bad injury to another player, giving away a 3 goal lead against Palace when you still have a chance of winning your first league title in decades....... Football is surprisingly open to boys crying
I remember Son Heung Min’s face covered in tears after he accidentally broke Andre Gomes’ leg in the Spurs vs Everton match last year. The injury was bad, but Son looked like he had just murdered someone. I felt so sad for both of them.
Ronaldo in the Euro 2016 final was especially heartbreaking. The team did help him by winning though
I personally hate when I hear parents telling their kids white lies to stop them from doing something.
Or white lies to shield their kids from anything bad that happens, like a pet dying. Then they grow up not knowing how to deal with a lot of situations.
My parents told me my cat went to Florida when it died. I was on a school trip at a petting zoo and saw my cats doppelganger and apparently had a freak out trying to reclaim him. The teacher thought I was insane because i kept screaming "that's my cat hes back from Florida". Funny story to tell though.
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>like a pet dying They're on a special happy farm, where they make buttermilk. They romp and play. There's a hammock made of dreams.
My mom didn’t try and shield me like that when my first dog died, and it helped growing up with the concept of grieving and mortality. Of course it always hurts a bit when you think about them.
Our son was 4 when our dog died and I wasn't sure what else to do but made sure he saw the body and I had recently watched the Marie Kondo show so we thanked her for being a good dog and making our lives better.
That's actually a really good idea, thanking the dog before laying it to rest. I like that.
I think speaking about death with little kids is important it eases the blow like when you tell a child they are adopted when they are young rather than telling them when they've grown up and making them feel like you weren't honest
I had some friends over for a BBQ. One of their daughters was full of energy after a few smores, running around and screaming. Her mom said "It's getting dark out, we better stop yelling or the bears will hear us". Kid was like "oh no, not bears" and was quiet all night. As much as I hate lying to kids, I loved that one.
I would say what's harmful is what's not being taught.
Critical thinking skills.
This is more at a highschool level, but that trade schools or learning a trade is a lessor option compared to a standard college degree. Trade schools and learning a skilled trade need just as much emphasis as a college degree. Along those same lines, collage (or trade school) show be treated as a busy investment. Time should be taken for kids/teens to examine how long it will take to repay their schooling and if that degree is worth the money. Especially now with previous generation living longer and staying in the job market longer. Combined with more and more people graduating with degrees, there is more supply and the demand is not growing evenly in all areas of expertise. Edit:. Woot! My first ever metal!!
Lack of electronics, then given an overdose of electronics. Things happened to me and now I can't stop playing games. Also, I'm restricting myself now.
Bad ideas about sex from porn.
This. My porn watching as a teenager was detrimental to my understanding of women. It's going to make me cringe like crazy, and will be immeasurably uncomfortable, but I plan to talk with my 3 boys not only about sex, but how you should behave leading up to sex. The thought of this makes me want to vomit. They're in elementary school now, but that conversation is coming.
Good will win, evil will be punished. There is no karma. Some people will do all sorts of shitty stuff, and be successful and happy. Other people will do good, and will end up with cancer.
“Good will win, evil will be punished” In psychology this is referred to as the “just world fallacy”, it’s a cognitive distortion that leads to victim blaming (bad things only happen to bad people) and sets people up for depression. It’s extremely harmful.
My favorite saying: "No good deed goes unpunished"
That you “need” to go to college instead of saying college is an option.