Journey to a New Life

I was reading another article the other day in one of the baby / parenting magazines that we got. The article was about disciplining your child through teaching it self-discipline. I thought “Ok, let’s check this out”.

So then the article starts talking about how important it is to inform your child when your child is faced with particular decisions in life. With this they meant that you should always explain to your child what their choices consist of and explain the consequences of each one of those decisions. Like that, your child is able to make an informed decision and is empowered to take self-responsibility for the outflow of their actions. I was like “Oh my god, someone’s actually making sense in this magazine, let me continue reading”.
So now that they explained kind of the ‘background’ behind their ‘method’, they go on giving an example of how you should practically implement this point, where you as the parent explain the consequences of the choices your child makes. The event they are using to demonstrate their example is that of your child about to draw on the wall. So here it goes, this is how you can teach your child, common sense reasoning, self-responsibility and empower them – ready? :”If you draw on the wall” (=choice) –> “You will not get cake” (= consequence).

SERIOUSLY???

How is the existence and presence of a piece of cake – physically, intrinsically linked to the physical existence of a wall and the action of drawing on it – that makes it so that the moment you draw on the wall, you can be assured that there won’t be any cake around for you. How the hell does that work? How is that consequence? That’s not consequence, that’s you blackmailing your child and you don’t even have the guts to do it straight out – no, you do it in a way where the child will think that HE is responsible for setting into motion these events by drawing on the wall. That’s so absolutely mean!!!
I mean, explaining consequence to child in terms of the choices they make, should be explaining how if they do A, then B will happen as a direct consequence (and not one you’ve just conjured up to suit yourself), where this consequence is absolute in every way. Because obviously by the time your 20 and you draw on your wall and you put out a piece of cake on the table for yourself, and you draw on that wall and keep your eyes on the cake – you will see that it does not disappear or ‘go away’ in any way whatsoever. That’s because ‘there’s not going to be cake if you draw on the wall’ is not real consequence, it’s just your parents threatening you while upholding the illusion that you ‘have a choice’. Sure, VERY empowering.

And then we get surprised that our children to bad in school and have a hard time developing critical reasoning skills. Well obviously – I mean, if you teach them that ‘1 + 1 = banana’ (yes, that’s right ‘banana’, not even a NUMBER), how do you expect them to get stuff that is actually supposed to make sense? Did you really ‘inform’ your child when you said that ‘he will not get cake if he draws on the wall’? Did the child just learn anything about the consequences of drawing on a wall and what such decision entails within its implications? No! Because all your child knows, is that somehow, by some godly divine power that does not have to make sense – he will not get cake. He doesn’t get to learn for instance, that if you draw on a wall,that that drawing will stay on it , until you clean it up.  So you either have to be okay with the drawing being on the wall forever or you got to clean it up. Then of course you also have to consider the other people living in the house with that particular wall and if they are okay with the drawing staying on their forever, so you gotta check that as well before you decide to draw on the wall, unless you know you’re going to clean it up afterwards.

Consequence would be, where if you don’t feed your pet bunny and give him clean water, that his physical body is going to deteriorate as it cannot support itself and the bunny will die.  That is consequence, that is if A then B and there’s no way around it.

If you tell your child ‘no cake’ if you draw on the wall, you are in NO WAY informing your child or putting them in a ‘power position’. Your child has no freaking clue as to why he for instance should or shouldn’t draw on the wall, and he’s got no freaking clue as to how the cake magically disappears if he would draw on the wall. All you are “informing” your child about – is that it’s in the child’s best interest to ‘not do things my mommy and daddy don’t want me to do', because if I do, they will do something to me that I don’t want them to do’. But did he learn anything about drawing on walls? Nope – nothing.

So now obviously if you’re going to practice this little method over and over again, you get a child that has no common sense reasoning skills because he has been taught to accept absurd claims by his parents, and will thus be ineffective in physical reality because he has never been taught to only stick to principles that make sense like 1 + 1 = 2 and the laws of physics (which does not include cakes disappearing if you draw on a wall). On top of that, you get an obedient future citizen who will not question those in power as your mom and dad have clearly shown you that those in power positions do not have to make sense, all you gotta do is listen and do as is expected of you.

Here’s another good one, in terms of ‘how to grab your child’s attention’ when you want to explain him something: use big words. Use words, that sound big and intelligent and that they don’t understand: works every to get their attention!!!

What the hell, seriously? Play the big smarty ass adult who knows big words that you don’t? Do you know what you’re doing to your child? Do you understand that you’re trying to make them feel like dumb little shits that are inferior to you in every way just to ‘grab their attention’ and ‘make them listen’? Do you understand how this affects how they view themselves and all their future relationships in this world and how this will affect their information processing skills just because you think it’s okay to use BIG WORDS as a fear tactic – where they will forevermore feel inadequate and inferior towards words they don’t understand just because you were actually inadequate as a parent? Where in your inadequacy you resorted to manipulation as threats, black mailing your child and bullying them with big words to get them to behave how you want them to?

These type of articles should NOT be appearing in parenting magazines. This type of manipulative BS under the name of ‘good advice’ should simply be ILLEGAL as this is dangerous shit. I mean, you’re busy creating the future, busy creating the future generations of this world – and what they will know is what you teach them. And if you teach them deception, lies and abusive behaviour – then that is what you will get in return. No wonder that the world is in such a mess today – if after so many centuries of ‘evolution’ this is the parenting advice we come up with.

To get some real perspective, I suggest you rather invest in the Parenting: Perfecting the Human Race Series on EQAFE to get an understanding of how you can best assist and support yourself and your child to become the best possible version of themselves.