Parenting Advice - Tumblr Posts

holding someone to unspoken expectations is premeditated resentment

"skibidi toilet is ruining gen alpha" do none of you people remember asdf. i remember asdf.

Not telling your kid they have a learning disability, chronic illness, mental illness etc. so they can “feel normal” actually does the opposite. They will not feel normal if they do not have the context to understand that their normal will be different from that of their peers.

not mine but had to share...

Been watching a lot of Supernanny lately and I can’t describe how annoying and irresponsible it is for parents to have a bunch of small children and also want to have a heavy job that requires them to be away from the house for long periods of time.

That, in my unprofessional opinion, is the same as buying a puppy then going to vacation in Europe for a summer.

You introduce this giant time commitment into your life that needs a bunch of love and attention and help and coaching, and then completely remove yourself from the situation.

I swear some people shouldn’t be allowed to procreate.

Can I just-

This is how we approach children (mainly toddlers) to avoid tantrums. Setting up an either/or instead of giving them the option to say no (and then have to elaborate on their own) is the number one way to have a smooth conversation where everyone feels like they win.

With toddlers it’s “do you want to eat your Carrots or your Peas first?” Obviously at the end of the day they’re eating both (probably) but more importantly it changed the conversation from “I don’t want to eat my carrots” to “I want to eat my peas first”

This is a really common parenting (& babysitting) technique most commonly called the illusion of choice (ik so original and hard to guess)

But it brings up the really interesting conversation of how many parenting techniques (especially for toddler’s) are great for adult human interactions.

TL,DR: Toddler parenting techniques are great for adult conversations too and I find that fascinating!

probably my most powerful interpersonal communication hack is to, whenever possible, ask either/or questions rather than yes/no questions

for example, when chatting with coworkers, i’ll often ask if they have any fun weekend plans. but let’s be real - we all feel like friendless losers when someone asks that question and we go “uhhhhh… no.” so instead, i phrase it as “so, do you have anything fun planned over the weekend, or are you just going to enjoy having some time to relax?”

phrased like this, there’s rarely any awkwardness. you’ve presented two options & given both equally positive connotations, so your conversational partner has an automatic “out,” so to speak

but it works for higher stakes conversations too!!!! my mom was saying this weekend how she and her neighbor both like walking around the neighborhood & that she wanted to suggest they take a walk together sometime, but was worried about how to approach the conversation

so i said “how about you just say ‘i’ve noticed we both like taking walks! would you be interested in going for one together, or do you use walks for some precious alone time?’”

now Walking Neighbor has an automatic “get out of jail free card” if she wants to say no!!!! which means my mom doesn’t have to worry about the conversation being uncomfortable, because she’s set it up to go smoothly

either/or questions rather than yes/no questions. it is really like magic

To: parents who have no idea about their child

The one thing that bugs me the most about parents is the phrase "I know everything about you." The amount of times I hear that phrase is uncountable. Also the funniest phrase to ever been told to me. It's so funny how parents seem to think they know about their child. Sorry to break it to you, Sir, Madam but their best friend might know better than you. Let me ask you if you think that way toward your children, do you know that your child cry themselves to sleep every night? alone in the dark where no one else knows? Or do you know how many times they were on the verge of giving up? Or that they have depression, anxiety, ADHD and many other more? Yeah that's what I thought. Do you know they cut up their flesh in order to cope? Or that they're emotionally unavailable and is trying hard to stay alive which you thought was laziness. Well let me enlighten you. it isn't. And I also like to bet you don't know they have trauma which was most likely caused by you either. So yeah I would like to sincerely ask you to stop spouting that lie, please and thank you.

from the struggling-to-stay-alive-teenager