“Babies only cry if they are hungry, need changing, or need to be picked up”
Lies
Babies (and small children) also cry for reasons such as:
1. “I am tired and that makes me angry”
2. “I scared myself with a fart”
3. “You are the wrong parent”
4. “I ran into something with my face”
5. “I’m facing the opposite direction then the one I want to”
6. “I fell asleep in one place and woke up somewhere completely different”
7. “I am a very small person in a very big world”
8. “I got scared because YOU farted”
Babies have more then 3 states of being and sometimes you just have to hold them and bounce them gently while saying solemnly “yes it is very hard to be a baby” because frankly it is
you have to remember that when you’re that tiny… pretty much any bad thing that happens to you is LITERALLY the WORST thing that has ever happened in your life. they have no perspective. everything is awful. help them
Earlier today, I served as the “young woman’s voice” in a panel of local experts at a Girl Scouts speaking event. One question for the panel was something to the effect of, “Should parents read their daughter’s texts or monitor her online activity for bad language and inappropriate content?”
I was surprised when the first panelist answered the question as if it were about cyberbullying. The adult audience nodded sagely as she spoke about the importance of protecting children online.
I reached for the microphone next. I said, “As far as reading your child’s texts or logging into their social media profiles, I would say 99.9% of the time, do not do that.”
Looks of total shock answered me. I actually saw heads jerk back in surprise. Even some of my fellow panelists blinked.
Everyone stared as I explained that going behind a child’s back in such a way severs the bond of trust with the parent. When I said, “This is the most effective way to ensure that your child never tells you anything,” it was like I’d delivered a revelation.
It’s easy to talk about the disconnect between the old and the young, but I don’t think I’d ever been so slapped in the face by the reality of it. It was clear that for most of the parents I spoke to, the idea of such actions as a violation had never occurred to them at all.
It alarms me how quickly adults forget that children are people.
Apparently people are rediscovering this post somehow and I think that’s pretty cool! Having experienced similar violations of trust in my youth, this is an important issue to me, so I want to add my personal story:
Around age 13, I tried to express to my mother that I thought I might have clinical depression, and she snapped at me “not to joke about things like that.” I stopped telling my mother when I felt depressed.
Around age 15, I caught my mother reading my diary. She confessed that any time she saw me write in my diary, she would sneak into my room and read it, because I only wrote when I was upset. I stopped keeping a diary.
Around age 18, I had an emotional breakdown while on vacation because I didn’t want to go to college. I ended up seeing a therapist for – surprise surprise – depression.
Around age 21, I spoke on this panel with my mother in the audience, and afterwards I mentioned the diary incident to her with respect to this particular Q&A. Her eyes welled up, and she said, “You know I read those because I was worried you were depressed and going to hurt yourself, right?”
TL;DR: When you invade your child’s privacy, you communicate three things:
You do not respect their rights as an individual.
You do not trust them to navigate problems or seek help on their own.
You probably haven’t been listening to them.
Information about almost every issue that you think you have to snoop for can probably be obtained by communicating with and listening to your child.
Part of me is really excited to see that the original post got 200 notes because holy crap 200 notes, and part of me is really saddened that something so negative has resonated with so many people.
Fun fact: when I was a teenager, my mother accidentally read some graphic smutty fanfiction I had written and left open on the computer.
She immediately told me and apologised … but said that my writing had been so good that she read everything on the page before she could tear her eyes away.
Her honesty and her ability to talk to me about sex as a normal function and not something to be ashamed of was something I really appreciated. My mother has open access to everything I write now (I’m now in my early 30s) and I know it’s because of this early incident and how much it increased my trust in her.
She never went behind my back, she never lied to me about it – she was honest and truthful, and that meant a lot.
To be honest.. if more children were shown from birth that they are loved, cared for, and listened no matter their gender we might not have some of the problems we have now.
While sitting in his high-chair, your baby drops the spoon. You get up, pick it up from the floor, give it back to Baby – only for him to throw it away on purpose.
If this scene sounds familiar to you, you might wonder why he does that. Is he rebellious and tries to upset you on purpose? Does he have a really silly kind of humor? No and no. In fact, your baby is busy conducting his very first scientific experiments. His brain is starting to understand two important concepts.
The first one is called “Cause and Effect”: When i throw away the spoon, mom picks it up. When i do it again, she does it again. Oh, yay!
The second is called “Object permanence”: When i throw away the spoon, it disappears – No, it doesn’t, mom picks it up! It’s still there, even when i can’t see it!
To fully grasp these concepts, your baby needs to repeat those experiments again and again and again. That’s annoying to you – but try to smile at your little scientist!
Kids really are born scientists. Most things that babies and toddlers do are part of how they discover how the world works.
This is how you parent. By trusting your kids and being there for them and not turning thier home into a prison
We had the same thing, except it was a phone message that an estranged uncle had called. Mom would then say that she would call him. Two minutes later she would call back and say that she needed me home. The best part was that if I felt super uncomfortable leaving, I could blame it all on her and be like UGH PARENTS OVERREACTING and save face and get out of there super easy.
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