“Go Right Ahead” Parenting
Have you ever found yourself asking another parent to – well, parent – their kid, and they refused?
Here’s a great article about that “undeparenting” phenomenon, which is as bad – if not worse – than helicopter parenting.
However, too few parents seem to be preparing their children to be successful as human beings. An essential element of this is instilling empathy. The word derives from the German word einfühlung—“feeling into”—and it’s at the root of good manners. It involves caring about how another person is feeling and being motivated to help them feel better, which often requires compromising on your own needs and desires.
The author calls it “go right ahead” mommying, as it indulges the kid’s every whim, regardless of how it might be affecting others around them.
This isn’t about kids who are having legitimate tantrums or meltdown – every parent has experienced that embarrassment when your kid screams bloody murder in a public place while you’re just, I don’t know, trying to buy a pair of shoes. This is, instead, about kids who are behaving rudely and, when asked by strangers to stop, the parent and kid refuse.
It’s ok to demand that your kids act respectfully and to teach them empathy. It helps prevent them from growing up to be assholes.
The topic of parenting has always befuddled me. How do we treat such a fundamentally crucial aspect of life with not much more than a yawn. What if driving was like this? No rules, no traffic signs or road markers. No training, just walk into a dealership, buy a car and they hand you the keys.
There’s so much to this story. Who knows the background, maybe this was a person who doesn’t spend a lot of time with her child. Daycare, babysitters or Grandparents. The last thing you would want to be is a bitch the little alone time there is.
Why don’t we teach parenting skills with as much gusto as we teach math or science? Winging it seems dumb, or worse doing what your parents did to you, Adrian Peterson etal.
It is not just OK to demand that your kids act respectfully and to teach them empathy. It is imperative
http://starter-packs.tumblr.com/post/103018615235/can-i-speak-to-the-manager