I’m probably going to get angry emails and comments, but I thought you should know your kid isn’t really special. Well, I know to you they are, and that’s fine, as long as you understand children are not miracles, and actually pretty common (look around they’re everywhere!), so please stop treating your offspring like some fragile, unique unicorn that needs to be coddled, insulated from the world, and allowed to do whatever they darn well please.
Basically, I’m saying it’s OK to actually parent your child once in a while… they won’t break, I promise.
I’m not trying to be controversial or troll people, honestly, but rather I’m reacting to some things I’ve experienced over the past few weeks. For instance, there was the four-year-old child standing outside in the common area behind my townhome shrieking for about 45 minutes. I looked out my window, thinking there was a possessed orangutan that had escaped from some nearby Satanic zoo, but instead it was an angelic-looking kid making that ungodly sound. There wasn’t a parent in sight, only other kids (presumably siblings) running around helter-skelter.
Sure, the area behind our homes is pretty safe for kids (which is why we bought there originally); however, in my opinion a parent still needs to be supervising their youngsters, in case they need to say something like, “Please use your words,” or “My angel, we’re not supposed to be shrieking like that, it may bother the neighbours,” or as my father would have succinctly put it, “Hey, shut the heck up!”
But it seems we exist at a time where parents think their special unicorns shouldn’t have to be stifled in their creativity, their exploration or their desire to express themselves by screaming non-stop. There seems to be a fear of disciplining, or maybe it’s an inability to say “no.” Maybe these new parents had super-strict parents. I don’t know, really, but our society seems to be raising kids with an inflated sense of entitlement who seemingly have never been told “no” or been properly disciplined. And it worries me.
So, please, stop your kid from destroying that tree’s branch, and teach them about preserving nature. Give them time-outs if they’re throwing tantrums. Make them understand compassion, empathy, and respecting other people… and then they’ll really be something special and unique in this world.
