Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thread about taking a stroller for a 5 yr old (on a walking-heavy vacation to multiple European cities) made me think about how there are just certain parenting decisions and topics that people are intense about. Like:

- stroller use past a certain age (seems to vary with some people thinking strollers are inappropriate after 2.5, others drawing the line at 4, others at kindergarten)

- age of potty training, people are so heated about this on both sides

- breastfeeding/formula

- daycare v. nanny v. SAHP

What am I missing? I'm a "live and let live" person and don't have strong feelings either way about any of these, and am always taken aback when people are militant about it. Especially when I'll talk to someone who seems fairly chill and then out of nowhere they are like "people who breastfeed past age 1 are engaging in child abuse" or something. I didn't even breastfeed past age 1! But I don't care if others do.

Why are people so intense about these choices? Why so judgmental? It feels like a waste of energy to me.

What's wrong with taking a stroller? A 5yo is likely to get tired after walking for a while.

Anonymous wrote:The thread about taking a stroller for a 5 yr old (on a walking-heavy vacation to multiple European cities) made me think about how there are just certain parenting decisions and topics that people are intense about. Like:

- stroller use past a certain age (seems to vary with some people thinking strollers are inappropriate after 2.5, others drawing the line at 4, others at kindergarten)

- age of potty training, people are so heated about this on both sides

- breastfeeding/formula

- daycare v. nanny v. SAHP

What am I missing? I'm a "live and let live" person and don't have strong feelings either way about any of these, and am always taken aback when people are militant about it. Especially when I'll talk to someone who seems fairly chill and then out of nowhere they are like "people who breastfeed past age 1 are engaging in child abuse" or something. I didn't even breastfeed past age 1! But I don't care if others do.

Why are people so intense about these choices? Why so judgmental? It feels like a waste of energy to me.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"No gifts" on party invites

Party favors

What's wrong with asking for no gifts?

Also, I must say I'm surprised at how civil this thread is especially given that this is one big list of all the controversial parenting topics

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People who keep their children home from school because the kid is tired, because the kid doesn't want to go, because it's an effort, because they like the company, etc.

The kid may enjoy it at the time but sabotaging schooling is bad parenting and bad for the kid later on.

Curious, do many parents do this? I always felt so guilty when I do it. Wasn't sure if this is happening across all socio-demographic and education levels.

I don't think it's common. I will actually let my kid stay home if she's super tired for a specific reason (disrupted sleep) or for a mental health day if she needs it, but I view those as sick days. I would never keep my kid home "for the company" that's weird.

But even my habit of keeping my kid home due to needing sleep (which, to be clear, I might do once in a whole school year, and only because my kid basically didn't sleep at all for some reason -- often I view it as a sign of coming illness because it's unusual) gets lots of pushback and side-eye. Same with a mental health day. To me this is teaching good skills of self-care and I would also use sick leave at work for the same reasons. But my sense is that the overall culture is to push through and get over it. Or to lie and say you're sick, which I think is what many people do in these situations.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People who spend a lot of their spare time doing math enrichment and math summer school and then complain the school math curriculum is "too slow" or not advanced enough for their math genius. If they need all that extra tutoring and time, they aren't that advanced.

So I get that those parents are annoying when they complain, but math education in this country is really slow compared to some other countries. And it translates into U.S. kids not being able to fill the high demand for quantitative jobs. When we recruit for quant positions, 75% of the candidates that pass the initial HR screen did K-12 in a foreign country.

Some parents think that the public school math curriculum is just not age appropriate - they worry that they're wasting their kid's potential by not teaching them early. The only "solution" I really see if to have multiple tracks for math from early on (because some kids struggle with the pace of the school math curriculum) but there are definitely other concerns with that.

We aren't going to have multiple tracks here. The US educational system isn't going to please everyone. People have to take the good with the bad and adapt.

We already do - some kids take algebra 1 in 9th or even later, some in 8th, others in 7th, and a few in 6th or even earlier.
What these parents are really complaining about is that the higher tracks are only available to those with th right combination of luck (how acceleration-friendly is the school), savvy (do you know your school's unadvertised acceleration options), and of course, social capital (are you golfing buddies with the principal? Do you know how to ask for acceleration without making it seem like you're asking for acceleration). All of these are hallmarks of privilege, and none of them are germane to the issue of whether or not a student is qualified for these higher math tracks.

Anonymous wrote:"No gifts" on party invites

Party favors

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Spanking.

+1. Spanking is not always abusive, but most DCUM people will automatically say all hitting is wrong.

I think spanking is always abusive. I believe you should parent your child as you wish them to behave in the world. Under what circumstances do you think it is appropriate for them to deal with a problem by hitting someone? Spanking advocates want to create this weird exception to the general rule that you should not hit other people where it's okay but only if you are an adult and the other person is a child 100% within your care and control. It's so weird. If you hit your kid, for any reason and under any circumstances, you are teaching them that hitting is an appropriate consequence for bad behavior.

I have a kid with special needs that includes not seeing hierarchy. It's problematic. You are pretending that hierarchy isn't real which is silly. And doesn't do your children any favors. They are not small adults, they are children.

So your logic is that because you have power over them, it's okay to hit them as punishment.

If they were small adults, they would not be below you in the hierarchy, and therefore even if they behaved the exact same way, you would not hit them because adults have more agency than children do.

So you believe it's okay to hit someone as long as they are below you in the hierarchy. What is the point of hitting them then? To punish a specific behavior, or to show them who's boss?

It's not spanking. It's everything. A parent teaches a child, through instruction and correction, using reason, praise, bribery, consequences; a colleague does not correct a colleague's table manners or decisions, impose a curfew, require chores. Etc.

This specific conversation is about spanking. I don't know what you are going on about.

Spanking is abuse.

I don't spank, but I was spanked growing up. It only happened 2-3 times in my whole childhood and my parents were always calm, never angry, and gave plenty of warnings before resorting to it. I personally think it did the job and I don't resent my parents at all for it (and I'm not generally hesitant to critique - they made plenty of mistakes along the way, just not that).

There is a vast, vast chasm, IMO, between a light smack on the bottom by a calm adult in response to a serious behavioral incident, vs. things like cigarette burns and beatings.

The harshest thing one can accurately say about spanking is that it is a bit crude (as in, overly simple) and lazy as a technique. And I have observed occasionally that my kid as a toddler would probably have understood not to do certain things much more effectively if she had been spanked in a certain moment, vs. lectured to. (But again, I choose not to spank; it's not my method.)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Spanking.

+1. Spanking is not always abusive, but most DCUM people will automatically say all hitting is wrong.

I think spanking is always abusive. I believe you should parent your child as you wish them to behave in the world. Under what circumstances do you think it is appropriate for them to deal with a problem by hitting someone? Spanking advocates want to create this weird exception to the general rule that you should not hit other people where it's okay but only if you are an adult and the other person is a child 100% within your care and control. It's so weird. If you hit your kid, for any reason and under any circumstances, you are teaching them that hitting is an appropriate consequence for bad behavior.

I have a kid with special needs that includes not seeing hierarchy. It's problematic. You are pretending that hierarchy isn't real which is silly. And doesn't do your children any favors. They are not small adults, they are children.

So your logic is that because you have power over them, it's okay to hit them as punishment.

If they were small adults, they would not be below you in the hierarchy, and therefore even if they behaved the exact same way, you would not hit them because adults have more agency than children do.

So you believe it's okay to hit someone as long as they are below you in the hierarchy. What is the point of hitting them then? To punish a specific behavior, or to show them who's boss?

It's not spanking. It's everything. A parent teaches a child, through instruction and correction, using reason, praise, bribery, consequences; a colleague does not correct a colleague's table manners or decisions, impose a curfew, require chores. Etc.

This specific conversation is about spanking. I don't know what you are going on about.

Spanking is abuse.

I don't spank, but I was spanked growing up. It only happened 2-3 times in my whole childhood and my parents were always calm, never angry, and gave plenty of warnings before resorting to it. I personally think it did the job and I don't resent my parents at all for it (and I'm not generally hesitant to critique - they made plenty of mistakes along the way, just not that).

There is a vast, vast chasm, IMO, between a light smack on the bottom by a calm adult in response to a serious behavioral incident, vs. things like cigarette burns and beatings.

The harshest thing one can accurately say about spanking is that it is a bit crude (as in, overly simple) and lazy as a technique. And I have observed occasionally that my kid as a toddler would probably have understood not to do certain things much more effectively if she had been spanked in a certain moment, vs. lectured to. (But again, I choose not to spank; it's not my method.)

You know, I was spanked in an abusive way (amongst other abusive parenting) and would never be able to live with myself if I hit my child. BUT, I do agree with this PP. Speaking from my experience, a child can tell the difference between hitting/spanking out of anger and frustration, and a rare spanking as a controlled consequence for very specific behavior. I don't think it's necessary or even the best discipline approach, and I think many parents THINK they're in control when they're really not (which is abusive), but I don't think every instance of spanking is necessarily abuse.

I agree with this (and was also spanked in an abusive way) but come to the opposite conclusion -- it is better as a society to simply treat all spanking as abuse and draw hard line, than to try and parse the situations in which spanking might not actually be abusive.

Because my parents absolutely thought they were in control when they were spanking us, even though they were screaming and lashing out and very clearly not in control. The very concept of "spanking" as opposed to "hitting your kid" gave them the cover they needed to convince themselves that what they were doing was normal discipline and not abuse. And I think this is how spanking works most of the time. Giving in to the impulse to hit someone as punishment just triggers too many bad instincts in humans.

The example given by PP where they were spanked a very small number of times in a calm way with warnings is simply not worth risking all the other people who won't do it this way at all. As that PP stated, they don't spank their kids now, which means they've found other ways of disciplining their children that are as effective. There's virtually no evidence that spanking is an effective means of correcting behavior in children, and a lot of evidence that spanking, particularly when it is done in anger and without control (which it often is) has a very detrimental impact on children and on the parent/child relationship.

So even if you feel like there are some instances of spanking that you would not consider abuse, it's crazy for society to say "yes spanking is fine" because most people who engage in it will simply use it as cover for abuse.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Spanking.

+1. Spanking is not always abusive, but most DCUM people will automatically say all hitting is wrong.

I think spanking is always abusive. I believe you should parent your child as you wish them to behave in the world. Under what circumstances do you think it is appropriate for them to deal with a problem by hitting someone? Spanking advocates want to create this weird exception to the general rule that you should not hit other people where it's okay but only if you are an adult and the other person is a child 100% within your care and control. It's so weird. If you hit your kid, for any reason and under any circumstances, you are teaching them that hitting is an appropriate consequence for bad behavior.

I have a kid with special needs that includes not seeing hierarchy. It's problematic. You are pretending that hierarchy isn't real which is silly. And doesn't do your children any favors. They are not small adults, they are children.

So your logic is that because you have power over them, it's okay to hit them as punishment.

If they were small adults, they would not be below you in the hierarchy, and therefore even if they behaved the exact same way, you would not hit them because adults have more agency than children do.

So you believe it's okay to hit someone as long as they are below you in the hierarchy. What is the point of hitting them then? To punish a specific behavior, or to show them who's boss?

It's not spanking. It's everything. A parent teaches a child, through instruction and correction, using reason, praise, bribery, consequences; a colleague does not correct a colleague's table manners or decisions, impose a curfew, require chores. Etc.

This specific conversation is about spanking. I don't know what you are going on about.

Spanking is abuse.

I don't spank, but I was spanked growing up. It only happened 2-3 times in my whole childhood and my parents were always calm, never angry, and gave plenty of warnings before resorting to it. I personally think it did the job and I don't resent my parents at all for it (and I'm not generally hesitant to critique - they made plenty of mistakes along the way, just not that).

There is a vast, vast chasm, IMO, between a light smack on the bottom by a calm adult in response to a serious behavioral incident, vs. things like cigarette burns and beatings.

The harshest thing one can accurately say about spanking is that it is a bit crude (as in, overly simple) and lazy as a technique. And I have observed occasionally that my kid as a toddler would probably have understood not to do certain things much more effectively if she had been spanked in a certain moment, vs. lectured to. (But again, I choose not to spank; it's not my method.)

You know, I was spanked in an abusive way (amongst other abusive parenting) and would never be able to live with myself if I hit my child. BUT, I do agree with this PP. Speaking from my experience, a child can tell the difference between hitting/spanking out of anger and frustration, and a rare spanking as a controlled consequence for very specific behavior. I don't think it's necessary or even the best discipline approach, and I think many parents THINK they're in control when they're really not (which is abusive), but I don't think every instance of spanking is necessarily abuse.

I agree with this (and was also spanked in an abusive way) but come to the opposite conclusion -- it is better as a society to simply treat all spanking as abuse and draw hard line, than to try and parse the situations in which spanking might not actually be abusive.

Because my parents absolutely thought they were in control when they were spanking us, even though they were screaming and lashing out and very clearly not in control. The very concept of "spanking" as opposed to "hitting your kid" gave them the cover they needed to convince themselves that what they were doing was normal discipline and not abuse. And I think this is how spanking works most of the time. Giving in to the impulse to hit someone as punishment just triggers too many bad instincts in humans.

The example given by PP where they were spanked a very small number of times in a calm way with warnings is simply not worth risking all the other people who won't do it this way at all. As that PP stated, they don't spank their kids now, which means they've found other ways of disciplining their children that are as effective. There's virtually no evidence that spanking is an effective means of correcting behavior in children, and a lot of evidence that spanking, particularly when it is done in anger and without control (which it often is) has a very detrimental impact on children and on the parent/child relationship.

So even if you feel like there are some instances of spanking that you would not consider abuse, it's crazy for society to say "yes spanking is fine" because most people who engage in it will simply use it as cover for abuse.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Spanking.

+1. Spanking is not always abusive, but most DCUM people will automatically say all hitting is wrong.

I think spanking is always abusive. I believe you should parent your child as you wish them to behave in the world. Under what circumstances do you think it is appropriate for them to deal with a problem by hitting someone? Spanking advocates want to create this weird exception to the general rule that you should not hit other people where it's okay but only if you are an adult and the other person is a child 100% within your care and control. It's so weird. If you hit your kid, for any reason and under any circumstances, you are teaching them that hitting is an appropriate consequence for bad behavior.

I have a kid with special needs that includes not seeing hierarchy. It's problematic. You are pretending that hierarchy isn't real which is silly. And doesn't do your children any favors. They are not small adults, they are children.

So your logic is that because you have power over them, it's okay to hit them as punishment.

If they were small adults, they would not be below you in the hierarchy, and therefore even if they behaved the exact same way, you would not hit them because adults have more agency than children do.

So you believe it's okay to hit someone as long as they are below you in the hierarchy. What is the point of hitting them then? To punish a specific behavior, or to show them who's boss?

It's not spanking. It's everything. A parent teaches a child, through instruction and correction, using reason, praise, bribery, consequences; a colleague does not correct a colleague's table manners or decisions, impose a curfew, require chores. Etc.

This specific conversation is about spanking. I don't know what you are going on about.

Spanking is abuse.

I don't spank, but I was spanked growing up. It only happened 2-3 times in my whole childhood and my parents were always calm, never angry, and gave plenty of warnings before resorting to it. I personally think it did the job and I don't resent my parents at all for it (and I'm not generally hesitant to critique - they made plenty of mistakes along the way, just not that).

There is a vast, vast chasm, IMO, between a light smack on the bottom by a calm adult in response to a serious behavioral incident, vs. things like cigarette burns and beatings.

The harshest thing one can accurately say about spanking is that it is a bit crude (as in, overly simple) and lazy as a technique. And I have observed occasionally that my kid as a toddler would probably have understood not to do certain things much more effectively if she had been spanked in a certain moment, vs. lectured to. (But again, I choose not to spank; it's not my method.)

You know, I was spanked in an abusive way (amongst other abusive parenting) and would never be able to live with myself if I hit my child. BUT, I do agree with this PP. Speaking from my experience, a child can tell the difference between hitting/spanking out of anger and frustration, and a rare spanking as a controlled consequence for very specific behavior. I don't think it's necessary or even the best discipline approach, and I think many parents THINK they're in control when they're really not (which is abusive), but I don't think every instance of spanking is necessarily abuse.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People who keep their children home from school because the kid is tired, because the kid doesn't want to go, because it's an effort, because they like the company, etc.

The kid may enjoy it at the time but sabotaging schooling is bad parenting and bad for the kid later on.

Curious, do many parents do this? I always felt so guilty when I do it. Wasn't sure if this is happening across all socio-demographic and education levels.

Anonymous wrote:Body and food shaming is one of my big triggers. People do it ALL THE TIME and it's really damaging.

I don't really care what else you do.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People who spend a lot of their spare time doing math enrichment and math summer school and then complain the school math curriculum is "too slow" or not advanced enough for their math genius. If they need all that extra tutoring and time, they aren't that advanced.

So I get that those parents are annoying when they complain, but math education in this country is really slow compared to some other countries. And it translates into U.S. kids not being able to fill the high demand for quantitative jobs. When we recruit for quant positions, 75% of the candidates that pass the initial HR screen did K-12 in a foreign country.

Some parents think that the public school math curriculum is just not age appropriate - they worry that they're wasting their kid's potential by not teaching them early. The only "solution" I really see if to have multiple tracks for math from early on (because some kids struggle with the pace of the school math curriculum) but there are definitely other concerns with that.

We aren't going to have multiple tracks here. The US educational system isn't going to please everyone. People have to take the good with the bad and adapt.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Spanking.

+1. Spanking is not always abusive, but most DCUM people will automatically say all hitting is wrong.

I think spanking is always abusive. I believe you should parent your child as you wish them to behave in the world. Under what circumstances do you think it is appropriate for them to deal with a problem by hitting someone? Spanking advocates want to create this weird exception to the general rule that you should not hit other people where it's okay but only if you are an adult and the other person is a child 100% within your care and control. It's so weird. If you hit your kid, for any reason and under any circumstances, you are teaching them that hitting is an appropriate consequence for bad behavior.

I have a kid with special needs that includes not seeing hierarchy. It's problematic. You are pretending that hierarchy isn't real which is silly. And doesn't do your children any favors. They are not small adults, they are children.

So your logic is that because you have power over them, it's okay to hit them as punishment.

If they were small adults, they would not be below you in the hierarchy, and therefore even if they behaved the exact same way, you would not hit them because adults have more agency than children do.

So you believe it's okay to hit someone as long as they are below you in the hierarchy. What is the point of hitting them then? To punish a specific behavior, or to show them who's boss?

It's not spanking. It's everything. A parent teaches a child, through instruction and correction, using reason, praise, bribery, consequences; a colleague does not correct a colleague's table manners or decisions, impose a curfew, require chores. Etc.

This specific conversation is about spanking. I don't know what you are going on about.

Spanking is abuse.

I don't spank, but I was spanked growing up. It only happened 2-3 times in my whole childhood and my parents were always calm, never angry, and gave plenty of warnings before resorting to it. I personally think it did the job and I don't resent my parents at all for it (and I'm not generally hesitant to critique - they made plenty of mistakes along the way, just not that).

There is a vast, vast chasm, IMO, between a light smack on the bottom by a calm adult in response to a serious behavioral incident, vs. things like cigarette burns and beatings.

The harshest thing one can accurately say about spanking is that it is a bit crude (as in, overly simple) and lazy as a technique. And I have observed occasionally that my kid as a toddler would probably have understood not to do certain things much more effectively if she had been spanked in a certain moment, vs. lectured to. (But again, I choose not to spank; it's not my method.)