Thanks for this cathartic article. I grapple with this everyday. How do I raise my kid to be optimistic when I'm so cynical about what's to come? It doesn't feel fair to him. And yet, lying to him about the future doesn't feel honest. I guess this is the price we have to pay for bringing kids into the world right now. On the other hand, there are so many advantages to being alive right now in this time and place (I mean, it couldn't have been fun being a parent when you knew your village could be burned to the ground at any moment by barbaric invaders, right?). I'm just doing the best I can to raise a good, community-focused human. I definitely want him to wipe his own ass (happened naturally...around 8, like your friend!) but also, if he asks for an extra cookie at dessert, I'm mostly like, "eh, why they hell not?"
One thing I've always let guide me in my parenting is, am I being real with my kids, or artificial? I don't know if my approach is best or not, but I do know when I'm exerting extraordinary effort to accommodate them, or when I'm tuning them out to an absurd degree, and I generally try not to do either of those. I will say that I'm often surprised by other people's parenting, in that it seems to both accommodate kids' minor whims more than seems healthy, and also to tune the same kids out with TV more than seems healthy.
Punch Butt is deeply hilarious. Lord. I appreciate this meditation a lot because while it's glaringly obvious that the most urgent work the world needs right now is certainly NOT the minutiae of middle class American parenting, that minutiae is the one unavoidable fact of our daily lives. I double appreciate your relating this question to class because I'm pretty sure middle and upper class comfort/materialism is one of the core *psychological* barriers to healing the earth. Like, when asked, everyone's like, yeah, totally, stop global warming. But if you showed them their wishlist, which items would they drop to do so? Airplane travel? Eating beef? Repurposing the time it takes to renovate a kitchen to advocate and petition? (My kids keep a running wish list and I'm thinking about the world in terms of adult wish lists at the moment - it's my paradigm of the week - hence that kinda weird word in there.)
I'm always so happy when your articles land in my inbox. Not related to this (awesome punch butt) post, but I came across this webinar and thought of you - https://continuingstudies.stanford.edu/discover-stanford-for-you. It's about inequality and educational access in the Bay Area.
Thanks for this cathartic article. I grapple with this everyday. How do I raise my kid to be optimistic when I'm so cynical about what's to come? It doesn't feel fair to him. And yet, lying to him about the future doesn't feel honest. I guess this is the price we have to pay for bringing kids into the world right now. On the other hand, there are so many advantages to being alive right now in this time and place (I mean, it couldn't have been fun being a parent when you knew your village could be burned to the ground at any moment by barbaric invaders, right?). I'm just doing the best I can to raise a good, community-focused human. I definitely want him to wipe his own ass (happened naturally...around 8, like your friend!) but also, if he asks for an extra cookie at dessert, I'm mostly like, "eh, why they hell not?"
One thing I've always let guide me in my parenting is, am I being real with my kids, or artificial? I don't know if my approach is best or not, but I do know when I'm exerting extraordinary effort to accommodate them, or when I'm tuning them out to an absurd degree, and I generally try not to do either of those. I will say that I'm often surprised by other people's parenting, in that it seems to both accommodate kids' minor whims more than seems healthy, and also to tune the same kids out with TV more than seems healthy.
Punch Butt is deeply hilarious. Lord. I appreciate this meditation a lot because while it's glaringly obvious that the most urgent work the world needs right now is certainly NOT the minutiae of middle class American parenting, that minutiae is the one unavoidable fact of our daily lives. I double appreciate your relating this question to class because I'm pretty sure middle and upper class comfort/materialism is one of the core *psychological* barriers to healing the earth. Like, when asked, everyone's like, yeah, totally, stop global warming. But if you showed them their wishlist, which items would they drop to do so? Airplane travel? Eating beef? Repurposing the time it takes to renovate a kitchen to advocate and petition? (My kids keep a running wish list and I'm thinking about the world in terms of adult wish lists at the moment - it's my paradigm of the week - hence that kinda weird word in there.)
Thank you for making my Thursday night bearable. Oh my god. Punch butt.. yeah. Keep up the inspiration.
I'm always so happy when your articles land in my inbox. Not related to this (awesome punch butt) post, but I came across this webinar and thought of you - https://continuingstudies.stanford.edu/discover-stanford-for-you. It's about inequality and educational access in the Bay Area.