Podcast E82: 10 Mistakes You May Be Making As Parents.

I know, I know. This is not the right place for this post, people don't come on here for parenting advice (bla, bla) but I can't help but talk about everything in the world and in my life? And I swear it's only until I find an appropriate outlet for my parenting discourse. Until then, sorry, you're it. I've been doing this "10 mistakes" series as a podcast and I've gone really wide with it, so I did one on Ten Mistakes You Are Making As A Parent. The podcast audio is up there but I thought I'd also do a list of my points so there is something to read as well, that went well last time.

So, here they are, the 10 mistakes you may be making as a parent.

1. Always enforcing your will under the guise of "safety." Obviously, we do things to keep our kids safe, but sometimes, we also just want them to do what we want (for other reasons, and sometimes because those things scare *us*) and we present our will as the only *safe* option, creating fears that aren't authentic to the child or informing their relationship with fear/safety without realising it.

2. Spending a lot more time on developing your ideology as a parent than you do with the child. It's all got its merits, right? Permissive parenting, gentle parenting, child-led parenting but you can't just let books and vlogs tell you what kind of parent you should be, a good chunk of parenting is *responsive* and highly contingent on what the kid requires. You don't know and cannot decide what prototype of parent you want to be, because all kids require different things, but also, the same kid requires different styles of parenting at different times. Rigid principles are often detrimental to the process.

3. Parenting by "mood". Are you a permissive parent when in a good mood but really strict when you're having a bad day? Are your kids having to decide how to behave by predicting and catering to the state of mind in which you are? That is not always great. It's one thing to raise children to be empathetic (ie: don't be loud when you know someone in your vicinity has a headache), it's another to raise them to be hyper-vigilant (ie: diminish your personhood so as to not set off a volatile person thereby ruining your ability to be relaxed and peaceful).

4. Calling disrespect whenever you don't like the child's point of view or what they want to do. Parents can be kinda touchy, huh? And tone policing really hasn't gone anywhere, but often we just want our kids to accept that we are right, without arguing, just because we are the parent, but in that we don't realise that a system of acknowledging their opinions and ideas helps them become people who are more likely to accept the opinions of others. People who consider more options without attaching security to a singular belief system. In parenting a young teenager, the number one lesson that I have learnt is that the words "*that's a great point you make*" go such a long way in validating their personhood and ensuring they continue to *want* to communicate with you. Sometimes it doesn't matter that you could logically defeat their argument, it matters that they are attempting to use their muscles of reasoning. They just want their opinion to matter as much as yours, and *it does*.

5. When talking to kids about sex, their bodies and sexuality, we make it *one* conversation for which there is a *right* time and it is decidedly a *big deal*. I think it's many conversations, through every stage of development and it's about as big a deal as teaching them about anything else in the world, so yes, it is a big deal but it doesn't have to be presented as monumental.

6. Viewing our children as *perfect* or *little angels* which makes it impossible for us to digest when they do *very normal* child-things that are less than palatable to our adult morality and sensibilities. A lot of people choose to be delusional about the behaviour of their kids and it is damaging to the kids, it's not about taking punitive action against bad behaviour, it starts with not creating *perfect* versions of our kids in our heads, so as to be able to handle their very natural moral and social development which will come with different kinds of hiccups.

7. Parenting, very specifically, to not be a certain type of parent, usually, exactly the kind your parent(s) might have been. You know that thing where people tell you, "My mother *always* made me finish every last bite of food on my plate, so I never do that to my kid," and then they believe that not doing that is the definition of being a good parent. Yeah, no. First of all, you're still using the shitty thing your parents did as a control for your parenting, and secondly, your experience as a child of your parents may not dictate exactly what your child needs (from you).

8. Seeking to or presenting as always having the answers and always knowing everything and failing to ever demonstrate that you also need time to figure things out and there is stuff you do not know (and are opening to learning about). You remember the disillusionment of the moment when you realised your parents weren't all-knowing geniuses? Well, maybe they shouldn't have made you feel that they were anyway.

9. Always teaching morality over manners or civic responsibility. When we teach kids that them being so special *to us* means they don't have to cater to the rights and boundaries of others, we end up with entitled adults. Instead of our personal morality (which kids will learn more from observation anyway), it's nice to teach them not to cut people off mid-sentence, to offer water to someone who looks tired and thank anyone who helps you.

10. The idea that the "paternal unit" must always put up a united front or agree on everything. This one is complicated and explained in detail on the podcast, but really, the basis is that there shouldn't be *fronts* because these relationships are not adversarial and so long as a situation can have multiple viable options, we can all present our own points-of-view and come to an agreement. It's harder when you develop the permissive/strict parent dynamic, where one is more *pliable* than the other, but that's an *environment* problem and essentially, if you exist within a poor communicative environment, no good advice can work and no healthy practise can be fostered.

(I lied, there were more than 10 points).

11. Everything doesn't have to be a lesson. Everything you do with your kids, every activity you plan, every evening you spend together, everything "special" you undertake does not have to play out like a fable. It's okay to just have fun for the sake of fun.

12. You take your *rights* as a parent (both positional and legal) so seriously you end up undermining the autonomy of your child. This happens a lot more in separated custodial/non-custodial co-parents, but can happen in the smallest ways with any parent.

13. And finally, of course, you want to teach them to be responsible adults, but you refuse to let them grow up. Growing up is a process and it does not happen overnight, and you have to go through it with the kid, even when it is hard. Your fear of something is not always a good enough reason not to allow/support it. You will never succeed at keeping your child 100% safe, you can't even do that for yourself, but it is possible to recognise that even though you may never stop wanting to *protect* your child, at a certain point, your protection may be received as control, because they do not have the same measure of the credibility of *your* fears as you do. Children grow up, and we must learn to manage our fears about it, instead of stifling them (by which I obviously also don't mean make a ten-year old in-charge of dinner 4 times a

week).

That's all!

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