Reblog It #11: Six Things My Kids Are Allowed to Say to Adults (From The Path Less Taken Blog)

There’s a blog post out there garnering a lot of attention titled 6 Things My Kids Aren’t Allowed to Say to Adults. After seeing it come through my Facebook newsfeed for the 27th time, I finally took a look.  Then I took another look. Then another.  Interestingly, each time I read it (3 times in total), there was another new edit, update, or clarification from the author. Clearly feeling the stress of negative comments, she defended, expanded on, and added specific examples for all of her original points.  She added a disclaimer.  She closed the comments.

As someone who is intimately and painfully familiar with the frustration of feeling like my words are being misconstrued, I am definitely sensitive to this mom’s plight.  Unfortunately, her additions to the post just made me disagree with it all the more, and were actually the impetus I needed to write a response.  Still, it somehow seems important to me to state right from the start that what follows is in response to words, ideas, and concepts… not to one individual person.  I don’t know her, and had never read her blog prior to this one post.

I will list the six specific words/phrases in a minute, but the biggest reason that I disagree (and the overwhelming thought that clung to me as I read) is this:

I’m not interested in raising robots.  My kids are not mine to control, or to train.  They are human beings.  Lovely, perfectly imperfect, unique human beings with their own personalities, their own thoughts, and their own opinions.  I want to recognize and embrace and honor who they are, not who I want them to be.  I want my kids to feel free to say anything to me, to express any emotion to me… and I want them to trust that I’ll always provide a safe space for them to do so.  <Read More>