26/12/2023
Copied from a friend
"There are no lessons taught when it comes to imposing obedience. Authoritarianism isn't parenting.
I saw a video in which a mom opened a package that her (maybe 8-9 year old) son ordered online without her permission. Apparently, he found a way to circumnavigate buying it under her name and that's how he received it. Of course, she opened the package and found it had a toy airsoft gun inside, which was totally "against the rules," so she decided to replace it with Ramen noodles, reseal it, and give it to the kid.
When she picked him up from school, he got into the car and didn't even look at her (hoodie up, no awareness of her presence) until she said, "You got a package." Immediately, the kid perked up and she handed it to him. He started tearing it open only to find the Ramen noodles. She asked if he got conned and he said, "No, you took it out," and went on to say that his dad said it was okay (when he never did), and complain. The video ended with a message that they hoped the kid "learned his lesson," and I do think that he learned something, which is how to not get caught next time.
It may seem like just a harmless and silly video, but I find it quite disturbing. This kid seriously felt so scared to tell his mom the truth that he became a literal online shopping con artist to get what he wanted. Why would he do that? If he was living in an environment in which he felt safe enough to tell his parents anything, why lie and hide something so big? And, what if he *was* the one to open the package? What then? Would he have known what to do with it and how to use it safely? Would he have used it to threaten people?
When you don't actually communicate with your kids about things they want to know about, you just ensure that they are forced to figure it out on their own, and it often goes badly. This kid's interest in fi****ms is not going to go away just because his mom said no and he got in trouble. He didn't learn a lesson, he just learned how *not* to do it next time.
And why would this kid feel the need to lie? Well, imo it was all in his body language the moment he sat down in that car. He just got out of school and immediately went to ignoring his mom. That's not a kid who feels like he could tell her anything, and it's *her* fault for not establishing a dialogue with him. This was not his first rodeo when it comes to asking his mom for something that interested him and being shot down. There's a reason he didn't feel like he could tell her the truth, and it's the same reason he didn't speak to her when he got into the car.
What if he's being bullied and that's why he bought what he did? What if it's because he has anger issues and he wants to find a healthy way to express them without causing permanent damage to his life? What prompted him to do something so risky in the first place? Because this decision was clearly not born in a vacuum, and I don't think he learned anything from it besides the fact that he needs to do better next time. His mom clearly thought that she won after mocking him, yet I see their entire dynamic as problematic from the get-go.
Imagine that the kid never had to lie to her about it, and she was the one who got it for him. Imagine that she took the time to teach him to use it safely in a controlled environment. Imagine that he had the experience that both made him realize that he could trust his mom *and* get his anger out in a healthy way. Imagine how much better their sense of communication would be if he hadn't been met with hard and fast rules, and instead was allowed to see if such an experience was even right for him to begin with.
Imagine that he didn't even feel the need to express himself in such a way because he had already been truly validated and given better outlets.
I had lots of weapons growing up (being in the middle of nowhere, there wasn't much else to do). From a bow and arrow to ninja stars to knives and yes, even an airsoft gun, I was no stranger to childhood weaponry. It often helped me to get my rage out in safer ways, and was an empowering experience. That being said, my mom was the one who enabled me to do so. She definitely held back on getting me anything too dangerous (no real guns, no spear-tipped arrows, etc.), she made me use protection, she made sure that I had a safe place to play with them (usually outside away from everyone), and she would even enlist my brother in help to teach me how to use them.
My mom never just said "no" without any good reason. She trusted that I was intelligent enough to make my own decisions about what interested me, and she wanted me to be able to experience those things in a safe environment. She didn't have to like the same things as me to respect my interest in them. All she cared about was that I was safe.
I often wonder who I'd be if I hadn't had such an understanding mom. My dad said "no" before even thinking about what I was saying (I could literally just be asking if I could have some chips), but my mom always listened. I think that she knew that if she didn't enable us that we'd just do it the dangerous way anyway, and she never wanted us to make pointless mistakes when we didn't have to.
The same reason that I had such rage issues and needed to vent them is the same reason why she agreed to homeschool me (ie being bullied), and the first step to working through that trauma was being validated and empowered, which my mom did in spades. Eventually, I transferred it into a martial arts education, and I even went on to become the highest-ranked "female" adult student in my kwoon. That never would have happened had I not been enabled to express myself, and that would have never happened if my mom never communicated with me.
Parenting isn't authoritarianism. Parenting is about setting your kid up for the best possible future, and sabotaging them with Ramen noodles and then putting his reaction all over the Internet isn't going to do that. What if she had instead picked him up from school and had a talk with him about *why* he felt the need to go around her to buy a fake weapon? No recording devices, no Ramen noodles, just an honest conversation with a kid who's clearly old enough to be having these issues. Denying that they exist by saying "he's too young" is ridiculous when he was old enough to find a way to sneakily make an online purchase without his mom knowing.
If a kid is old enough to make a mistake, they're old enough to talk about why it happened in the first place. If a parent doesn't allow for that dialogue, then they aren't much of a parent. "
