I recently came across a blog for parents where the author was talking about an educational tool and giving it a review. She lost my trust as soon as she said in her first line that the product made her want to throw up and then used some kind of sexual innuendo to talk about the harmless thing. Read more https://kabku.com/.
I wanted to know what kind of person would respond so strangely and over the top to something so simple.
Reading her story and some of her personal blog posts, I found out that she had a very sad childhood, full of sexual abuse and being left by her parents. This makes her very sad. The non-physical discipline method she was criticizing seems to have brought back feelings from her youth of fear, abuse, and being left alone. As I read her words, I wondered if the pain from her youth was affecting how she raised her children.
As parents, we need to be aware of the mental baggage we bring from our own childhoods into the lives of our children. Divorce, abuse, bullying, being left alone or neglected, and the many other bad things that can happen to kids often follow them into adulthood and can have a big impact on how adults raise their kids. Childhood is hard enough without having to deal with the pain, anger, and frustration of one's parents.
Parents don't want what happened when their kids were young to change what they do as adults. It's normal for feelings to "come up" when we spend time with our kids. Parenting is much harder and more stressful than people say. Parents should try to look at situations calmly and logically and react in the right way. It's not always smart or helpful to make parenting choices on the spot based on how you feel.
In his book The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, Steven Covey says:
We have the freedom to choose between stimulus and response.
We are self-aware, creative, moral, and have our own free will. Responsibility means being able to choose how to act. People who are very bold know that they have to do that. They don't say that their actions are caused by their situations, conditions, or upbringing. Their behavior comes from the choices they make based on their values, not from how they feel or what they have to deal with.
Keeping this in mind, the responsible parent lets the feeling come up (frustration, anger, stress, sadness, etc.), takes a moment to decide what to do, and then does what is right, not what she or he feels. Kids are sweet, innocent, and easy to influence, so when they act like kids, adults should act like adults.
The mom blogger above lost her credibility as an expert on how to be a good parent because unresolved problems from her past made her act irrationally. If she had spewed venom at, say, a child murderer, it would have been perfectly reasonable, but when she did it to a simple product, it was weirdly out of scale. One can only hope that she doesn't get as angry when she has to deal with parenting problems that make her feel the same way.
Parents who haven't dealt with problems from their own childhoods should do something about them. Working through hard feelings with a trained professional can give them the freedom to make decisions that make sense. Their defensiveness can be replaced by responses and choices that are well-thought-out and grown-up. A well-thought-out response is much better for both the parent and the kid.
During youth, everyone gets hurt and feels let down. If the bad things that happened to you as a child are going to hurt your kids, it's best to deal with the pain. When a parent realizes that a painful past is affecting how they make decisions and then gets help to deal with those problems, they don't pass on the pain they are feeling to their own children. Kids need to be raised in a good way and be guided by an adult who is wise, caring, and not stuck in the past.
Elena Neitlich helped start Moms on Edge, LLC and is now its CEO. Moms on Edge, LLC creates, makes, and sells products for kids' behavior. The goal of Moms on Edge is to make things that encourage peace, quiet, and good behavior. Elena is happy to be the mother of Noah, age 5, and Seth, age 2. She wants to bring up really good people.