It takes a village to raise a child. This African proverb became even more popular in America after Hillary Rodham Clinton used part of it as the title of her…memoir? Book? Google tells me the latter and that it’s lessons we’ve learned form our childhood. In that case, the lessons I learned from my childhood was to never question the adults or show any kind of emotions because I was not allowed to have them. In addition, I was taught that I was a worthless human being except for when I was doing whatever my parents wanted me to do, usually for their benefits. Oh, also that I was fat and unfit for the human eye, and I would never get a man to marry me. Those were also lessons from my childhood. I’m not sure those are good lessons to learn!
Kids are a touchy subject as is the question of how to raise them. One thing I see in various forums is the battle between parents and people without children. The former is obviously the norm, whereas the latter is seen as the outlier.
As someone without children, I know better than to talk about kids in a negative way. I get confused, though, as to what I can and cannot say about them. The message I hear a lot is that you never ever tell someone else’s kid what to do or a parent how to raise their kid. But, at the same time, you’re supposed to cheerfully help out parents all you can.
Listen. These two things are in opposition to me. If I’m going to help out with someone’s children, then there are some ground rules I am going to set. When my niece was little, I had one rule–don’t break your head. She could repeat it when prompted, and it was the only thing that mattered because everything else could be fixed. When her brothers came along, I had to add new rules such as don’t break each other’s heads. I don’t think there is anything wrong with setting boundaries and limits when you are looking after said kids.
In addition, for whatever reason, I have been in several situations where kids like to kick the chair/seat/booth I’m sitting in. I don’t like it, obviously, and the parents never did anything to stop their kids from doing it. Once was at a baseball game. After ten minutes or so, I turned around and told the kid to knock it off. His parents didn’t say a word, but he cut it out. Second time, it was on a plane and I did the same thing. The third time was in a restaurant and, yes, I did the same thing.
