Query for the day
March 23, 2012
Why are so many parents in such denial about their kids’ behavior? How can they have forgotten what they were like as kids and how their friends and neighbors behaved?
That’s the kid space. It hasn’t changed for the better. Your children occupy it. They are not magically angels just because they are yours.
So somewhere in your mind you should recognize it is possible that your kid would “do that”.
DrugMonkey 
March 23, 2012 at 5:10 am
You’ve been talking to my ex wife again, haven’t you?
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March 23, 2012 at 5:19 am
Children are savages. To expect otherwise is delusional.
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March 23, 2012 at 5:25 am
that bad, huh
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March 23, 2012 at 5:42 am
Exactly PP. “The Lord of the Flies” is a frigging user guide for boys people!!!!
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March 23, 2012 at 6:08 am
Because with their n = 1 they are parenting experts!
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March 23, 2012 at 6:56 am
Depends on what “that” is. Smoking? Getting drunk? Murder? Some things *are* hard to imagine that somebody you love could do, although presumably even serial killers have loved ones.
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March 23, 2012 at 6:56 am
Exactly PP. “The Lord of the Flies” is a frigging user guide for boys people!!!!
Seconded. I have 3 boys of my own, which is enough to keep my home in the state of perpetual disarray. But after the oldest has friends over, the house is virtually upside down. And they are actually nice boys..!
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March 23, 2012 at 7:00 am
Whatever. My kid farts rainbows. If your kids don’t, maybe you don’t have enough Carebear Teaparties with them (ok, technically we have Pooh Bear Teaparties, but the principle holds).
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March 23, 2012 at 7:36 am
You are one of them, Badgie.
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March 23, 2012 at 7:55 am
Yeah, like becca said. *My* kids are practically perfect in every way. And, don’t think that’s just a delusional parent speaking. Everyone thinks so.
(mind you, this is easier to say about the girl than the boy. I do sometimes fear that Orwell was a right about boys. But then, I try to remember the men I know who are quite reasonable dudes — fewer than you might hope — and try to gain some perspective).
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March 23, 2012 at 7:56 am
I told someone that we had successfully raised our daughter because she had a college degree and no unwanted pregnancy or communicable diseases.
They said they were aiming higher than that.
I told them to call me when their kids were in their 20s and see if this wasn’t good enough.
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March 23, 2012 at 8:06 am
Men are not “quite reasonable dudes”. See every war zone in the past 20 yrs…or ever if you like history. The social compact compels them to pretend most of the time but the second it breaks down, “Kill Piggy!!!” reigns.
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March 23, 2012 at 8:07 am
My mother once told me she was proud to raise “taxpayers”.
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March 23, 2012 at 8:09 am
My little nephews are the most awesome, adorable, intelligent, and perfect people in the history of the planet and I will hear no arguments to the contrary!
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March 23, 2012 at 8:12 am
They are nothing more than little subhuman vikings who have yet to gain enough strength and manual dexterity to wield a battle axe. I have high hopes for their axe swinging skills one day.
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March 23, 2012 at 9:17 am
I think it’s because they DO, in fact, remember their childhoods and sincerely believe that they can shield their child from all criticism with denial and outrage. It’s disgusting. No wonder we’re becoming a nation of cheaters and thieves rather than achievers.
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March 23, 2012 at 10:16 am
zb: “mind you, this is easier to say about the girl than the boy.”
Which brings up another point- that kids can get typecast even within a family or neighborhood. My “troublemaker” brother was blamed for my misdeeds on more than one occasion when we were growing up. He even got in bigger trouble once for trying to put the blame on his sweet innocent sister. The idea that I could have been the culprit was inconceivable to adults.
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March 23, 2012 at 12:21 pm
I, however, am full willing to believe you Isabel.
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March 23, 2012 at 2:15 pm
You mean my sweet and innocent facade doesn’t fool you?
Well anyway, I *was* a relatively ‘good’ kid, so there was some logic to it. But nobody’s perfect!
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March 24, 2012 at 4:58 pm
“See every war zone in the past 20 yrs…or ever if you like history.”
Plenty of wars have been started by women. Remember Maggie Thatcher’s little escapade in the Falklands?
And here are some more: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081107192955AAlxioJ
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March 24, 2012 at 6:29 pm
Not talking about “started by”, talking about “horrible fucking atrocities against all that is normally held decent” during the prosecution thereof.
Men have a decided edge.
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March 25, 2012 at 3:51 am
My kid is an angel so long as he gets an hour of mental stimulation and an hour of running around each day.
And that’s objectively true. People comment on it all the time when we’re out in public and he gets little green dots almost every day at school (so far 2 days of yellow dots total, one for rolling off his mat during naptime when the first grade teacher was gone for two weeks and he was bouncing off the walls from lack of mental stimulation) and one for leaving the room without permission (left to go to first grade when he usually does, but forgot to say anything).
Also he’s a boy. No signs of homosexuality yet, despite the abnormally good behavior. He seems to take after his father who is also well-behaved and mellow (and to my knowledge, heterosexual). In fact, from what he says about his class, it’s mainly the girls who are the trouble makers, not the boys. Of course, the girls in his class are also older on average than the boys which may have something to do with it. Though that’s opposite from what everybody says about kids’ behavior and age.
Individual differences are always greater than differences between the genders.
So far he’s only 5, but if he continues to take after his father he will grow into a responsible and upstanding teenager and adult (who will find his true love at age 16 and live happily ever after).
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March 26, 2012 at 9:12 am
N&m:
Although we managed to slip off into one aspect of children’s behavior in the comment thread, I fail to see where this is about “homosexuality”. In fact you highlight a flip side of the discussion coin. Just as I feel parents should consider it *possible* that their child could go Lord of the Flies, it is also the case that they should consider that their kid could be a goody-two-shoes as well. And that this spectrum is not necessarily indicative of abnormality or whatever it is that makes them unable to believe that *their* kid could do/be/want X, Y or Z.
Individual differences are always greater than differences between the genders.
You are incorrect on this but I understand where it is coming from.
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