Alright so I wrote this back in October and it’s taken me this long to pay it. Why? Honestly, I was afraid of the shit talking backlash I’d get from people. Let’s all just go into this with mutual respect and understanding that we all have our own opinions and plans for childrearing, okay? Sweet. Let’s do this.

There’s this bizarre idea in our culture that children don’t have the right to be considered real people. That they shouldn’t get a say in what happens to them and that they don’t have rights over their bodies. I don’t know where that came from but it is so bizarre to me.

Like… No, my kid does not get a say in what time she goes to bed because for her age and developmental stage that is what is appropriate and what has proven for her to be best for her general well-being during the course of the day. However, even in things where she doesn’t get much of a choice, I still give her as much say in it as possible. I take her feelings and thoughts into consideration.

I let her make decisions where I’m able to because if kids aren’t given the chance to learn how to make good decisions then they never figure out how to, and then they start adulthood out with the expectation that they should be able to do these things because they are adults when nobody ever bothered to teach them how.

For example, my daughter had to change occupational therapists a few months ago from the one that she’d been seeing for many many months. Her new OT is good but my daughter just didn’t take to the change and has been very resistant to the therapies since. So much so that not much therapy gets done. After her last appointment she told me that she didn’t want to do OT anymore and I thought about it and was like, “you know, maybe you’re right. Maybe it is time to take a little bit of a break.”

Taking her thoughts, opinions, and considerations into mind instead of just saying, “no this is what’s good for you you’re going to do it whether you like it or not” allowed me to see the situation from her perspective. And from the perspective of her desperately frustrated OT.

Bless you, Autumn.

Our kids are people. We are not raising children, we are raising adults, right? We don’t want them to still be children when they go out into the world, we want them to be healthy in mind, emotion, and body as adults. But if we don’t give them those opportunities, then we fail as parents in our ultimate goal: to raise them to be established adults.

I know this has been a bit of a ramble so thanks for sitting through it with me.

This has been my TED talk.