I was a full-time parent (homemaker) for a lot of years. I always operated as much as possible on the assumption that my kids had a great deal of local knowledge about their life that I would never know and when they were little they were incapable of articulating it but still knew it.
An event that helped cement my commitment to respecting their boundaries as much as possible is where I made my son eat lunch because he wasn't eating and he tended to be skinny and I worried that I would end up charged with neglect for not feeding him enough. About thirty minutes later, he threw up all over my jacket which I actively encouraged to keep it off the cloth truck seat.
After that, I doubled down on trying to make sure there was food available that he liked and that I felt was sufficiently healthy, but I left it up to him to decide to eat.
He likely has two conditions that can each lead to requiring hospitalization to treat aversion to eating by mouth. He's never developed any such issues.
So, unbeknownst to me, I had some serious challenges to deal with. Respecting his boundaries paid off.
Kids like mine frequently end up seriously abused because the parents just keep increasing their attempts to control the kid and force the kid to do as they are told rather than coming at the issue from another angle as I chose to do.
I am on my third parenting blog, still trying to figure out how to talk at folks about such things in a way that is helpful and doesn't sound too accusatory. The intent is to offer options, not criticism per se, for people dealing with challenging children.
You can respect their boundaries while still knowing better than them.
You would stop them running into the road, as an extreme example. Good parents know well enough to communicate with their child, and provide an environment in which they can learn and grow, and also when to intervene because there is danger.
It's overly simplistic to say that parents don't have "know better" as part of the job description.
An event that helped cement my commitment to respecting their boundaries as much as possible is where I made my son eat lunch because he wasn't eating and he tended to be skinny and I worried that I would end up charged with neglect for not feeding him enough. About thirty minutes later, he threw up all over my jacket which I actively encouraged to keep it off the cloth truck seat.
After that, I doubled down on trying to make sure there was food available that he liked and that I felt was sufficiently healthy, but I left it up to him to decide to eat.
He likely has two conditions that can each lead to requiring hospitalization to treat aversion to eating by mouth. He's never developed any such issues.
So, unbeknownst to me, I had some serious challenges to deal with. Respecting his boundaries paid off.
Kids like mine frequently end up seriously abused because the parents just keep increasing their attempts to control the kid and force the kid to do as they are told rather than coming at the issue from another angle as I chose to do.
I am on my third parenting blog, still trying to figure out how to talk at folks about such things in a way that is helpful and doesn't sound too accusatory. The intent is to offer options, not criticism per se, for people dealing with challenging children.