Your children are young and thus have had a very limited time to gain knowledge of language and of the world and are thus incredibly inarticulate with respect to you.
I’m actually quite lucky here, in that I happened to have two kids who are very articulate. They’re really very good at explaining why they want to do things.
Because they are so inarticulate it is easy to default to a patronizing response when they ask for help. When Lily adamantly desires a haircut, perhaps consider why rather than discarding it as the nonsensical whims of a child.
I’m confused why you’re saying this? As I wrote in the post, when she wanted a haircut I didn’t stop her, because it’s her hair. Letting kids do what they want, as long as they’re not going to get hurt, do something they’d really regret, or cause problems for others, works well here. They don’t have to convince you why they should be allowed to do the thing if the default is “yes”.
We wear shoes so our feet can’t sense what is below us, we have homes where we decide the temperature so we’re never too hot or too cold
I think I disagree there. Letting kids do things where they might scrape their knees is important, but if we could magically have knees that were more resistant to abrasions that would be a good thing!
your daughter falling and hurting herself may be a positive in the long run
Again I disagree; I think she was much to young to get anything out of it. And even if it had happened today instead of years ago I still would think it wouldn’t have been worth it.
That said, your daughter falling and hurting herself may be a positive in the long run.
I am also of the opinion that we should let our kids take some real risks (at least those without long-term health consequences). And risk here meaning that some of these risks do lead to getting hurt. getting bruises or even broken arms or teeth. This way the kids can calibrate how dangerous (or not dangerous) the world really is. This way, when they grow up, they will a) have more options to choose from and b) avoid options dangerous options they didn’t know were dangerous.
My go-to-example is a toddler who jumped out of his high-stool head-first because he genuinely didn’t know that was a bad idea. My boys knew that certain heights are bad ideas because from early on when they were crawling toward the edge of our bed we would let them ‘fall’ down, i.e. let them slide down head-first and just make sure they would land just gently enough (by holding their leg) that they would learn “this is uncomfortable and probably not a good idea this way”.
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I’m actually quite lucky here, in that I happened to have two kids who are very articulate. They’re really very good at explaining why they want to do things.
I’m confused why you’re saying this? As I wrote in the post, when she wanted a haircut I didn’t stop her, because it’s her hair. Letting kids do what they want, as long as they’re not going to get hurt, do something they’d really regret, or cause problems for others, works well here. They don’t have to convince you why they should be allowed to do the thing if the default is “yes”.
https://www.jefftk.com/p/still-barefoot and https://www.jefftk.com/p/how-we-cool-our-house, but point taken ;)
I think I disagree there. Letting kids do things where they might scrape their knees is important, but if we could magically have knees that were more resistant to abrasions that would be a good thing!
Again I disagree; I think she was much to young to get anything out of it. And even if it had happened today instead of years ago I still would think it wouldn’t have been worth it.
I am also of the opinion that we should let our kids take some real risks (at least those without long-term health consequences). And risk here meaning that some of these risks do lead to getting hurt. getting bruises or even broken arms or teeth. This way the kids can calibrate how dangerous (or not dangerous) the world really is. This way, when they grow up, they will a) have more options to choose from and b) avoid options dangerous options they didn’t know were dangerous.
My go-to-example is a toddler who jumped out of his high-stool head-first because he genuinely didn’t know that was a bad idea. My boys knew that certain heights are bad ideas because from early on when they were crawling toward the edge of our bed we would let them ‘fall’ down, i.e. let them slide down head-first and just make sure they would land just gently enough (by holding their leg) that they would learn “this is uncomfortable and probably not a good idea this way”.