Ok guys let me throw a few things out here.
First, I noticed someone comment "I don't have kids so maybe I'm not the best person to comment on this" and well.. I HATE this mentality. All my life growing up my parents told me "you don't understand you don't have kids" and I can't say how many times I have heard other people say "you just don't know what its like having kids"
I'm sorry, but until you've raised children, you haven't learned a lot of lessons that parents learn via mistakes.
We all makes lots of mistakes with our kids, and learn from them (hopefully). Until you have made your share of mistakes, and TRULY understand kids and parenting, then you are running on theory.
Theory just doesn't cut in when it comes to parenting.
To me.. the excuse that someone else doesn't have kids is nothing more than a parents attempt to justify poor parenting. Now.. if the parent were to say, "you are unaware of all the factors of this situation, thus you are unable to make an informed judgment" that would be different. The truth of the matter is in most conflicts, a third party is usually used to negotiate. In this case who better than someone who doesn't have kids and can look across both lines?
Because you have so much to learn when it comes to kids.
It's like having an undergraduate student mediate between a PhD physicist and a High School physics student.
You just don't know enough to get involved.
I am not saying that a 3rd party making random judgments is always best. I most certainly don't look down on people who will even publicly whip their children if the child starts acting up, and I don't make instantaneous judgment over anyone.. However, the truth of the matter is speaking from first hand experience as one of three children. Parents are usually wrong. Hell i can cite more examples growing up of my parents not having any idea what the **** they are talking about.
Every child thinks that parents are usually wrong. Every parent thought that when they were a child. It's often not until we've raised a child of our own that we understand WHY our parents made a lot of the decisions that they did.
The point I'm trying to illustrate with that? when your a parent.. you really are self serving.. you don't care about the details, all you care about is either A. being able to maintain control of your kid or B. at least coming to some point of "equilibrium" for yourself so that your not in a world of constant chaos.
See. Here is a great example of what you need to learn as a parent.
Parenting is far from self-serving. Self-serving would be to let my daughter fail spelling.
It wouldn't be to have arguments where I'm forcing her to study using a new method that might help her do better on her tests.
There is a fine line between "controlling" and "caring". I would like to applaud the user who mentioned having one child who she doesn't snoop around on, and trust and having another child she has to check on constantly. Why? this means as a parent she did more than tell her kids to "stop fighting" if there is a problem. It also means she does in fact trust her kids as far as they let her trust them.
Again, here is where you have so much more to learn. Sometimes there is a fine line between controlling and caring. Sometimes they are the exact same thing. It all depends on the child.
However, this is an issue which I suppose I must comment on. For all the things I dislike my parents for. Telling us to "come talk to us and don't just hit your brother!" then as soon as we do yelling "WHY CAN'T YOU EVER SOLVE ANYTHING ON YOUR ON?"... I received my first cell phone many years ago before they came with camra's and all the bells and whistles. However, my parents have *always* felt that if you were not responsible enough for something, then you do not need whatever it is you have.
I find it amusing how you tell us that your parents were almost always wrong, and then use their thinking as part of yours.
Aside from that, you don't always get the luxury of taking things away from your child because they are likely to do something stupid with it.
If my parents didn't trust me to not speed in my car, they wouldn't put a limiter in my car, they would drop my insurance! If they didn't trust me with a phone, they would take my sim chip and cancel my line.
Drop your insurance? Take your car.
I am not a parent, I do not instantly take the "childrens' side nor do i take the "parents" side on this. All I want to say on this is I am tired of people immediately siding with "parents know whats best" is the social norm. It is not true and is really justification for a lot of stupid crap.
Spoken like a child.
I would be horrified if I had a daughter and nude's of her went viral..
I imagine I would probably feel like total failure as a parent however, I think I would associate the failure with my daughter sending nude pictures of herself in the first place and having her not understand why its a horrible idea and should not be done not in my failure to physically stop her from sending the pictures.
Then you don't understand that number one thing that EVERY parent MUST understand about children:
They will screw up in ever more inventive ways. They will screw up in ways that you never thought of. Why? Because they don't tend to think before they act.
As a parent you are continually striving to get one step ahead of their immaturity. Your child WILL screw up. That's just a law of parenting.
