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[–]emptiedriver 16 insightful - 1 fun16 insightful - 0 fun17 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Even just the idea that the parent is taking seriously allowing a child to change their name to "Star" seems silly to me. Like, even if it were a daughter who was named Susan but wanted to become "Star" from now on, it seems like that's fine if you want to let her tell her friends to call her by a new nickname or whatever, but to officially ask the school and correct other parents and take seriously the idea of renaming your child "Star" ..?

I dunno, not that that's a big deal, but somehow it just accentuates the childishness of the whole thing to me. Just let the kid play around and if they want to have their friends use a nickname fine. But at this age, it's just bath time and personalities - if the kid wants to be "girly" fine, but what makes him a girl? Maybe it's not important now, but not worth causing confusion over.

[–]lefterfield 19 insightful - 1 fun19 insightful - 0 fun20 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I understand what you're saying. It gives children way too much power over adult choices and the actions of those around them. Kinda reminds me of back when I used to work in a daycare - one day a dad brought his sniffling three year old in. She was wearing two mismatched LEFT shoes because, in his words "it's what she wanted to wear." I rolled my eyes a bit, waited till he left, and put two matching shoes on her that were appropriate for playing(the mismatched ones weren't). Yes, she threw a fit, but when I didn't react, she forgot about it a couple minutes later... like kids do. The trans stuff seems to be giving parents the same sort of opt-out option for actual parenting. Children don't know really know what they want, and far too often what they claim to want is dangerous or otherwise harmful. That's why adults should be, y'know, adults.

[–]Feather[S] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

You probably should have let her wear the wrong shoes. Wearing the wrong shoes is uncomfortable. You denied her the minor suffering of wearing wrong shoes.

It's the same thing as why parents should advise kids not to play in the snow in a t-shirt but then let their kids do it anyway if their kids insist; their kids need to learn through literal physical experience that sometimes the results of their choices feel bad.

You make the kid wear a coat and they learn that parents make kids wear coats. You go, "Okay, if you insist on not wearing a coat, go ahead," and they learn that they were wrong to ignore you because they feel horrible and cold. One of the most important aspects of parenting in the younger years is letting them learn that ignoring your advice leads to results that feel bad.

It leads them to trust your judgment later on, since they have an entire library of memories about how it was a mistake to ignore your advice.

[–]lefterfield 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

That's a different philosophy on parenting, and while I don't disagree with it in theory, in some cases it's better to just tell the child what they need to do at that time. My other concern about the shoes was that they were very sparkly and the sort of thing that leads to other children being jealous and wanting special treatment too - I didn't need to deal with that from 10 toddlers. When it's just one it's easier to let them make bad choices.

[–]Feather[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I hadn't thought of that point about one kid vs a bunch of kids. Makes sense.