fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6072 ]

[ SECRET POST #6072 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6072 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Jojo's Bizarre Adventure]

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[Futurama]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 30 secrets from Secret Submission Post #868.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
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Some friends of a friend of mine had a baby, and they already have a slightly older kid. Apparently they keep asking the older kid if she loves the baby and coaching her to say yes. They also spend a lot of time telling the older kid to kiss and hug the baby. I think this is probably not a real good idea to force the kid to act affectionate but I kept my mouth shut. Am I wrong?

How old is the other kid?

The parents should not be doing that, but I don't think you're wrong to keep your mouth shut. Trying to talk to them about it, even gently, is likely to just make them defensive and double down harder on coaching their kid to do what they want.

Eh. If the kid is younger than 3, it is normal. You have to teach kids that age how to be gentle and nice to other creatures. Especially ones smaller than them.

DA but yup. This totally depends on the age of the older kid. They could probably lay off a bit but there is nothing inherently wrong with it within certain situations.

dda and this. Kids that little don't understand the concept of being gentle yet and need to be taught not to do things like pull the cat's tail for the simple reason that they don't understand that that hurts.

That's a totally different thing from teaching a kid to kiss and hug a baby. If OP had said the parents were teaching her how to do it, like if she were in the habit of coming up to the baby and violently hugging it and the parents were coaching her to do it more gently, that would be fine. What OP made it sound like was that the parents were making the child make physical contact with the baby without caring whether she wants to or not.

We read the same post but came away with totally different takes on what OP was making it sound like. Shining a light on the difficulty of text based communication.

OP here. They were making the kid (who I think is about 4) kiss and hug the baby whether she felt like it or not. They also were encouraging other adults who weren't family members to tell the kid to do this. I think this is messed up.

Are you around kids much? The baby is new. You sometimes have to force kids to interact with others. Especially a new sibling that the child may be feeling jealous or even scared of. If you don't force those interactions, they may not have any contact at all.

Forced contact is not going to make jealousy or fear go away. it may make it worse.

I can guarantee that you don't spend a ton of time around kids. Kids are not little adults.

Please tell us more about your real life firsthand successes with forcing children to do things they don't want to do, and how this is soooooo much better than trying to create a positive, non-coerced environment for them to adjust to big life changes.

DA

(Anonymous) - 2023-08-22 02:28 (UTC) - Expand

Re: DA

(Anonymous) - 2023-08-22 03:03 (UTC) - Expand

Re: DA

(Anonymous) - 2023-08-22 03:24 (UTC) - Expand

Please don't have kids.

Please don't have children. Please stop interacting with children. Fuck is wrong with you

100% wrong and likely to achieve the opposite goal. Parents can be really dumb sometimes, my sympathies to the older kid.

Wanna bet how little this is going to effect the kid? Sometimes I forget how extreme everyone on the internet thinks. Real, "delete Facebook, hit the gym, consult a lawyer" vibes in here.

It's basically impossible to predict how shit affects kids

But also this is still fucking weird and bad

You only think it won't affect her because people rarely realize how strongly certain childhood experiences relate to the way they are as adults.

You seem weirdly invested in forcing children to be physically affectionate with people even if they don't want to be. What's the big achievement in doing it by force rather than encouraging it to happen at the child's own pace and development?

Re: Vent thread

(Anonymous) - 2023-08-22 03:54 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Vent thread

(Anonymous) - 2023-08-22 04:00 (UTC) - Expand

Teaching someone to be gentle and nice isn't the same thing as insisting that they hug and kiss a baby, or insisting that they say they love the baby, though. The "gentle and nice" part comes when a child naturally, on their own, wishes to interact affectionately with the baby but doesn't quite understand how.

You're not wrong. I think it comes from good intentions, i.e. wanting the older child to love and accept the new baby. But that can't be forced, and it's frankly weird to me how many parents just do NOT understand that at all. Insisting on it won't make it happen, it'll just increase the chances of pushback because the older kid isn't stupid. Even if they can't articulate what they dislike about it, kids don't like being pushed and prodded to feel positively about something they don't actually feel positively about.

The cynical part of me says that the reason parents do this is that they stubbornly and selfishly believe it'll be easier to magically create a good sibling relationship instead of doing it the hard way, which is to make sure your older kid(s) still feel loved, valued and have an appropriate amount of parental attention and nurturing even though there's a new baby in the house. NGL, that's hard. But you know, you chose to have more than one kid, so get on it.

Yeaaah, you probably can't do anything. You can try asking why they are doing it without sounding too judgy. Maybe it can strike conversation that will help them realize this shit is super weird. But other than this? Dunno

TBH One of the hardest things as an adult is not saying anything to the ways people parent their children.

Especially when I was/am going through some childhood/family trauma.

My approach is to have a respectful and encouraging interaction with the kids in my life (sibling's kids, friends' kids, etc). Let them know their boundaries and opinions matter too.

MM I feel you. And having seen all the arguing over the whole thing... like.

Being forced to hug and kiss the baby at age four is not the thing that's going to ruin the kid's life, that part is true-- it's NOT going to foster the close sibling relationship they want, but it's not like this *one* thing is going to wreck that relationship, either. It's NOT a relationship, though, and it won't be until baby is old enough to be interesting to a four year old, and that's pretty normal. Some four year olds love a baby and are interested in a baby and will grab a doll and mimic how mom and dad care for baby, some four year olds could not care LESS until their sibling is big enough to actually play with.

The real problem is that if they are comfortable with forcing their older daughter to hug and kiss baby, and comfortable *getting outsiders to do the same*, that's a precedent for what they think of their child's autonomy, and that CAN lead to things that will hurt her! And if they think they can bully their way through the bonding at *this* phase, rather than putting in the work to make their kid feel like she matters, then the odds are they will continue to make the wrong moves during phases that ARE going to have more lasting/serious consequences.

But, of course, they're never going to listen to a non-parent about it, and probably not ready to listen to other parents, either. Which makes it hard to stop the behavior now when it's the kind of thing the kid won't remember later in life.

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