Friday Finds, XXII
It's been a very, very long time since I last had a Friday Finds update. I hope some of these links I share are worth people's time.
There’s a Better Way to Parent: Less Yelling, Less Praise (The Atlantic)
One of the craziest things we do is praise children constantly. When I was first working on the book, I recorded myself to see how frequently I praised my little girl, Rosy, and I noticed that I would exaggeratedly react to even her smallest accomplishments, like drawing a flower or writing a letter, with a comment like “Good job!” or “Wow! What a beautiful flower!”
It’s hard to cut back on praise, because it’s so baked in, but later on, I decided to try. It’s not that there’s no feedback, but it’s much gentler feedback—parents will smile or nod if a child is doing something they want. I started doing that, and Rosy’s behavior really improved. A lot of the attention-seeking behavior went away.
Not to suggest wholly prescribed inevitability, but I do believe how we were raised by our parents has an outsized influence in who we become as adults. I hope I don't fuck it up.
Some honest reflections on parenting, from the morning quiet (Twitter)
Your kids are not you. You share genes and points of reference and maybe even ancestral belief patterns and trauma, but they are not you. You will never fully know them, but that’s OK. Kids are allowed their own mysteries, just as us parents should have ours.
And yet, here is an equally comforting and nerve-wracking statement from a tweet thread I came across.
Reddit is an interesting place. While some corners of Reddit are disgusting, crude, and downright dangerous to society, most subreddits range from fun, weird, thoughtful, to highly informative and helpful. Except the occasional witch-hunting and brigading that lead random redditors to digitally mob and identify wrong suspects in domestic terror attacks.
I've said before that seeking and receiving wisdom from random strangers on social media is, at best, mildly valuable, and, at worst, extremely dangerous. And yet, I will completely contradict myself here by sharing two subreddits that I frequent all the time and look to for crowd-sourcing information when it comes to expecting and raising an infant.
BabyBumps is a subreddit for expecting parents. I can't tell you how many times Amy and I wondered something, and the first thing I did was search in this subreddit to see if anyone here has discussed it. Some worries or concerns we had were allayed by the fact that we'd see many other posts asking or saying the same thing.
BeyondTheBump is a subreddit for, you guessed it, parents post-partum. While I've not yet frequented this subreddit, you better believe I will when the little one's born and all up in upending our lives.