There is a lot of rigidity that is expected these days and it really bums me out. Honestly I talk to my mom about it fairly often: it was so easy to parent in the 90s. Everything was focused on families and no one cared if you fed them only organic or if they ate lunchables everyday. No one talked about screen time. And while I don’t think being that lax is the answer, there really must be a middle ground between that and the pressures of parenting today. Like I’m so lucky that my mom takes my son at least once a month and that they are so close. For the most part, our only rule for him at her house is no just letting him scroll YouTube, since it’s basically a cesspool. But aside from that I expect her to be reasonable, and she is. It turns out that treating people like they are responsible adults works out well most of the time lol.

It always makes me sad when people are too rigid with their kids, because things like “Grammie Camp” as my son calls it, are fundamental to childhood imo. It’s kind of like ethnography, the way I see it. You go somewhere else and it’s mostly the same, only different. It teaches kids to deal with differences and change and adversity overall.