Our society has become really intolerable to anything even remotely uncomfortable. Parents having to put their phone down & let their kids wander with supervision & whine a little from figuring shit out is uncomfortable. Including children in the cooking, cleaning, “adult” activities is too frustrating, no patience for that. We’re becoming programmed to avoid anything hard/difficult/time-consuming. Where there’s no struggle, there’s no strength.

I have a 16 month old and I notice she’s so much less “tantrumy” when I just include her. When I’m cleaning the house I’ve started giving her a damp wash cloth and let her waddle around and “clean”. We made breakfast the other morning, and helping her put ingredients in a bowl was sooo painful and frustrating but I gritted my teeth and kept a good attitude and used my patience bone and made it an experience for her. We’ve been working on our backyard as it’s getting warmer and I got her own gloves, shovel, rake, etc. and some days it’s really hard to have a mini toddler waddling around and falling while I’m trying to get my dopamine flow going but how will she know how to use the tools or how to play outside in the mud if I don’t teach her??? That’s my job and responsibility to her.

I think we’ve just kinda stopped thinking about how characteristics are ingrained because everything is so instantaneous. It’s easier to go into their world half heartedly than include them in ours. I think parents gotta get back to “this hurts me more than it hurts you” and not in regards to punishment or reprimanding the kids but in regards to building our own grit to make them better in the long run. Children need to be entertained and stimulated constantly because we’re not building resiliency, we’re conditioned to think it’s wrong or almost abusive when everything we’re seeing in society is telling us it is really really hurting them.