A week or two ago I was in the car with my 7 year old and she saw one of the few surviving Red Lobsters and asked if we could get cheddar biscuits. Because Red Lobster cheddar biscuits are amazing.
But the problem is that I can't walk into a Red Lobster because if I do that I will stop breathing. It's not a fun spot for the shellfish allergic (Yes, Jamie from my books gets that from me).
So I told her we could, if she would take some cash into the restaurant, wait her turn to talk to the hostess, ask politely, pay, and bring them out to me. She considered this, but she already orders for herself in restaurants, goes up to ask for shop restroom keys herself, etc. She's polite and calm and it's fine. So she decided that this was a manageable stretch, and agreed.
And lo, we had cheddar biscuits and they were awesome.
And I keep thinking about how we did this all the time in the 80s and 90s and then everybody went nuts for stranger danger and true crime podcasts and we just...stopped.
You know what's great about teaching young kids how to do shit like this? No sense of cringe, and if they fuck up they come right back to their parents, and also people give young kids grace if they stumble a bit.
Instead, I'm seeing people to wait till their kids are teenagers to expect them to be able to do things independently. Teenagers! Who are famously terrified of social fuckups, who get no grace from anybody, and who rarely want to go to an adult if things go wrong!
That's utterly backwards!
Not only do we need to trust teens to do more independently, but that starts with letting young kids do things more independently. So they learn early on that trying and failing is ok and they can just try again. So they can learn skills when they're young and shameless.
standard disclaimer not all kids not all families you know the drill please do not be obnoxious pretending I said you piss on the poor.
titsay
pixelskylines
gracieabrams
jimmyeatworldofficial
stormborns
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
gummygunk
