I think, inadvertently, the person who made this box, and put it on Pinterest, has highlighted a division that exists in the AP community. There are very different schools of thought to raising kids, even within our common philosophy. A lot of people do what the writer of the article I linked does, and treat their kids like little grown-ups with full vote in whatever goes on in the house. I, and those like me, think that this is a steaming hot load of crap. My kids can have full vote in the running of their home when they grow up, get a job, and pay for that full vote in their own home. As long as they live under my roof, they live by my rules, and if they don't like that, they can do what I did and move out when they turn 18. I'm not going to structure the rules of my home around the whims of my kids. That is simply not going to happen.
Thak and I believe that kids, like soldiers, need strong and consistent leaders, and a well defined chain of command. We have seen what happens when this doesn't exist, when lines get blurred, and it isn't pretty. The parent who treats their kids like little adults is screwing up just as badly as the company commander who attends a kegger at the barracks. In both cases, they're undermining themselves, and also everyone else. Just like a soldier who does not respect his own commander will be less likely to give proper respect to other officers, a kid who doesn't know his place in his own home will attempt to run roughshod over his friends' parents as well. This is bad for everybody involved.
This whole thing reminds me of this one friend of Erin's. This kid has so much potential to be a good kid. He's intelligent and articulate, and his mom is really cool. The wrinkle is that this kid does not know his place. The couple times he has been allowed inside at my place, he has been like a bull in a china shop. He barges into my kitchen demanding to know where the cups are, trying to help himself to whatever is in the refrigerator, asking for snacks and then turning down what we keep around as snacks (fruit, kale chips, grape tomatoes, raw milk cheese, etc). If I get myself a glass of tea, he demands one, and tries to argue with me when I tell him that children in my home don't drink caffeinated drinks. (My kids don't. Orren's too young, and as sensitive as Erin is to certain foods, I don't even want to know what caffeine would do to her.) I'll offer him water, which is what my kids drink, and he'll turn his nose up at it, and question me on why I didn't buy juice at the store. This kid is about 1000 shades of obnoxious, and the root of the issue is that he doesn't know his place.
I had honestly thought it was just kids in that age range, that it just wasn't an age that I liked, but it isn't that. Earlier this week, the daughter of one of the other contractors Thak works with was here for the day while her dad was at work. He has her for the summer, and doesn't have childcare for her, so he usually brings her to work, but it's so boring for her to just sit in the office of the hangar all day, so after a while, it was decided that instead of doing that, she would stay with us during the workday. I would drop Thak off at work, and pick her up there and take her to our place. Then her dad would bring Thak home, and pick her up when the workday was over. The arrangement was very mutually beneficial. I would have the car for the day, and we'd only make one trip to and from the airfield, and I wouldn't have to wake Chai up from his nap to go pick up Thak, and Thak's friend would have a safe place for his daughter to be while he worked, so he could focus more on work, and she could have fun instead of being bored. Of course, our kids love her, so they win, too. Even though the thing was very mutually beneficial, I was nervous about having her over all day long because babysitting isn't really my thing. Let me tell you, though, this kid is awesome! She's easy going and not the least bit obnoxious. She can come over whenever she wants. We figured out that it's because her dad is very much the same kind of parent that we are, and that's why she fits in so well in our home.
I don't know what most people's goal in parenting is, but me and Thak pretty much agree that the most important thing is to create people whom most of the rest of the world will like. What we say is, "If there are fewer assholes in our kids' generation than there are in our generation, then we have done our job." That's pretty much the idea. The problem with some of the extreme AP families who treat their kids like small adults right from the start, is that they're not teaching them to function in the real world. They're not going to be rubbing elbows with the CEO at their first job, and nobody's going to care if they think it's unfair that they have to clean the bathroom for the third time that week. The world is built on clawing your way up from the bottom, and earning more privileges and respect as you go. If that concept doesn't exist at home, if kids are born with a full quota of privileges, they're in for a very rude awakening when they hit the real world. Not to mention, I can't imagine anyone wants to be the parent with the kids nobody can stand. All I can figure is that these people are raising those kids whom I cannot stand the idea of letting into my home.
Edited to add:
I found this. Maybe what we have here is that AP philosophy looks very differently when applied to various parenting styles. Thak and I are authoritative parents. That's our style, by definition, but we use AP practices as well, and they fit well into a general authoritative parenting style. It seems to appeal to people with a permissive parenting style also, and fits in with that. What we have is not people giving AP a bad name, but permissive parenting, which sucks, combined with AP, which doesn't suck, and it becomes a recipe for disaster, even for the kids. I suppose, what I get out of this is that it actually does the kids a favor to be authoritative. That's what I'd thought all along, of course, but it's always nice to see that the experts agree with me on something.
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