riderofpern:

spinelsong:

when your child comes to you and says “this is something that makes me uncomfortable and unhappy and makes me not want to spend time with you” and you respond with a 20 minute speech that boils down to “deal with it because life sucks” you have no respect for your child and you need to change your parenting tactics

YES! This is why we parent with respect for our child. Doesn’t like tickling? we are a tickle free house. Doesn’t like it when I call him my baby boy? Ok, sucks for me, but I get it, he’s a big boy now and so I don’t call him my little baby boy. At the end of the day, we are teaching him NOT to ignore his own intuition and autonomy. If I kept on tickling him, even after he told me he doesn’t like it, I’m teaching him that he doesn’t have the right to say who can and cannot touch him, that he should ignore that voice inside of himself, and that because I’m bigger he has to do what I say. I ABSOLUTELY do not want a child who:

1. is afraid to tell people (especially grownups) to stop touching him/stop talking to him in a certain way

2. thinks that he has no right to ask an adult to stop touching him/saying things to him

3. thinks that his parents won’t listen to him when he expresses himself, especially if someone has done something his intuition says isn’t right.